Our Baby's the Best

Our next adventure was probably our biggest and my craziest. There is a great mall on the opposite side of town in our neighboring city, Coralville. It has a fantastic Children’s Museum that we got season passes for. I decided to bike myself and the kids out there. In the car, it’s probably about 7 miles. When I’m biking with the kids, I usually try to find paths that don’t have me riding on streets. I mapped out a path that I thought would take me mostly on bike trails and away from too many cars. I accomplished that pretty well, but it ended up being about 9 miles. The way to the mall is almost entirely uphill (I’m not exaggerating on this) and it was grueling with the trailer. It took me just over an hour and I thought I was going to die when we got there and couldn’t believe I was going to have to make the trip again. Still, I settled in and enjoyed the museum with the kiddos. It is a great place. There is a room full of Legos, which, needless to say, Ben loves:

And a little grocery store where the kids can shop and check each other out at the cash register (I only got pictures of Penny, and they were all so cute I couldn’t pick one):

Grocery shopping

And an ambulance attached to a hospital/dentist’s office:

Little EMTs

There is also a cute little farm with plastic vegetables to plant and harvest and a little farm house and a barn with a slide. And a room to build pinewood derby cars and race them, as well as golf balls down different tracks. And an aviation room with slides and little pedal planes, and half a Cessna for the kids to play in, and a place to build stomp rockets and paper airplanes. They even have little flight simulations. I don’t think we’ve even been everywhere in there yet. I intend to make the most of it, especially in the winter when we can’t go outside as much.

Anyway, it was quite the adventure. I survived the return trip, as it was mostly downhill and I found a shorter way home (although the one hill almost did me in). It was much hotter on the way home and Penny was ready for a nap, as evidenced by how she looked when we got home:

She never even falls asleep in the car, so I really wore her out.

One other thing we’ve done this summer is the Summer Reading Program at the library. One of the things we had to do was read a book and have Ben draw a picture of it. The book we read was Moon Plane and this is the picture he drew (I labeled it on the computer, if you click and enlarge it, you may be able to see it):

I know I’m his mother, but I think it’s pretty impressive and adorable. He was so cute when he was drawing it because he narrated the whole thing. When we finished all of the items on his reading list, he got a certificate and a bookmark and a new book and some stickers and a pencil and eraser and a tattoo. He was super pumped. We’re working on it for Penny too. It is such a cool program.

That’s pretty much all for now. We are keeping busy and having fun, even if it is ridiculously hot and humid out most days. The truth is, riding your bike everywhere isn’t so bad, as long as you can get used to being sweaty all the time.

Zoo Trip

2011-06-26T16:54:00.001-05:00

So we went to the zoo on Friday. It is about an hour away in the quad cities in Illinois. My visiting teacher invited us with her and even let us use the free passes that came with her season pass. Hooray for cool new friends. She has two kids that are almost the exact same ages as mine. Seriously, Ben and Charlotte are 3 days apart and Penny and Eleanor are a couple weeks apart.

The weather was great and the Zoo was awesome. It was just the right size. Not so big you could never see all of it, but just big enough to have all of the best animals. Ben kept wanting to see the dinosaurs. I tried to tell him there are no dinosaurs at zoos. Luckily, they did have some dinosaur sculptures and skeletons. He and his new friend Charlotte took advantage.

This picture is cute, but the lighting is all funny.

We also saw a pond that had ducks and geese and fish. Both kids got a kick out of this. Although Penny was still in the backpack carrier when we were near the water. She loves water and is just a bit too fearless.

We moved onto the petting zoo, and I set Penny loose. She got a major kick out of the chickens.

In this picture, she was a little bit bugged that I kept trying to pull her attention away from the chickens. Both kids loved the goats and each tried to feed them. Ben was funny because he would drop the food and shriek and laugh as soon as the goat touched his hand.

They had this cool little enclosure where you could walk in with all the birds. Ben was excited, but also a bit freaked. I got him to stand by the birds but he kept thinking they were going to land on him. You can tell in the picture.

I love that picture. We saw lions and giraffes and ate some lunch and played on the playground. It’s hard to tell in these pictures, but both kids liked climbing on the killer whale statue.

The little boy with Penny was following her around and helping her climb stuff. He even caught her when she went down the slide. It was pretty cute, but I have no idea who the kid was.

And last, we went on a train ride. Both kids loved this and waved and said hi to all the animals as we passed them. Penny says “choo choo” now, and it was pretty adorable.

And last, one quick family photo before we left for the day.

Phew

2011-06-26T16:39:00.001-05:00

OK, so a lot has happened since my last post, which is bad since I am already woefully behind on posting. Namely, I STILL haven’t posted about Christmas, or Penny’s birthday. So, to throw a bone before moving onto more recent things, here are some pictures of Penny’s birthday. It was pretty low key, we had a family from our ward over and ate dinner and had some personal sized cheesecakes (made in cupcake tins) and opened some presents. Penny was pleased as punch.

Penny’s Birthday

I’m in the process of putting together a “best of” photo album of the last several months for everyone to see. The videos are still a long way off. It just takes so long to sort through them and edit them and post them.

Still, prepare for a synopsis of the last couple of months. I can’t promise that it will be brief, there is a lot to cover. Firstly, Ben turned three. Sadly, we didn’t do anything too big. We were halfway packed and the house was a mess, and Ben was so excited about presents and cake, it didn’t seem necessary to have a big party. We had a friend over for dinner and had cake and opened presents. Apparently I didn’t even take any pictures. Yipes. I did take some videos, so I’ll get to it. Just let it be noted that Ben is now three.

He is so fun and sweet. He is much better with Penny and tries so hard to be patient with her. Conversely, she tries very hard to test his patience. She is constantly taking his toys, biting him, pinching him, pulling his hair, and generally being very difficult. He knows all of his letters and the numbers 1-10. He can count with varied success. Sometimes he’ll just count to ten perfectly, but other times he is all over the place. I don’t think he totally gets the concept that the numbers are always supposed to go in the same sequence when you count. He likes to sing songs and dance. The best thing is how fun his little imagination is these days. He can entertain himself really well. Yesterday, he was playing with his friend “bike” and they were fighting monsters. Admittedly, most of his imaginary games involve monsters.

He chatters pretty much all day long. The other day, he was just finishing lunch and I was cleaning up the kitchen. He was just talking. It was so funny, I had to write it down on an envelope. It’s probably not as funny if you aren’t hearing him say it in his “big boy” deep voice. Anyway, this was the gist, as I wrote it down: “Fire trucks shoot the monsters, not sharks. Sharks live in the ocean, not in houses. Houses are great things. Sharks are in the ocean, they eat fish. Fish are my favorite food. I eat it all the time”. It should be noted that Ben does not eat fish. It turns out he has a loose definition of the word “favorite”.

Anyway, onto the next event. Jon graduated from Medical School. Yay! It was very exciting. I only have the one picture of my family because most of those were on my mom’s camera. My mom also got great pictures at the graduation. The kids had a great time with grandparents and aunts and uncles. As you can see, they got tossed around quite a bit, and loved it.

Jon’s Graduation

It was a momentous occasion, and I am so proud of Jon for making it. He is now officially Dr. R. Jonathan Willes, or R. Jonathan Willes, MD. It’s pretty cool.

The next big event was my family reunion in St. George. My little big brother was running the Ironman Triathlon there. For those of you uninitiated, the Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride topped off with a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. It is insane. I got worn out just from going around to all the spots to watch him all day. It was an amazing feat, and I was very impressed with him, even if I do think he is insane. He did pretty well. He finished in about 14.5 hours, which is pretty good for a first-timer. Especially in St. George. It’s a very difficult course with the altitude and crazy hills on the bike. Plus, the bike was into the wind a lot and it was really hot.

Here is Brad with the family at the end of the ordeal. I was actually impressed with how together he was at the end. He wasn’t falling apart like some people were. I was ready to have to scrape him off the pavement. As you can see, we were all wearing matching shirts for Brad to spot us. My sister designed and ordered them. They were awesome.

We couldn’t get them in the right sizes for all the grandkids, so my mom just ordered some blank pink shirts to match and I ironed on the logo. They turned out pretty well. The sizes weren’t small enough for Penny, so I cut it up and made a little dress. I was pretty pleased with myself. Here is the only real picture I got of it before Penny knocked the camera out of my hands and broke it (RIP). I may be able to get it fixed, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Of course, the protection plan I had on it had expired about 2 months before this happened.

After the reunion, I went back up to Salt Lake for a couple of days. My mom, my sister and I took the kids to Kangaroo Zoo. It was a blast. Mostly the day was a success because we got this picture:

I mean, seriously, those boys are so stinking adorable. Ben had such a good time with his cousins.

As a result of the Pennyfied camera, I have very few pictures after the Ironman. I didn’t take any pictures of our empty house or the moving truck (although that was such a fiasco I’m not sure I want pictures of it), or the new house. However, on Friday, I finally found my old camera from college and the battery and the charger. It was miraculous. As a result, I got to take some pictures of our latest adventure, which was a trip to the zoo in the quad cities in Illinois. I think I’ll do a separate post about it.

So there you go. I’ll keep working on the videos. Also, stay tuned for a video tour of our new home and the story of our move. Also, look for some cute pictures of the kids in our new favorite mode of transport, the bike trailer (thanks grandma).

Pittsburgh Trip

2011-04-03T11:54:00.001-05:00

So, at the beginning of the month, the kids and I drove out to Pittsburgh to keep my sister company while her husband was out of town for several days. It was a long drive, but the kids did great. Here are some of the highlights, as documented on my phone:

Penny and Ben on my Grandma’s little rocking chair that Rachael inherited:

And Penny on her own:

And here’s a little video of Ben and Ollie having a picnic together. They got along pretty well, although Ollie was kind of sick. Ben actually had a lot more fun with Owen.

And a couple of pictures of the kids playing with the play food.

Tobin and Penny with Ollie in the background. Penny and Tobin sometimes played near each other, but it turns out that Penny is a bit of a bully. She kept stealing Tobin’s pacifier, so he wasn’t her biggest fan. Still they had a couple of cute moments together.

The four younger kids playing together. Ben, Ollie, Penny, Tobin. Owen was at school most of the time. I’m not sure I have any pictures of him, but he was so cute with my kids.

Some of you may or may not know that while we were in Pittsburgh, Ben took a spill and split his face open right above his eye. Here is an up close shot of the injury at the hospital before we got it stitched up:

And after the stitches, as you can see, Ben was very upset by it. He thought it was pretty cool that he had “hairs” on his face:

Of course, he wasn’t that calm and pleased the whole time, but he was very brave. He screamed when it first happened and was asking for his “boo-boo bear” which is a little kids ice pack we have. Of course we hadn’t taken it to Pittsburgh, but we got him calmed down with a sucker. When we got to the hospital, he actually recognized it as such. He knows that daddy works at a hospital, and when asked what daddy does there, he says “he fix people”. So as we were walking up to the emergency room he said “We going to the hospital mommy?” I told him yes, we were. His little lip started to quiver and I could tell that he was fighting back tears and trying to be brave and said, “I have owie” I told him it was a hospital like where daddy worked and asked him what they do at hospitals. He replied that they fix peoples. I tried to reassure him that they would fix his owie too. He perked up a bit and said, “Yeah, because they crash” and started making car crash noises. Apparently, when Jon first taught him about hospitals, it was when they were passing some ambulances at a car accident. The hospital was great and we didn’t have to wait at all. He did really well. Since the cut was so close to his eye, they had to strap him down to a little mummy board while they injected the anesthetic and put the stitches in. He was not pleased about being strapped down. He freaked out for the shot, but who can blame him, that part is extremely unpleasant. Once the cut was all numbed up, he actually calmed down and was very curious and sweet while they did the stitches. He was talking about getting more suckers and seeing Nammy (who was on a plane to Pittsburgh at that moment) and asking Grandma for a present (I may have mentioned that he could ask for a present to calm him down during the injection).

Here is one more close up the next day that my mom took with a real camera.

On to the rest of the trip. Here is an adorable picture my mom took of Tobin. Can you believe those blue eyes?

And a picture of Tobin and Penny being super adorable after their bath. They are two such happy little babies, even though both of them were cutting their molars. Yipes!

And a picture of me with Owen, Penny, Ben, and Ollie, all in our jammies

One day, mom, Rachael and I ventured out with the four little ones. Here is a picture of Tobin and Penny in the cart at Sam’s Club. Penny is using the car keys like a cell phone.

And here we are on the road. These kids were such good travelers.

It was a great trip. There were many more pictures taken by my mom, who is a great photographer, but she accidentally deleted them from her memory card when she uploaded them to Rachael’s computer. I guess Rach will have to post them.

Phone Dump

2011-04-01T17:03:00.001-05:00

I know it’s been a while since I posted, and that I still owe my loyal followers (if there are any of you left) documentation of important things like Christmas, Penny’s birthday, and our trip to Wisconsin Dells. I’m still too lazy, and a little bit overwhelmed by our impending move to do so. Sorry. Maybe once we get settled in Iowa City, I’ll do some backlogging. Oh yeah, that reminds me, Jon Matched!!! Yay! We will be going to the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital in Iowa City. I am feeling super pumped about this. We took a trip to Iowa City, and it is a lovely little college town. I think we can be very happy there.

In other news, I just dumped my phone’s memory card so get ready for a bunch of photos. Here are some of the highlights from the last couple of months since I got my new phone:

The view from our back door in early February. We had some pretty killer icicles.

Mommy trying to get a good picture of us all nice in our church clothes. This is about as good as it gets:

And this is what should be expected:

Daddy is a slightly more cooperative model:

Sometimes they get along:

and Ben lays one on his little sister (though he’s not always gentle in doing so):

Ben is learning to draw. Here are some “peoples” he drew on his magnadoodle:

and a fire truck. I swear he drew this by himself. I gave him some directions on what shapes to draw, but he really drew it:

My camera doesn’t take great videos, especially if the lighting isn’t perfect. But I have to include this one. Penny likes to put this little cloth box on her head and walk around running into things. It kind of reminds me of the kid from the Parenthood movie:

And here is Penny at one of her first attempts at feeding herself. She actually does pretty well:

And Penny running around in her beautiful dress that Geri gave her. Seriously, can you get any cuter?

I think I’ll end this post now. I might post later with phone pics and video from our Pittsburgh trip and the rest of March.

Twilight

2011-01-22T14:43:00.001-06:00

So I am currently waiting for some videos of my kids to upload. My computer is painfully slow right now thanks to a problematic battery. As a result, I have some time to post about silly things. Prepare for a lengthy post without any pictures.

I’m sure you all guessed that this post is about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. For the past several years (since about the time I finished reading Harry Potter in 2007) most women I know between the ages of 12 and 45 have been reading this series and telling me to read it. I resisted. A lot.

I had my reasons. First of all: I like to read good books. Secondofly: I have a very long list of those books that I want to read, and I couldn’t bring myself to bump Twilight ahead of the likes of East of Eden and Crime and Punishment (neither of which I have read still) and Count of Monte Cristo (which I did finally read). Third: It sounded like a romance novel. I’ve unfortunately read a romance novel by a Mormon author once t wasn’t a mistake I was ready to make again. Fourth: I sometimes like to pretend I’m more mature and refined than adolescent girls. Fifth: I hate vampires. I don’t like stories about them. I don’t think they have ever made for books that are anything more than glorified romance novels.

In spite of all of these objections, I finally decided I would make a compromise and see the movies. If only because I kind of like Kristen Stewart from her other stuff and it seemed like something good to watch for a girls night with my mom and my sister. So, when I was in Utah this summer, my mom and I rented “Twilight” and “New Moon” and set out to watch them. My dad joined us because he is a good sport and there wasn’t much else to do. Not surprisingly, mom fell asleep about halfway into the first one and I ironically watched the first two Twilight movies with my dad.

Can I just say Yipes?! The first one was tremendously bad. It was boring and went pretty much nowhere until that last half hour or so. If I had to watch Robert Pattinson make a pained expression one more time, I was going to have an aneurysm. It was hard to tell if he was constipated, or just trying really hard to not look at the camera or something. I thought Kristen Stewart was believable, but the character was obnoxious. At least I got some joy out of some 24 alums. Sarah Clarke (aka Nina Myers) in a small role as the mom and Billy Burke (aka Gary Matheson) as the dad. The score was terrible and did nothing to fill in the gaps, which was unfortunate since the whole movie was gaps.

I actually kind of liked the second movie. Possibly because Robert Pattinson and his painfully pained expression left shortly into the movie. While Taylor Lautner is not a particularly good actor, he was adorable and likeable in Pattinson’s absence. Kristen Stewart was again believeable, but the character was still obnoxious. At least they did a quick montage to glaze past the months of her pathetic moping, and the music was a lot better. Actually, I should give Kristen Stewart more credit because she really dominated the screen time and somehow managed to make me not want to kill her character, who probably deserved it.

I watched the third movie by myself. I liked it. I’m sort of ashamed to admit it, but I did. Taylor Lautner grew into his role, Robert Pattinson was grimacing less, and Kristen Stewart was good. It helped that Bella was less obnoxious. I liked the vampire family (except for Rosie). I really liked Jasper and Emmet and Dr. Cullen. The music was actually really fun, and the villains were interesting. The middle was still painful to get through, though.

I decided I had to find out for myself if the characters were any better in the books, so I finally broke down and started reading them. I also told myself that I was also really skeptical of the Harry Potter books and made fun of people who read them. I was way off on that one. I sort of skimmed the first three since I had seen the movies. I was just trying to find the stuff that wasn’t in the movies. While they were quick reads, and I didn’t absolutely hate them, I have to say that I was right about them.

The characters lack depth and don’t really function as real heroes or protagonists. Edward is definitely more likeable than Robert Pattinson makes him, but even then, not until the back end of the third book. Bella is an annoying, love-stricken teenageer, which would be fine, since that’s normal for a girl of that age, but she’s supposed to be mature and an “old soul”. I think Meyer just said that about the character so the reader could get behind her falling so desperately in love with a guy she barely knew and be so sure of it, even after he took off and came back. Note: It’s hard to really get behind a teenaged girl finding true love with a creature that is, by all accounts, built to make people fall for him. I never quite got what made her infatuation with him more meaningful than every other girl who would have dropped everything to be with him, other than the fact that he noticed her, as well. Which is another problem, since he really only noticed her since her blood smelled super delicious to him and he couldn’t hear her thoughts.

The writing is straight forward and unimaginative and tends to drag in all of the books. They are driven in good part by internal monologue, which doesn’t work very well when the writing is bad and the characters are uninteresting. Stephanie Meyer has a bad habit of making sure nothing really interesting happens until the last 10% of the book. Even when interesting stuff happens in the middle of the book, she manages to make it seem boring.

Ultimately, the books had a couple of chances to be good and maybe even have some substance, but missed the mark. I guess I shouldn’t have expected more out of books for young adults, but I sort of did after reading Hunger Games. I kept waiting for there to be anything thematically of value, but it just didn’t come. It really is just a love story about a girl, a vampire, and a werewolf. I can see how people like it, as it is better than most other love stories for that age group, but it’s unwise to look for anything else out of it. I guess I’m glad I read them, because it definitely did add something to the movies. The characters are easier to understand, and the vampires are given more depth and back story. Also, I can now honestly say that I don’t particularly like them and have it be an informed opinion. I have to say that I agree with Stephen King’s take on Meyer’s place in the juvenile literature worl: "the real difference [between J. K. Rowling and Meyer] is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer, and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."However, King understood the appeal of the series, adding, "People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because it's not overtly sexual." (Link to the article)

That is all. Look below for really cute videos of Ben and Penny, as a reward for making it through this post.

Cute Videos

2011-01-22T14:39:00.001-06:00

So, here’s a cute video of Penny walking. She’s really getting good at it.

And here’s a super cute video of Ben reading with Jon. He loves this story and he loves when Jon reads it with him. It’s kind of fuzzy looking because of a smudge on the camera lens courtesy of a very curious Penny finger.

Quick Little Penny Video

2011-01-22T08:51:00.001-06:00

So, I know I still owe people pictures and video from Christmas, Penny’s Birthday and a lot of other things. To make matter worse, I have a loaner phone that has a terrible camera on I, so I haven’t been texting pictures either. So here is a quick video of Penny being silly to tide you over. Oh, and FYI, there is an adorable video of Ben helping Jon read the Three Little Pigs on the horizon.

Penny being her cute, silly self. Sorry about the bad picture, there was a nasty smudge on the lens.

The Quiet Books

2010-12-28T11:53:00.001-06:00

So, earlier this year, my mom got me a sewing machine. I was determined not to make the same mistake I often make when I take on a new hobby which is to jump into the deep end, get frustrated, and give it up. I have a tendency to try to do the hardest thing first, rather that starting out as a beginner. I did pretty well at first. My first couple of projects were really simple and pretty hard to screw up. They helped me learn my way around a sewing machine. The extreme importance of setting the tension correctly, and the frustration of having kids around that sometimes changed settings when I wasn’t looking. All was going pretty well. Then I started to frequent some crafting blogs and saw this quiet book at homemadebyjill. I fell in love and had to have one for Ben. I started looking around the internet for cute ideas and did tons of research before starting to put together my own sketches and ideas. Then I had the brilliant idea of just making the thing in triplicate so my nephews could have one too (one for us, one for my brother’s kids, and one for my sister’s kids). I decided they would be Christmas presents. It’s been difficult, frustrating, and surprisingly fun, but I finished (sort of) in time for them to be Christmas gifts. Sadly, I have not quite finished Ben’s yet. I sort of put it off to make sure the other two got into the mail in time. It’s close, though, and I hope to have it done shortly after the new year. Also, I made them 3-ring style, so I can add more pages as I finish them. Now that Christmas has passed and the recipients have seen them, I can show it to you. Enough talk, though, here is a tour:

The front covers. The little frame holds a picture. I left them empty because I didn’t have great pictures of my nephews to put in them. The strap has three sets of snaps for use as it grows in size when I make more pages.

You can’t see it very well, but I embroidered the spines to say “The Merrill/Grant Family Quiet Book”. Considering that before I made this book I had never embroidered before, I feel pretty good about how it turned out.

Inside front cover/Page 1: The inside cover is a tree that I got from homemadebyjill. The only thing I changed is that I stitched on little labels with the family’s names onto some of the leaves. I love the gumball machine way of doing the color matching. I got that idea from craftychic. The circles just velcro on to a matching circle on the bottom.

Pages 2 and 3: The counting page just had shank buttons on some ribbon. I honestly can’t remember where I got this idea, but it wasn’t mine originally. I did have to put a stitch down the middle of the five bigger numbers and separate out the buttons so the ribbon didn’t sag. I like the cute way of teaching how to count, though. The Noah’s Ark I saw on a lot of different blogs. I kind of combined a lot of them into my own. It unzips and has finger puppets inside. I did not make the finger puppets, I got some really cute ones at IKEA Also, you can’t see it, but the inside of the boat is lined with a cute animal fabric to give a little color and make it more sturdy, since felt tends to stretch. This page was probably the easiest to make.

Pages 4 & 5: This is most definitely my crowning achievement for the book. I got the idea by following the links on quietbook.blogspot.com to her little sister’s, the Egberts. The layout is almost the exact same, but my pages are a little bigger, so I had more to work with. Also, I used tiny (1/8th inch) ric rac for the yellow lines. I think it adds something. You’ll notice each house has a garage (three of which have my nephew’s names embroidered on). Each garage has a Micro Machine in it (thank you Ebay). Also, the stop lights are plastic snaps that come off. The soccer field is a pocket to put the snaps or cars in or whatever. I’m particularly proud of the fire truck and ambulance, on which I embroidered the details. I toyed with making them removable, but I was too proud of them to risk them getting torn apart.

Pages 6 & 7: The shapes pages is pretty straightforward. The shapes snap on with standard, sew-on, metal snaps. You can see a little Penny hand that was very excited about the heart. The football player is another one I’m pretty proud of even if it does look a little off. I decided to do a football to lace instead of the traditional shoe. I got the idea from modestmaven’s quiet book. I just modified it because my pages are so big, it didn’t make sense just to have a football. So I decided to add a buckle of some kind and that led to a football player. And yes, you may detect a Broncos theme.

Page 8/Inside back cover: The pockets hold puzzles I made out of craft foam. Each of the pockets snaps onto the page with plastic snaps, so the puzzles can be easily distributed to different kids. The little frame is meant to be a puzzle board for making the puzzles, but the puzzles can be done on any surface. The puzzle board also removes. I’m pretty proud of the Broncos puzzle, you’ll have to check it out in the album at the end, as this post is getting very lengthy. The last page has slots for twistable crayons and a little pocket with a notebook in it. I put a Cars notebook in it that I got in the dollar bins at Target.

The back cover is just plain with a pocket to keep miscellaneous items in or any pieces that fall out when you grab it as you’re leaving church.

All in all, I’m very pleased with how it turned out, especially considering that I really bit off more than I could chew. I have a lot of fun ideas for more pages, but I have other projects I want to do before I expand this one (most importantly, finishing our book).

And, here is an album with more pictures of the book in closer detail, including the puzzles:

Quiet Book

I will do my best to post about Christmas and Penny’s birthday as soon as I can. I hope to have some pictures up today, but it might be a while before I get the videos up. We took a lot of video and it’s taking me a long time to sort through it and edit it.

Penny Walking Update

2010-12-22T10:52:00.001-06:00

Hey all. I just thought I’d do a quick update on Penny’s adventures in walking before things get too crazy with Christmas and Penny’s birthday (I can’t believe she’s going to be 1).

Here’s a video we took at the beginning of November when she was first taking steps.

Some of Penny’s first steps captured on video. It’s tough to do without a tripod or another adult to hold the camera while we encourage her. Sorry for the cutting off of the heads.

Penny hasn’t been too motivated to adapt walking as her primary means of getting around as she’s so fast at crawling, but yesterday she started walking across the room without any encouragement from me. It’s adorable and amazing. Ben was pretty pumped and wanted to get in on the action. This is one of my favorite videos we’ve ever taken. See for yourself.

Pretty much the cutest video ever. And yes, I know it says Pwnny. That’s what happens when you upload videos with a baby on your lap.

Wisconsin Dells

2010-11-12T14:50:00.001-06:00

So we went up to Wisconsin Dells for a night a couple of weeks ago to play in the water parks up there. There was a cute little place in our hotel that the kids enjoyed the night we got there. After a bit of water time, we went to get some dinner. We found this cute place where the food is delivered by train. As soon as we saw that, we thought that sounded perfect. The food wasn’t half bad either. Here’s a look at the train delivering our drinks.

And Ben getting a kick out of the process.

And Penny dancing to the awesome country music:

We had a good time at the pool park in our hotel, but the morning after our stay, we headed over to one of the other resorts that had a huge indoor water park. Getting in there was included with our hotel stay. It turns out Penny is a total water baby. Ben likes the water, but he’s very cautious and wary. We mostly just played in the toddler/baby area all day. Penny splashed around and enjoyed herself. It took a while, but by the end of the day, Ben was going down the toddler slides all by himself. He really liked it, and was very sad when we had to leave. Seeing as how I didn’t want our expensive camera getting wet, we only took one video. Here it is:

Jon and I took turns going on some of the bigger slides. All in all, it was really fun, if a little bit hectic. We came back from our trip, got bathed and pretty much headed right over to the church for the Halloween party. The next post will be about that.

Standing baby. . . sort of

2010-08-23T17:35:00.001-05:00

I remember when Ben was a baby, that Jon and I were really excited for every new milestone. We would go out of our way to encourage Ben to roll over, crawl, walk, whatever. Not so with Penny. I am just treasuring the infant phase. She is such a sweet baby. I do not want her to grow up. In spite of this, Penny has gone right on ahead hitting her milestones like a champ, with little encouragement from me. She pulled herself to a standing position last Friday. Here it is the first time I caught it (the unclipped version, for those of you who got the text):

Note: Here’s another example of the cloth diapers Penny has been sporting of late, as mentioned in my last post.

In the meantime, Ben has gone on being his rambunctious self. In general, I’d say he’s pretty good for a two year old. He’s even doing better in stores these days. He’ll help me shop and be pretty sweet, with a couple of notable exceptions. For some reason he is terrible in Joann’s. He refuses to ride in the cart and runs up and down the aisles and won’t listen to anything I say. Also, he is not good in sporting goods stores, but who can blame him. He took off while we were there the other day and I tracked him down in the football gear. With a little help from mommy, he got ready for the football season:

True Confession

2010-08-23T17:15:00.001-05:00

So, while it’s not exactly a secret, I’ve been putting off announcing the fact that we are now cloth diaper people. I was kind of waiting to make sure it was a success before broadcasting it to the world. And while I have absolutely no intention of pushing other people into cloth diapering, it’s something I’m pretty excited about right now.

I have to tell you, when Ben was born, the topic came up once with Jon and I totally wrote it off saying that there was absolutely no way that I was going to spend large portions of my life cleaning poop off of cloth. Jon, being the good husband he is, dropped it and happily supported me in using disposables. One day, I saw a deal for some hybrid cloth diapers on babysteals and was curious. Hybrid diapers are basically a waterproof cloth cover with disposable inserts, either cloth or disposables. The disposable inserts are biodegradable and compostable, unlike normal disposables. Jon and I had been talking about trying a more environmentally friendly disposable, but it was out of our price range. The deal made it pretty affordable so I decided to give it a try. It worked out pretty well, but I was still using normal disposables a lot.

I was still scared of trying cloth because I was already buried in laundry and still hated the idea of cleaning poopy diapers. Then, as I was rinsing the poop off of yet another outfit of Penny’s after yet another blowout, I realized that it was silly to not use cloth because I didn’t want to deal with cleaning poopy diapers. I was cleaning baby poop off of something or other every day. So I started doing some research and discovered that cloth diapers are not what they used to be. There are TONS of options out there. In fact, there are altogether too many options. And, while the upfront costs are more expensive than a pack of disposables, you definitely save money in the long term. Plus, it’s better for the environment. There are some great online stores that will let you try cloth diapers and return them if you don’t like them.

Long story short, after a LOT of research and several returned items, I found a convenient, affordable option, and we’ve been using them for a couple of months. I really like it so far. It’s really not that bad cleaning them. We got a little sprayer that attaches to our toilet and I just spray off the messy diapers and toss them in a diaper pail that has a waterproof fabric bag in it. Every other day, I pull out the bag and dump the diapers and the bag in the washing machine. I do a quick cold rinse to get rid of the gross stuff and then wash on hot with a small amount of detergent and two rinse cycles (it’s important to keep detergent from building up in the diapers). Throw them in the dryer, and it’s a done deal. It’s really only a couple of extra loads a week, and with all the laundry I do, it doesn’t feel like much. Plus, it’s actually helped me establish a more regular laundry routine, keeping me from falling behind and getting crushed under a mountain of laundry, as I’ve been known to do.

I still use the hybrid disposable diapers for when I take Penny to the gym or for babysitters, but I haven’t bought any more traditional disposables since our last bag ran out a while ago. Penny seems to like the cloth diapers just fine. I was worried that since cloth doesn’t absorb as well or as fast as disposables, Penny’s skin would get irritated. I was wrong. She’s actually had fewer diaper rashes in cloth. I got some fleece liners to put in for naps and night time, and they wick the moisture away from the skin really well. Plus, the covers/diapers we got are pretty cute. Check out the album of Penny modeling her newest cloth diaper:

Seriously, so cute. And Penny seems to like them.

Too Much Too Late

2010-08-13T17:40:00.001-05:00

So I know that this post is woefully overdue, but I’ll try to make up for it by making this post way too long. I’ll start by posting some of the pictures from Penny’s blessing that I promised in my last post. Unfortunately, my mom was too busy taking pictures to actually be in any of the pictures, but I promise she was there. Also, we didn’t get any pictures of her cute little headband and the shoes she was wearing. It is worth noting that she’s wearing my blessing dress. My mom cleaned it and it was just beautiful. Anyway, here are the pictures:

Other than that, I guess I’ve missed posting a lot of what has happened over the past couple of months. I’ll give the Reader’s Digest condensed version with pictures interspersed to keep you interested. The kids and I went to Utah for the Merrill Family reunion. It was a grand time in Eden. I loved seeing all of my siblings and nephews, and of course my parents. We also got to spend some time with Jon’s family which was fantastic, of course. Ben loves his family and having playmates, although he did get a bit overwhelmed when everyone was together. Penny loves everybody and is pretty chipper most of the time. My nephew Dylan (Ben’s age) was in LOVE with Penny. He couldn’t get enough of her, and it was pretty stinking cute. I don’t think we ever adequately captured it on film, but here’s a little taste:

Other than our trip, life is pretty much normal aka crazy. Jon works ridiculous hours and I feel largely like a single mother with a boyfriend who spends the night once in a while. Also, I had Girl’s Camp. Geri and Robert came out to help take care of the kids while I dealt with that. It was so nice of them. We loved having them here. Ben was in heaven with Robert. They built forts and played all day. Penny didn’t exactly take a bottle so I came back from camp and went back for the last day. I love Girl’s Camp and I love my girls, but I’m pretty sure I would have died if I had stayed the whole week.

Ben is such a big boy. He’s halfway potty trained. Basically, he can go in the potty, but he’s not very good at telling me when he has to. So he’s potty trained as long as I remember to put him on the potty frequently enough. He talks up a storm, and almost half of it is intelligible now. I think my personal favorite is that he calls thunder “bunder”, and he always says it in a serious, low voice. It’s adorable. I’ll try to get it on film during the next storm. He has his moments of being sweet with his sister, but is not very excited that she is mobile enough to get into his toys now. He loves trucks and trains and cars and trucks. He loves this movie my cousin made called Twenty Trucks. It came with an awesome yellow shirt that he wants to wear every day. He points out all of the trucks we pass when we’re driving around. Especially dump trucks. They’re his favorite. Did I mention he loves trucks? He’s also a Lego building machine. He’s really good at it. Exhibit A (he built it without any help from me, also, note the trucks T-shirt):

Penny is growing so fast. My doctor was out of town, then I was out of town, so her 6 month check up was actually a 7 month check up. She weighed 18 lbs. 5 oz. and was 27 in. long (I think, I’ll have to check that on the little growth chart I keep). She’s been sitting really well for a while now. In fact, she can sit herself up on her own from laying on her stomach. She’s pretty much mobile now and is really close to crawling for real. In fact, sometimes she does a normal crawl, but most of the time she pushes herself up on her hands and knees and flops forward onto her belly and repeats that until she gets where she wants. Here she is from sitting to crawling back to sitting:

My mom is sending me a disc of the pictures from our trip to Utah, so I’ll post those when I have them. I have a large backlog of photos and videos from our nice cameras to upload and edit, but who has time for that? Right now, you all (that is if anyone still reads my blog) will have to settle for the latest batch of cell phone photos/videos. So, here are the last few months of our lives, as seen through my cell phone:

My Very First Solo Sewing Projects, Crafts, and Redecorating:

June in a Nutshell:

Ben’s First Movie (Toy Story 3) and July Fourth

Utah Trip

The Rest of July

Ben and Jon building stuff at Home Depot

And just to send you off:

Research

2010-06-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

So, I know that I have a lot better things to post about, but I really can't help myself, and posting about this is a lot easier than uploading all the adorable videos and pictures of my amazing kids. I promise to try and post something about them later today or tomorrow. That being said, I don't very often muse on my blog, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. I hope your interest is piqued. Or not, maybe nobody ever reads the text on here and you completely ignored this post when there were no pictures.

Now, let me just say, that I think that Psychiatry plays an important role in health and well-being and there are a lot of really good Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals out there, including my sister. Unfortunately, Psychiatrists and Psychologists often get a bum rap for not being real medical professionals or scientists. Luckily, there are some Psychiatrists who are willing to go above and beyond to give their profession more credibility. Check out this article on TVguide.com or this one on Wired

REALLY!! Can you possibly read that and still think that the mental health field doesn't study anything "real". Awesome. Who loves the fact that they talk about what kind of treatment would have benefited Anakin Skywalker, like maybe that would have made some difference? My favorite part is that it's being published in an academic journal and was presented at the meeting for the American Psychiatric Association. I'm not sure if this is more telling of what's wrong with Psychiatry or how crazy Star Wars fans are.

One last note. This really is all in fun. I'm in no place to judge people for over-analyzing fictional characters.

Cute Older Brother

2010-05-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

So Ben is kind of hit or miss when it comes to his baby sister. Most of the time he ignores her or tolerates her. He's never really mean to her, which is good. But once in a while, it strikes him to be really sweet with her. Tonight, as in just a few minutes ago, Ben was in his highchair eating some chocolate cake after eating a good dinner. I was sitting in front of his highchair with Penny on my lap and Ben was kind of playing footsie with Penny and she was laughing because a)her little feet are ticklish and 2) she LOVES her big brother and smiles so big for him any time he looks at her. Anyway, Ben was getting a kick out of this and laughing when she would laugh and he promptly put down his fork, put out his arms and said "hug". I said "You want to hug Penny". He replied that he did. So I took him out of his highchair and took him in the family room and put him on the couch and set Penny on his lap. The results were adorable. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to pull out the video camera as Ben's sweet brother moments are generally fleeting. I did capture it on my cell phone. I didn’t edit it, because I thought it all was pretty cute, but it is long. Check it out.

Also, expect an update about Penny’s blessing on Sunday. I’m just waiting until I can get the pictures from my mom.

Benjamin Danvers Willes: Age 2

2010-04-20T21:30:00.001-05:00

I promised an update on our little man, so here goes. At his two year checkup today he measured in at 34 1/4 inches and 29 pounds. That puts him at about 50th percentile height and 75th percentile weight, so he’s not nearly as big (relatively) as he used to be. This doesn’t surprise me at all as he’s much too busy to be bothered to eat as much as he used to.

Ben is a little adventurer and a delight to everyone around him. Even today, when we had a WIC appointment and a doctor’s visit for him, he made friends with everyone. He didn’t even flinch when they pricked his finger to test his iron.

At the doctor’s office, he had a really good time. He was pretty excited that he got to use the big boy measuring stuff and got to walk out in the hall to the measuring stick and stand on the scale. He didn’t even mind when the nurse had to try four times to get a blood pressure. Then the doctor came in with a nursing student and was telling her/me that 2 is a really hard visit and that he would scream through the whole thing. Not so. Ben was pretty quiet for most of the exam and only seemed bothered at all when they looked in his ears. Then they laid him down to check him out and the doctor kind of tickled him and Ben started laughing hysterically. The doctor looked surprised and said it was the most pleasant 2 year checkup he’d ever done (I’m sure he tells that to a lot of people, but Ben was pleasant, also of note, Penny was a champ through all of this too). Then, the doctor left and left the door open while I had Ben on the exam table to dress him. Every time a nurse would walk by he would say hi. When they would stop and say hi he would point at the wallpaper and say “Wha't’s dat?”, “Train” (there was a train full of animals on the wall). It was super cute. He didn’t want to leave; I had to drag him out.

Anyway, so that’s just an example of the kind of little boy Ben is. He’s sweet and friendly and curious. He goes a mile a minute all day. He loves, cars, trucks, trains, and Toy Story and running around outside. He likes to read and knows most of his animals and some of his shapes. I swear he picks up a new word at least once a day, so it’s hard to keep track of everything he’s saying. He says several phrases now and is starting to put together little sentences. His favorites: “What’s happeen?” (what’s happening, he says this a lot when he’s watching a movie or playing with his daddy), “Eer oo go" "(here you go, when he gives you something), "Puu pazon (put pants on, this one is funny as he didn’t used to want pants on, but he now knows he only get to go outside when he has pants on, so as soon as he has a new diaper on he says this and grabs his pants). He’s sweet to his sister when he slows down for long enough to pay attention to her. And boy does Penny love her brother. Any time he is in her line of sight, she follows him with her eyes and just smiles at him. Ben is such a joyful little soul and I am so grateful to have him in my life. He makes me smile every day (even on days like today when he screamed for 15 minutes when I brought him inside because he kept running into the street to go play with the big kids across the street, he just always wants to be socializing).

Lastly, and of note, Ben is currently sleeping in a big boy bed for the first time (at least I’m pretty sure he’s a sleep, I haven’t heard a peep from him since I put him down an hour ago).

I let him pick the bedding out at the store for his birthday. Jon and I put the bed together today when Jon had a break. While Ben was in the bath tonight I got the bedding all ready. I got Ben out of the bath and in his pajamas and set him down so he could help me put his toys away. I no sooner set him down than he ran straight to the bed, climbed in and pulled the comforter over himself. I had to coax him out to help me clean up (which he actually did), then we had to brush teeth, read books, and say prayers. When it was time to get in bed he climbed right in, asked for his fleece blanky which he put under his head and pulled the covers over himself. I sang him a song, tucked his stuffed animals under his arms (he loves his stuffed animals, it’s really cute) and kissed him goodnight. He still hasn’t made a sound. We’ll see if he lasts the whole night. Here are some pictures:

The bed all made up for him:

All tucked in for the night

So that’s my very lengthy update on the little man. I also got the crib set with Penny’s bedding, and it looks great. I’ll take a picture of that tomorrow. We probably won’t put her in it until Ben is in a routine with his new bed and she is sleeping a little bit longer cycles at night.

Ben’s Birthday

2010-04-19T11:58:00.001-05:00

So yesterday was Ben’s second birthday. It was a really good day. Crazy, but good. I think Ben really enjoyed himself. I made some french toast out of homemade cinnamon bread for breakfast with a strawberry topping. Ben loved it, as evidenced by this picture when he was shoving pretty much a whole piece into his mouth.

I spent the rest of the morning assembling his cake while Jon played with him. Here’s a few pictures of the finished product (and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. It was A LOT of work):

Jon did a good job of keeping Ben out of the kitchen until I was just about done. Once Ben saw the cake, though, he was way too excited to do anything else but look at it and point at it (just a note, none of these videos are edited. Sorry they are so long, but I wanted to get them posted and don't really have time to edit them).

Then we went to church. We came home and Ben took a nap while we got ready for Ben’s little party. We had over two families from church with kids around Ben’s age and one of Jon’s friends. Ben was so pumped when everyone got here. He was just running around screaming and laughing. Then he saw his presents and had to open one. He picked the one from the stack that was from my mom. Here he is opening it:

He really loved the train. Jon got it all set up for him, and he was pumped.

When it was time for cake and ice cream, we lit the candle and tried to get Ben to blow it out. See for yourself (thanks to Cori for the film-work):

Turns out we’ve apparently taught him too well that fire is hot and he shouldn’t touch it because he didn’t want anything to do with it. Not only that, but when we gave him the cake, he refused to eat it, saying it was hot. The only way I eventually got him to eat any cake was by cutting up a piece of the unfrosted stuff I had leftover.

Ben opened the rest of his presents after cake. I do need to edit the video of that, unless everyone wants to watch about 20 minutes of video of that. Jon and I gave him a couple of activity books about trucks, which he liked. The Thomases gave him a Hot Wheels car with the cutest little homemade pouch to put 5 cars in with a little road on it that folds up and velcros shut. It’s a perfect little thing for putting cars in and sticking in a purse or diaper back when we’re out. The Delavans gave him an action figure set of Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and the rocket from the first Toy Story. He loved it. He was flying Buzz around all night. All in all, I would say Ben really liked all of his gifts and had a great time opening them and playing with them with his friends. I’ll post and abridged version of it when I get a chance to edit the video on the other computer.

One of my favorite parts of the night was Ben saying goodbye to his guests. Sorry his shirt was still off from eating cake.

All in all, it was a great day, at the end of which I needed a really long nap. So did the kids. They both zonked out pretty much as soon as the guests left. Poor Penny had been needing to sleep for a while, but it was just too loud. She was a really good sport, though. Turns out she likes having people around, too.

That’s all. Later today or tomorrow, I’m going to do a little tribute to Ben to catch people up on what our little man is up to these days.

Easter and Beyond

2010-04-19T11:57:00.001-05:00

So, we celebrated Easter a week late as Jon was on call for actual Easter and was at the hospital all day. Here’s a video of Ben on Easter morning doing his little Easter egg hunt. It’s a long video, but I didn’t really have time to trim it. All of the videos in today’s posts will be uncut for the time being. Sorry about that. It’s probably a lot more of us than anybody needs to see. Also, sorry that Penny is screaming for the first half of this video.

And here is a quick little video of us in our Easter clothes on our way to church. We couldn’t find the still camera, so we just took a video.

I also discovered recently that Penny loves it when you tell her stories. It doesn’t really matter what you tell her, just that you do it in an animated voice and look at her. She gets a kick out of it. Here’s a video of it.

We put both kids in the crib. Ben is actually pretty sweet with Penelope these days. And Penny loves her big brother. She always watches him whenever she can, and just smiles anytime he pays attention to her. She’s also pretty tough and even likes it when Ben is a little bit aggressive in his affection.

Photos are up!!

2010-04-03T15:20:00.000-05:00

The photos from our recent photo shoot in Utah are up. I think they are pretty great. It definitely captures Ben's little personality, as you can tell that he was never really sitting still the whole time. My kids pictures are mixed in with pictures of my sister's kids, as well as some group shots so you might have to sift through it a bit to find Ben and Penny. Although I don't think that's too much of a problem as my sister's kids are just gorgeous. Check it out by clicking on the picture here:

They are just so cute.

Trip to Utah and More

2010-04-02T15:30:00.001-05:00

So Ben, Penny, and I took a trip to Utah for about a week and a half. We got back last Saturday. We left so we could get out of Jon's hair while he studied for his surgery SHELF (which he passed, no problem, even though he was convinced he failed). It turns out, Jon knows his surgery stuff and we're really proud of him.

Anyway, it was a really great trip. We stayed with my parents, and my sister and her three boys were there at the same time. Ben had so much fun with his cousins. Owen (5) and Ollie (3) were really cute with him. Ben spent most of the time chasing them around. He was always the "monster", which he didn't mind, since it just meant that whenever they started running away screaming, he chased after them, screaming. It made for a very noisy time, but also very fun. Penny was her cute self, and even overcame some of her mommy clinginess by the time we left. She's still not taking a bottle very well, though.

I'm sorry I don't really have any pictures of the trip, as we really only took pictures on my mom's camera. She's been pretty busy, but as soon as I get a chance to get some of those pictures from her, I will post them here. Also, we had some professional photos done of the kids as well, which I'll post the link to here as soon as they're uploaded.

In the meantime, while you're all anxiously awaiting those pictures, I did finally get around to dumping all my camera photos onto the computer, so here are a few of those.

Penny on the plane-ride to Utah:

Yeah, miraculously, she slept the whole flight. No joke, she fell asleep as we were taxiing to take off and woke up on the descent.

Benjamin on the ride to Utah:

Thank goodness for portable DVD players. We got a portable DVD player that accepts SD cards. Jon put a bunch of movies on one SD card (about the size of a quarter) and that way I didn’t have to pack any DVDs. Ben still has a pretty short attention span and the plane was full of distractions, so this only worked for about twenty minutes at a time. Still, it definitely helped, as he did that several times. He also ate lots of sugary treats that he doesn’t normally get.

And I have to post a picture of Penny in the AMAZING knitted dress that Courtney made for her, although these phone pictures do not do it justice:

Can you believe that my sister made that? It’s very impressive.

Speaking of impressive homemade things, we have received so many great homemade things for Penny. I’m blown away by the talented friends and family that we have. Unfortunately, the only other one I have a phone picture of is the quilt that Jon’s Aunt Linda made for us. I think it definitely warrants mentioning, though. Check it out:

Penny enjoying her little baby straight jacket and waving to the camera:

Ben, outside in the warm weather, at long last. He actually probably didn’t need the jacket, but when I asked him if he wanted to go outside he went and grabbed his shoes and brought them back for me to put them on him. Then as we were going out the door he pointed at the coat closet and kept saying “coat”. He’s so used to needing a jacket to go outside, he wouldn’t let me take him out without one. Classic.

Plus a video of Ben outside. He has discovered a new thing that really interests him, bugs. I think this partly comes from the little bug cages and plastic bugs that my mom had at her house. I think this video captures our very boyish little boy quite nicely. He’s obsessed with cars/trucks and bugs.

Also from my phone, a video of Penny being ticklish and otherwise adorable. Admittedly, her little laugh is more of a grunt. Oh, and she loves her fist.

And last, yesterday Ben did not want to get out of his crib after his nap, so I gave him a couple of toys to entertain him while I got some other things done. I heard him jabbering quite a bit and went in to find him intently reading Jon’s laminated pamphlet on Schizophrenia that had been stuck in one of Ben’s books.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to update as soon as the photographer sends me the link to our pictures.

Sometimes life is just crazy

2010-02-20T10:38:00.001-06:00

So, for those of you who didn’t know, we spent last week in the hospital with Penny, who had RSV. It was very sad to see our little girl struggling to breathe, with a nasal tube for oxygen and an IV in her head. Thankfully, Jon’s mom was able to drive out to help, which was a real blessing. I don’t know what we would have done with Ben if she hadn’t come. He had such a good time with his Grandma, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even notice that mommy spent pretty much 24/7 at the hospital. Plus, for some reason, Geri thought that driving across the country with the car she and Richard bought for us, watching our son for five days, and cleaning up our house wasn’t enough. She kept insisting on buying us dinner and doing other nice things for us, like watching both kids all day so Jon and I could get a day out.

Anyway, Penny has bounced back really well. She’s already regained the pound she lost in the hospital. We went to the doctor yesterday for a check-up and she got a clean bill of health.

Of course, just to make things even more fun, when Jon was on his way home from the hospital in the awesome new car that Geri brought for us he got rear ended. Talk about a giant kick in the pants. The car is probably going to take a couple of weeks to fix. So, yay for that.

In other news, I thought I’d give a quick update on our little man now that he’s officially 22 months. He’s growing up so fast. He’s really smart and sweet and fun. He talks up a storm now, although most of it is either gibberish or sounds exactly like another word. Still, he pretty much parrots back whatever I say to him, but only when he feels like it, so it’s hard to catch on video. I tried to make a list of all his words, but it’s hard since he seems to pick up a new word or two every day. He’s gotten really adept at letting us know what he needs. He even tells us when he has a poopy diaper. He’s still obsessed with cars, but thankfully he’s moved on from the movie a bit. His new favorite movies are WALL-E and UP, which Jon and I appreciate.

So, now that things have settled down a bit, I thought I’d treat everyone to some pictures and video. Consider it a reward for those of you who slogged through my update.

Photos from Geri’s stay

Penny’s Photo Shoot

I'd like to share my Walgreens Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Here’s a video of our little girl being back to her healthy, happy self. She’s such a social and happy baby.

Quick Ben Story

2010-01-28T13:21:00.001-06:00

So, yesterday a woman from church took Ben for the whole day and even brought us dinner when she brought him home. It was a huge help. Anyway, according to her, Ben was very well behaved for her and was just a joy to have. Don't get me wrong, I think Ben is a joy too, he just gets a little stir crazy here and lonely as well. I'm glad he got the chance to get out of the house and play with some other kids. She has a little boy who is just over a year old named Spencer.

Apparently at one point during the day Spencer hit Ben and Ben responded by going over to Spencer and gently rubbing Spencer's arm in the gesture we've taught him that goes along with the word "gentle". I think it's great that he actually learned what we've been drilling for the past couple of months in preparation for the baby. He's so smart (even if he is a little lacking in the verbal department) and sweet. Jon and I feel so lucky to have such a special little boy. He's adjusted beautifully to no longer being the only child. He loves his little sister. He tries to play with her and comfort her when she cries.

Quick Update

2010-01-27T09:54:00.001-06:00

So, posting on the blog is a little bit tricky these days. For those of you who didn’t get the e-mail, I also posted a link to the pictures I uploaded to Walgreens (it’s the easiest place for me to pick up prints). I don’t really have any more pictures to post today, but I do have a couple of videos. But I’ll only share them if all of you promise not to judge my messy house keeping in mind I’m new to two kids and a lot of these videos were on my birthday.

Also, yesterday was Penny’s one month birthday and we went to the doctor. She tipped the scales at 11 lbs 9 oz and measured 22 inches (although I think she’s a bit longer than that because the nurse really didn’t try to stretch her out at all). She’s a really big girl.

Anyway, here are the videos:

Ben playing cars with his little sister:

Ben in mom’s shoes:

Ben exercising with dad:

And lastly, Penny’s smile (I swear, she’s an early smiler, she does this a lot, it wasn’t just a fluke we caught on video). Oh, and yes, she is very chubby:

Enjoy.

Penny's first month (90 photos), by Chelsea Willes

2010-01-27T09:20:00.001-06:00

So here are some new baby pictures

2010-01-16T20:56:00.001-06:00

It’s frustrating that even though she is only 6 hrs out of delivery at the time of that picture, I’m the one who looks like i gave birth. Anyway, as far as babies go our little girl is pretty okay.

It’s a GIRL 8lbs 10oz

2009-12-26T18:13:00.001-06:00

Yay. After two contractions of pushing we got a girl! Penelope Beth Willes (tenative)

Christmas Preview

2009-12-25T13:00:00.001-06:00

So, I’m going to post a Christmas overview to make sure everyone gets a peek. On account of I’m going into the hospital first thing tomorrow to be induced, and I don’t want Ben’s Christmas to be overlooked in the hub-bub of the new baby, so I’m going to post a couple of quick pictures and video. I’ll try and get more up later tonight or maybe when my family is here next week.

This was really the first time that Ben was an active participant, and he was a real hoot. We started the festivities yesterday morning making gingerbread cookies. Ben really had fun with that. We gave him a little rolling pin which he tried to use (video to follow, I’ll have to upload it). Mostly, he just picked at and ate the dough. We gave him a cookie cutter and he would push it into the dough, then start eating the dough he’d cut out. He had fun decorating them too, but he was mostly pumped about the car-shaped cookie that his daddy cut out special for him. Check it out:

(The one on the left is a zombie cookie that Jon made)

Ben took a really good nap and we took it pretty easy in the afternoon. I had to run a couple of errands while Ben was sleeping. We had some delicious sandwiches for dinner while we watched a movie, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (Jon’s choice). In hindsight, it might be a bit scary for little kids, but Ben liked it, mostly he liked the songs. Ben went to bed like a champ after we attempted to tell him the nativity story. Jon and I watched Christmas Story and I went to bed early.

As for today, I didn’t think Ben had any idea that today was Christmas. We’d planned on doing a quick breakfast with Ben this morning before presents because he always wants to eat as soon as he gets up. But when I went in to get him this morning he immediately started pointing towards the family room saying “car”, “truck” (it turns out the few presents he’d opened before today were cars, so he thinks all wrapped presents are cars or trucks). Anyway, so we did presents first and breakfast later. He got a real kick out of opening presents. In typical small child fashion, he wanted to stop and open/play with every toy.

Here’s a picture of the post-present-opening wreckage:

And here are some pictures of our delicious breakfast of Belgian waffles and bacon and cinnamon bread:

And our little family in front of the tree (thank goodness for a camera with a timer):

We took video of him walking in for Christmas and opening some of the presents, but that’s on the video camera and it takes a lot longer to post and I have to track down the USB cable. However, Jon’s parents gave us an awesome new webcam for Christmas (ours broke), so we took some video straight to the computer.

I’m sure this is what everyone wants to see, videos of Ben playing with his new toys. He really loves everything he got. He’s been a crazy little boy all day, running from gift to gift. Here are a couple of the highlights:

Ben riding around the giraffe tricycle that Grandma and Grandpa Willes sent:

Ben put himself in one of the boxes. He was highly amused.

And, last (for now), Ben playing with the spiral racetrack that my parents gave him. The boy sure loves his cars.

That’s all for now. I hope you all had as wonderful a Christmas as we have had. Jon and I will do our best to keep everyone updated on the baby situation.

Hooray for the Holidays

2009-12-09T11:26:00.001-06:00

So, I decided it was about time to post about Thanksgiving. And, since Ben, Jon, and I are trapped inside enjoying a snow day, I figured today was a good day to post. I haven’t been taking a ton of pictures lately, but we do have a couple from Thanksgiving and from today.

Thanksgiving was just the three of us. It was actually lots of fun. Jon helped keep Ben out of my hair when he wasn’t helping me cook. Ben really likes to pitch in and “help” with the cooking too. Sometimes I put him in the sling so he can stir and watch. These aren’t my best pictures, but I feel that being pregnant and slaving away in the hot kitchen all day are a decent excuse to look a little under the weather. Plus, it’s really about the food isn’t it?

Ben chilling in the sling:

And the spread:

Everything was quite delicious, if I do say so myself. We had to feed Ben a snack shortly before the meal so he didn’t eat a ton. He did love the leftovers, though. He gobbled them up every time we served them to him, even the vegetables. So that was a major win.

As for today, we decided to take Ben outside in his first snowstorm. It took about 45 minutes to get everyone all bundled up and then Ben was a little bit freaked out by the whole thing. I don’t think it helped that we have about 6 inches of snow and it was really windy. The snow in his face really bothered him, but he still wanted to be outside. We’ll probably try taking him outside again later when it stops snowing. Regardless of how much he enjoyed it, he looked really cute in his snow outfit.

I’ll try and upload some videos later.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

2009-11-16T08:45:00.001-06:00

So, my mom has been bugging me for pictures of me pregnant. As I don't usually feel very camera-presentable, I've been avoiding it. Then Ben woke up early yesterday and Jon agreed to feed him and such so I could shower and actually take some time getting ready for church. It was the first time in a while that I thought I actually looked cute, so I made Jon take a picture. Plus, Ben looked really cute in the Sunday outfit that Geri sent him, so we had to have some pictures of that. Without any further ado:

Apparently, Jon didn’t get the whole “pregnancy photo” concept at first as he totally cut out my pregnant belly. Luckily, he took another, long-ways one.

The lighting isn’t great, but that’s the general idea. There’s me at 34 weeks pregnant. I have to say, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I’ve been pretty pleased with my weight gain with this baby and I don’t usually feel super huge. That is, until I went to church and a lady came up to me after sacrament meeting and told me how I looked like I was ready to pop and was that baby ever coming out. I’m chalking it up to cultural/language differences as she’s Hispanic, but I couldn’t help but be a little bothered. I think it’s worse when people make pregnancy comments like that when I’m feeling good about myself because it just totally wrecks that. When I feel bloated and huge I don’t mind because they’re just confirming what I already know and it makes me feel less crazy.

Anyway, as promised, here is a picture of Ben’s Sunday outfit. Again, I don’t think Jon totally got the point as he didn’t include the awesome pants, but Ben’s adorable nonetheless.

Lastly, here’s a quick video of Ben kissing my belly and making the sign for baby. It’s pretty dang adorable. You’ll have to excuse the belly nudity and the very messy house. What can I say? Some days I don’t bother cleaning up until Ben’s asleep.

Halloween Revisited

2009-11-01T21:52:00.001-06:00

So it’s me, Chelsea again. I’d like to thank Jon for his very entertaining post. I’m just going to update with a couple more videos and some cute pictures I think he left out of the last couple of weeks.

Ben and I did a little fall photo shoot outside the other day, Jon posted a couple of pictures from it, but here are a couple more.

Ben playing tetherball:

Pointing at a bird flying by.

Playing in puddles. What can I say? Boys will be boys.

And rolling around in the grass all on his own. Sometimes when we’re outside he just lies down in the grass and laughs and claps.

And a couple more pictures with the fire truck. Notice that he puts his hands in his little pockets on his vest. I think it’s pretty stinking adorable.

And playing in the leaf pile

Oh, and Ben Flexing his his little baby muscles.

As for Halloween, it was hard to narrow down the footage we took of Ben romping around in his costume. This is what I came up with, I took this video the day we bought the costume and tried it on him. Turns out he loved it.

Here’s another little video of him showing off his roar and costume on Halloween.

And of course, his very first door on Halloween. I have to say that it’s pretty classic, but see for yourself:

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T21:47:00.001-05:00

So this was Ben’s first halloween as an active participant and with out further ado we give you our little monster.

Oh and this is Jon not Chelsea posting, so don’t expect anything spectacular. We dressed Ben up as a dinosaur monster thing, but really here are my best guesses at what we really dressed him up as

Bub – From bubble bobble

I think that there is pretty good evidence for this

See? there’s the blue one!! And the life like bubbles really sells it for me.

But if you aren’t buying that, here’s an esoteric 80’s reference: It’s Denver the last dinosaur!

Anyway, it could be possible that this:

is really the same as this:

or this

I’m sure that who ever looks at this blog is more interested in seeing pictures of Ben than my witty image banter so here’s some more Ben.

And here’s a picture of Ben driving a fire truck. It turns out he loves fire trucks and the firemen at the station just across the street are really nice (aren’t all firemen nice, or is that just my experience?). We go visit them every once in a while.

And a video of Ben hugging Owen during the trip to Pittsburgh. This is pretty classic. Ben loves his cousin.

I haven’t loaded the drivers for the video camera just yet so there’ll be more to come, including videos and pictures of his first Halloween night.

Long Overdue

2009-10-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

So I know this is long overdue. At this point it's way too overwhelming to try and catch everyone up on everything. So, instead I'm going to give a quick update on what's happening now and try to catch people up slolwy. Mostly, right now I'm in Pittsburgh visiting my sister and her family who just had a new baby, Tobin Joshua Grant. It's been great, especially because Ben loves playing with his cousins. Owen and Oliver are great cousins. They are so fun. Oh, and it should be noted that I'm using a Mac (I hate Macs) for this post, so I don't know how to do slideshows and such. As a result, this will be one of those posts that has lots of pictures that take up a lot of space, so prepare to scroll. Anyway, I'll start off with a couple of pictures of Ben, since he is the star of this blog.

Here is Ben saying peekaboo

And helping me sweep, one of his new favorite pasttimes

And showing off his finger painting skills

And getting cleaned up after finger painting

And being the adorable and cool dude that he is.

Here's a shot of my pregnant belly at about 25 weeks I think.

Ben loves his mama ( most of the time)

Risky business baby (This was Jon's doing)

Ben playing with the new corn popper that Nammy got him while she was in town. It was so fun having Nammy and B-Pa here (albeit at different times). Ben loved playing with them so much, and he loves his new toy.

A couple of shots of Ben enjoying the little tricycle at Rachael's house

Rachael with the baby all bundled up because it was chilly out.

Owen being Owen. That is, just posing silly for the camera.

It takes a lot of focus to ride one of these things.

Me and the boys

Courtney enjoying the sweet little guy, and he surely is sweet, and tiny.

Courtney, Rachael, and Tobin, the man of the hour.

Lance made fake mustaches for the boys. They thought it was pretty hilarious.

Here's a close up of the cute, little guy. He's seriously adorable.

Tobin and his dad.

Ben turns the big fat One

2009-04-29T00:04:00.001-05:00

So, I know this is long overdue. Jon’s been really busy with tests and what-not, so I haven’t had much Ben-free time to get to the blog except at night. Which, I’m sorry to say, I usually reserve for watching a show or two and reading before I turn in. Anyway, Benjamin managed to complete his first year of life on April 18th, which was Saturday (a week and a half ago). I think I’ll start off by showing you how much has changed in that year.

Benjamin	Me (Chelsea)
Born: 8 lbs. 12 oz. 21 inches long 1 yr: 23 lbs 31 inches long	OK, I’m feeling skinny and good about myself, but not good enough to tell everyone how much I weighed before I delivered.

OK, so I know that the picture of me you can’t really see how much I’ve changed. But it turns out that Jon and I never take pictures of each other, so it’s the best I’ve got.

Anyway, we celebrated the big day by taking Ben to the park and having a picnic and playing on the playground. Be forewarned, this will be a fairly long post with lots of pictures and video. We went a little nuts. One of the first things we did was show off Ben’s upper body strength, which also serves as a demonstration of how he is quickly turning into a good climber. It’s cute, but definitely not good news for mom, who has a hard enough time keeping him out of trouble as it is.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the park:

Sound of Music Train Station @ Yahoo! Video

We also found out that Ben’s two favorite things at the park are:

Tunnels:

and slides:

Lastly, when we got home from the park, Ben took a ride on daddy’s shoulders and showed that dad’s head makes an awesome drum.

That’s pretty much it for Ben’s actual birthday. We did most of the presents and cake on Sunday. Pictures and video of that will be in the next post, hopefully tomorrow.

Musicals

2009-04-13T16:06:00.000-05:00

So, Geri, my mother-in-law responded to my Zac Efron post with a link to a pretty awesome video of people in a train station. Even Jon thought it was funny. He said it's the funniest social experiment he's ever seen. I just think it's awesome. Does it make me crazy that I want to live in a musical? Check it out:

Thanks Geri, that really made my day.

Easter

2009-04-13T11:54:00.001-05:00

As promised, here are some pictures of Ben’s Easter celebrations. First, I have some pictures I took of Ben at our ward Easter dinner. He usually loves going to church activities because everybody pays attention to him and plays with him. Unfortunately, he had missed his afternoon nap on Friday and it was about bed time anyway, so he was pretty grumpy. Still, I got some cute pictures of him exploring the gym and the halls. He especially loved playing peek-a-boo with me through the glass doors.

Now for the really cute pictures of Ben Easter morning. I also have some video of him when he first got up and found his Easter basket, but I don’t think I have time to upload and edit it right now. Anyway, he was pretty adorable in his little outfit. I didn’t get any super pictures outside like I’d hoped because he was so distracted by the cars going by and he was already about ready for a nap. I pretty much just posted all of the pictures I took. I’m a little too lazy to be selective and this way you all can decide which ones you like best. Plus, this way the album sort of functions as a montage of our morning.

I hope you all had a happy Easter. I certainly love this time of year where we get to celebrate the resurrection and really turn our hearts and minds to Christ. It doesn’t hurt that the world is coming back to life as well. Now, if only the weather would really commit to being nice so Ben and I could go on more walks and enjoy it.

Zac Efron on SNL

2009-04-13T00:36:00.000-05:00

OK, so maybe I'm admitting to something I probably shouldn't admit here, but I'm a big fan of High School Musical. As such, I have a bit of a fan crush on Zac Efron. Some of you may think less of me for it, but I definitely don't hide the fact. Anyway, Zac hosted SNL on Saturday night, so I taped it and watched it in spite of my thinking that SNL really isn't very funny these days. I was right. Pretty much the only funny parts were the opening monologue and the skit making fun of High School Musical. I embedded those two clips for your viewing pleasure. I always think it's great when actor's can make fun of themselves. The opening monologue just makes fun of the fact that all of Zac's fans are girls between the ages of 7 and 13 (the tweens). And of course, me.

The High School Musical sketch is pretty funny, especially for those of you who feel the same way about musicals that Jon does. I love them, well not all of them, but a lot of them. Jon thinks they're awkward and silly. Don't get me wrong, it is a little odd for people to randomly start singing and dancing. Obviously that never happens in real life, but a girl can dream, right? Anyway, musical-haters and musical-lovers alike can still get a kick out of how absurd it is when you think about it. It may not be quite as funny if you haven't seen the movie.

I know I promised Easter pictures to some. I promise, they'll be up ASAP, hopefully tomorrow. Ben was struggling tonight, so I didn't get a chance to upload the new photos.

Ben’s First Haircut

2009-04-05T01:46:00.000-05:00

So, Ben was starting to look a little bit like a girl and his hair was getting into his eyes and his ears so I decided it was time for a haircut. Jon really didn’t want to, but agreed to do it because I wanted to. He thought we could do it by ourselves and I couldn’t find a place here that I felt comfortable taking him so we bought some clippers to make it a little bit simpler. We weren’t exactly surprised by the fact, but it’s pretty tough to cut an almost one-year-old’s hair. Anyway here are some before pictures of him in the highchair. We ended up just disrobing the little dude and rinsing him off afterwards. He’s got the Wii remote because we wanted to give him some things to distract him that he’s usually not allowed to play with.

Here is a video of the event as well. It’s not cut together very well because it was really long and I just wanted to show the interesting stuff. So, you get the beginning and the end. The beginning shows him freaking out about getting his hair sprayed with water and trying to see the clippers and being impossible. A couple minutes in, I discovered the best distraction was some cheap headphones I have. He was a little more cooperative after that, although he still kept looking at the clippers. By the end, he was pretty unaffected. I just put the last bit where he claps, because that’s his new thing. He claps for everything and gets so proud of himself.

Ben's First Haircut. The camera is sitting on a stool. It makes us look like Charlie Brown adults.

And, here are some after-shots, one right after we rinsed him off and the rest from during his dinner and after I got him ready for bed and trying to brush my teeth. He was being pretty stinking adorable

And last, here are two really cute videos of Ben giving me kisses. Well, I’m not sure if you could call it kissing, he more tries to eat my lips and then laughs about it, but see for yourself. Oh, and it should be noted that I was taking this video and some of the pictures from above by holding my arm out, so forgive the cutting off of heads and such.

Ben giving silly kisses.

More kisses, I love this boy.

One last thing. I finished a post I had started earlier, so you might want to scroll down past the last post and check out the pictures of when Owen and Ollie came to visit.

Just Chillin’

2009-03-20T12:21:00.001-05:00

My life isn’t overly interesting, but Ben’s sure is. This kid is discovering new things every day and really enjoying being a mobile little dude. Here are some pictures of his latest adventures including playing drums and actually getting into the entertainment center when we cleaned out one of the cupboards. Regardless of what he’s doing, he’s pretty stinking adorable.

I recently bought Ben some new clothes on an outing to the outlets. Here are some pictures of him sporting his latest duds while he gets into trouble. Sometimes I can’t believe what a little boy he’s growing into. He even cheeses it up for the camera sometimes.

Livin' Free

2009-03-20T11:21:00.002-05:00

So, sometimes after his bath we let Ben chill in his birthday suit for a bit. He really seems to enjoy it and I figure he's got to get sick of his diaper. Anyway, here are some pictures of him loving life in the nude. I tried to keep them G-rated, but I couldn't resist putting a couple of pictures of his little bum. If you look closely, you might be able to see all his teeth. He currently has four, although the newest one is still kind of hard to see. Also, you may notice the bonk on his forehead. He got that on one of his adventures. He’s a pretty tough little guy. I think it was harder on Jon and me than it was on Ben. Ben’s gotten pretty good at pushing his little walker around, although I think it still freaks him out a bit when it starts moving.

Also, here's an adorable video of Ben playing the Rock Band drums and rocking out a bit. This video was taken on the still camera, so the quality isn't super great, but it was a classic moment and I already had the digital camera out.

Owie and Ollie Visit

2009-03-20T11:21:00.001-05:00

So Rachael's two little boys stayed with us a little while back. It was a little cramped here, but we had a lot of fun. Ben loved having his older cousins around to keep him company. Ollie wasn't totally pumped that Ben kept taking the toys he was playing with, but I think he still likes Ben. Anyway, here are some pictures. I know I've been doing the albums lately, which I prefer, but for reasons beyond my control, this will have to be one of those posts with tons of pictures. Sorry.

Anyway, here's one of Ben and Owen under the table. Ben likes to hang out under there sometimes, I got out the camera and Owen jumped under there to be in the picture. He loves to be photographed. Turns out, so does Ben.

Rachael sent along this little tent that her boys like to play in. Ben loved it to. He would crawl in one door and keep crawling until he tipped the tent over. All three boys were in it, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera and Ollie didn't want to cooperate.

Here's Ollie smiling for the camera. He was being so cute and smiley. He looks a little goofy in the picture, but I just can't resist those baby blues. This kid is seriously so sweet.

Ben and Ollie playing with Ben's walker. Ben is waving, he does that sometimes now, although not all that predictably.

Ben and Ollie playing the drums in their matching shirts. I promise that wasn't on purpose.

All three boys on the drums. They were so cute together.

Anyway, I know that Rachael thought I was doing her a favor, but I loved having her boys here. They really helped keep Ben occupied and they are just so sweet and fun. I even took them all to the library. They just opened up a new branch nearby and they loved it.

We got a new camera!!!

2009-02-13T14:29:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I know that this post is long overdue. I think I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by how much I have to catch up on. So, I decided to make this post with the most recent stuff and I’ll work my way backwards as I have time. I’ve already started the posts that cover what’s been going on the past few months, so when I do post them, they will post previous to this one, so keep an eye out. Phew, that was a run-on sentence.

Anyway, our most recent big news, if you couldn’t guess from the title of this post, is that we got a new camera. Jon and I decided it was time to upgrade since both of our cameras are pretty old and not very well-suited for taking pictures of a baby. Not to mention that neither of them are currently functioning properly. So we decided to upgrade to something with a little more juice. This is it here:

I haven’t figured out all the bells and whistles on it yet (it has a lot), but we have managed to get a couple good pictures out of it so far. Here are some of the pictures we took with it the first day we got it:

As you can see, Jon discovered that Ben likes to play in our hamper.

Yesterday, I got Ben all dressed up in a new outfit from his Nammy and did his hair to take some pictures of him. It was pretty much a photo-shoot. Ben was a pretty good sport but he kept trying to grab the camera, which made things tricky. Mostly, I wanted to get a money shot to submit in the Regis and Kelly beautiful baby competition (the deadline is today). This is the one I chose for the competition:

Here is a slideshow of some of the other pictures from the day, including the ones where Ben decided he had had it with the picture-taking.