Rodney's New Tricks

So I realize that it has been a long time since I have posted. Life has been crazy since the last post we have moved, and unpacked, started school (me), and rodney has gone from only being on his belly to getting up on his hands and knees, to scooting, to crawling, to pulling himself up to standing. This video is of rodney standing, I don't know how to get it flipped to be right side up. He didn't get himself up on the toy, I did help. But, he stood there for probably five minutes and perfected the one handed stand. (Holding on with one hand so he can make the toy make noise!) I am so in LOVE with this little man it's rediculous!

ROAD TRIP!

Quality Grandma time

Hannah walking with Grandpa around the nurses station

Rodney and Hannah became the best of friends this week!

All of us in the hospital the night before Dad got to come home. What a week!

I accidentally put this one on twice, can't figure out how to remove it without starting over, sorry. And I haven't quite got the formatting with pictures down to a science. But you get the idea anyway. Long post, be prepared!

Dad was scheduled for surgery on his hip. I get a phone call from Amy saying that she is coming to town and asked me if I wanted to go to Utah with her to help Mom and Dad with whatever we could. I said, HECK YES! so we did. Thanks for the idea Gary!!

We fit Amy, Hannah, Rodney and I in our little Civic and left at 5 a.m. to get to Utah by about 2. The kiddos did great! It was a great week that was spent taking care of Grandma McFadden, helping run caters at the restaurant, doing a session at the Timpanogos Temple (can I say GORGEOUS!!!), visiting Grandpa in the Hospital, and quality sister time! This has been such a week that I will never forget. I am always excited when I get to see Amy, but everytime I do I love her more and more even though I never think it would be possible. What I would do without my sisters I hope I never have to find out!

We also got to hang out with Jeff and Stephaney and had a blast. Sleep is always limited when I go to Utah because I just don't want to sleep my play time away! So all week I got an average of 6 hours a night. Jeff and Stephaney wouldn't get off of work until about 10 and then we would stay up talking/playing for a few hours and wouldn't go to bed until at least midnight. And then up at about 7. My new absolute favorite ice cream joint is Iceberg (sorry Stephaney) with their Snickers shake...oh my gosh! with an order of their fries. It just doesn't get any better or any higher of a caloric/fat content. Oh well.

What are the odds that we would be in town for not one but two bridal showers! Our cousin Kelsey and our best friend Chelsey both just happened to be having the showers the week we were there! It was so fun to be there and I am so excited for both of them and their new lives to come. It just seems that so many things just fell into place for us to go and so many things just worked out this week. It was definately meant to be!

Rodney loved all of the family he would just be a smiling mess whenever they would say hello, but his favorite was Great Grandma McFadden. He would be all smiles and so happy if I would just lay him down by Grandma in her chair. She has one of the mechanical chairs that raises and she would raise it up so she could just look down at him at her feet and he would smile for an hour pretty much just at her feet. She, of course, ate it up! The cutest thing was right as we were leaving at like 4:30 Rodney was asleep in my arms as we were saying goodbye to everybody and he woke up just in time to see Great Grandma one more time and as soon as he saw her he hammed it up. Grandma just melted. It made me tear up. She is looking more and more frail every time we go to visit, however as stubborn as she is I think she will be around for a while still.

Dad's surgery went really well, the anesthesia however made Dad quite the comedian. He was very agitated as far as the nurses saw to the point where it was taking 4 of them to hold him to the bed. Then they gave him morphine to keep him calm until the rest of the medications wore off, but it had the opposite effect and made it worse. They brought Mom back into the recovery room to help calm him down which they never do. He did some funny things that were making the nurses laugh but then he would get sensitive to the fact that people were laughing at him. Dad hasn't ever had anything done that would require general anesthesia before so it was interesting to see all of that. He was up and walking that afternoon, 1 time around the nurses station and 24 hours after that he walked around 10 times! Hannah dutifully walked right behind him the whole time.

He came home on Saturday afternoon and we made him a yummy dinner of Veggie Lasagna, asparagus, and artichoke. It was really good, we tried a new recipe. Dad is still doing pretty well, he is now taking pain medication but on a modified schedule so it isn't as much. He is feeling relatively pain free, but I am thinking that anything is going to be pain free compared to what he was feeling before.

I will always remember this week and treasure it like you wouldn't believe. A once in a lifetime experience for sure!

4 Months. Say WHAT?!

That picture of him in the last post is my only one of him at exactly four months. We went in for the appointment for the vaccines and such. Not until this appointment had Rodney rolled over more than twice maybe three times. All of a sudden after they weighed him (13.11 lbs) and measured him (25 in.) the nurse left and Little Man rolled over three times right there on the counter. He finally got it figured out getting his arm out of the way! Wahoo! The doctor said that Rodney was very social because he was cooing at her the whole time he was getting checked out. It was pretty cute. Naturally he wasn't happy after he got his vaccines, but you gotta do what you gotta do. So I told him to "take it like a man and get over it." Ok, you got me, I almost cried with him. His cry is just so sad!

THANK YOU!

I just want to say Thanks! to Ryan and Lindsay for the wonderful hand-me-downs! I think Rodney enjoys them even more than I do!

Rodney gets so frustrated when he is in the Exersaucer because he wants so badly to suck on all of the toys but just can't quite reach. He is also not quite tall enough to touch more than his tippy-toes on the floor even on the shortest setting. Even with all of that he still would rather be upright than laying flat or the bouncy seat.

Katie's Reading?!

Lia, I know that is going to be your reaction when you see this so that title is dedicated to you! Yes I have now finished the Twilight series. Now I can join in on the conversations about the popular series. It isn't my favorite, but I sure did like it better than those books that they make you read in High School. So with a free redbox monday I rented the movie. Extremely dissapointing to me. It seemed like the people that filmed Napoleon Dynamite tried to do a more difficult film and completely failed. Edward in the movie is so not as cute as I imagined. I hear that they were going to use what's-his-face from Count of Monte Cristo (now that's a good flick! Especially the last scene where the "Count" is coming out of the castle to slay his childhood friend... 'heavy sigh') That would have been a good Edward. Instead they pick this weird lookin' guy. I only half watched the movie because I got bored. And I have to say, if I had paid to see that in a theatre I would have left pretty peeved because of wasted money. Anyway, I also just finished The Wednesday Letters. A book for the family reunion book club. I thought it was really good and would recommend it to anybody. Now I still feel the need to read, next I will go to the library and pick up the Ladies Auxillary or what was it the Potato Peel Society? Heck at this rate maybe I will have all of them read by the reunion! This is a record. I am pretty sure that I have read more books in the last 3 months than I have ever read before. That is excluding the books that I have had to read for assignments.

Bad Habits

I know I have bad habits like nursing him in the night and falling asleep while he eats what he wants. I never know how much he eats or how often he eats because I don't wake up enough to really remember what time it was when I looked at the clock last. I might as well stop making such an effort to look at the clock if I can't even remember the times. Oh well. I also like to hold him while he sleeps, so now he won't sleep on his back unless if he is so exhausted and falls asleep on his own like that. It is hard though because he won't sleep in a port-a-crib. I don't know if it is too hard for him or what. And we don't have a real crib yet, so he sleeps with me every night. I know, I know...bad! Mark calls him my cuddle buddy. SO, even though I have all of these bad habits that will spoil Rodney to the max, I don't really want to stop. I figure I only have one baby once in a lifetime. AND, if I have the time and not more children to distribute time to, why not? That is my justification and it makes me feel better about my actions. I will no doubt regret it later, but I have decided to be selfish and possibly self destructive.

p.s. sorry about the rambling.

Rollin' and the Po-Po

Today has been an eventful day to say the least! It started out pretty lazy, and Rodney was pretty gassy and let everybody know about it. When I say let everybody know about it, I mean he screams high and loud enough for people across town to hear. I was up and cleaning, then we get a knock on the door. We live in the basement of Mellow Yellow (hippie central!) and nobody knows that there are apartments in the building. You even have to go in a door and down some stairs to find our door. So needless to say we never get people unannounced. I open the door only to find two police men there. The people upstairs were concerned about our little ones cries and called us in. The policemen were very nice and cordial and after they saw Rodney safe and sound (and by that time, HAPPY...) they were gone to the next report of child abuse.

Then we finished cleaning and got ready for the day (at 3:30. I know.) But Sister Myers invited us over for dinner with the missionaries. She made the best green chile casserole. I really should get the recipe. Anyway, after dinner I laid Rodney down on a blanket and was going to help in the kitchen when Mark says "He's rolled over" like it's nothing! I freaked out, squealed "really!" and he was on his tummy! I then sat next to him for 45 minutes just trying to help motivate him to do it again while I could witness it with no success. Maybe tomorrow.

I didn't think I would be so proud of things that seem so trivial. But, I do, I get so proud of his little milestones. He also has figured out how to get his toes in his mouth. He has done it a couple of times but is selective about when because I have yet to get a good picture of it. I think he is doing it on purpose...