Ariana´s Mood Swings

Is it bad that it cracks me up when she starts throwing a tantrum? Most of these tantrum and smiley pictures were taken within seconds of each other. She gets mad when I won´t give her the camera. She´s a bit dramatic.

Doh!!

3 weeks after the cut

Contrary to some popular advice given to me after last month´s post, I cut Ariana´s hair. I just wanted to trim up the straight bottom layer to line up with the curly top layer. I took her to a kids salon, they had a little car and animal seats and everything. A bored-looking barber came out and unenthusiastically told me to put her in the chair. I should have bolted then. I put her down and said I didn´t want to loose much length, I just wanted him to even it out. I apparently should have specified things a little better.

Three minutes and a heart attack later he said “all done” as I was stuck staring at her curls all over the floor. I was so sad and so mad. I heard myself lament the curls and he just sighed and said it would grow back better this way. I wanted to deck him. I definately didn´t want to pay the $7.00 for the hair cut. I was so sad, I kept apologizing to her all day and then everyday for the next week I hit myself on the side of the head everytime I looked at the back of her head. The front didn´t look too bad, albiet alot shorter. But the back! Ug! Her little curly layer was like the ruffle on the top of a window curtain. It just crowned the top of her head then there was the totally straight layer going the rest of the down. It´s not brushed down in the picture, so you can´t really see the very distinct divisions. Thankfully it is starting to grow out and I´m starting to deal with it better. Just like they say, “The difference between a good haircut and a bad hair cut is (3 weeks or 6 weeks?). Her case is definately a six weeker.

Before

After

Before

After

(She is in the washer because I have to line dry the clothes after I wash them, I am just ecstatic that I finally have a washer. Anyway, I can´t have her crawling around in the mud and I can´t leave her inside while I am tending laundry outside, she she stands in the washer while I hang the clothes up on the line. A good arrangement if I work fast.)

10 Months and So Dang Smart!

My beautiful little Ariana. I am so fascinated by her everyday. I love watching her discover new things. You can see the awe on her face everytime she enfronts something new and interesting. She analyzes EVERYTHING. She will tilt her head back and forth trying to decide what she thinks about whatever she has come across, then she´ll either pick it up and study it some more or move on. She will scan the room when looking for something new to play with, I watch her as she lets her gaze move past the 20 toys strewn across the room, then I see her face light up as she zones in on an outlet or paper or anything destructable, chokeable or otherwise not good to play with, and she heads straight for it. Why are the toys not intriguing? Just a "been there, done that" issue? Or a "this will get my mom´s attention faster" issue? She is so funny and so decisive. She´ll even get the little mischievious smile and giggle when she sees me trying to beat her to whatever she is going after.

The other day I was putting on my mascara and she had her hand out grunting for it. So I closed it and gave it to her assuming it would just go straight into the mouth. But it didn´t. She immediately pulled on both ends trying to open it. Then she pulled harder. Then she changed hand positions, turned it over, looked it over, pulled harder. I was actually very impressed at her focus. She kept trying to open it for a minute or so, then when she decided it wouldn´t open, she chucked it. I kept thinking, "is she really only 10 months old"?

Today I threw her a little piece of cereal and it landed right behind her foot. I could see her looking for it and I told her (in spanish) "it´s by your foot, behind you" I was just talking to her until I could get back over to her to help her find it. She looked at me, so I told her again "It´s by your foot, behind you". She turned and looked straight at it and picked it up. Coincidence? Can she really understand that well already?? Honestly, I was floored. Again, "is she really only 10 months old". I guess her spirit is much older than that and half the time she is probably looking at me like I´m clueless.

New House

Okay, I promised no more critter posts, so I had to add this picture to this post. We found this at the end of our driveway this morning. I think it was hit by a car. When I saw how big it was, I said "Isaac, if one of those happened to come in the house, I can´t step on it, it´s too big!" He said, "you can´t step on it anyway, they jump." Yikes! The good thing is that all of these "little" (I swear all of the wildlife here is on steroids) creatures have been found outside, none inside. Thank Heavens!

This scorpion, in length, was about from my finger tips

to my wrist. He was a big guy (these pictures are actually close to life sized).

Spidey, poor thing.

So we moved. Yay! It´s got it´s pros and cons over the last house, but the bottom line is that the windows and doors are closeable. No more mosquitos. What a blessing! The most frustrating part is that it is very small. Although it is a three bedroom the owner decided to use one bedroom as a storage room for her stuff, so now we are a little stumped as to where to put our extra stuff. We were planning on putting together our three month food storage as soon as we moved in, but now we don´t know where to store it. I´ll have to work something out.

The other downside is there are a lot of little critters around (all outside though since I can close the windows and doors - anyone new to the blog, our last house had cinderblock windows, not glass and non closeable, and a metal gate for a back door. We had all kinds of things inside the house).

I´m sure many of you are tired of/grossed out by all my little critter posts, so unless I get any cooler pictures than these ones, I´ll cool it on the subject. But I can´t pass it up this time with these pictures. When we moved in we had a little "pet" spider on the back porch. She made me pretty nervous at first until I did some internet research. She looks very much like a Florida Garden Spider, not so harmless, only she is alot bigger. The FGS is about the size of a quarter while our little spidey was the size of, well, my open hand. Fingers included. But I asked a few neighbors and they said she wasn´t poisonous, so I was no longer afraid of her. But the neighbor was, so they poisoned her. I was actually a bit sad when I saw her dead in her web.

Then last week when we came home from church there was a visitor next to our front door. This nice, big, black scorpion. Isaac let me get a couple of pictures first, then he took care of it with a machete. I wasn´t so sad about that one. Our neighbors have said that there are a lot of trantulas around here, they mostly come out when the developers start digging in the neighborhood behind us. Everytime Ariana grabs one of Isaac´s shoes, I have this flash of a trantula coming out of it and biting her. I have started sticking my own hand in and checking first, just to make sure. Hopefully, they can´t get in the house.

Then last, but not least, two days ago the maintainance man found a large snake near the pool. It was hanging out under some roofing tins behind the maintainance closet. It´s called an "X" snake, apparently very poisonous. Oh great. So, I used to open our double sliding doors to let in some air, but now I suffer the heat. I don´t want to encourage any guests like these to come in the house.

Upside to the new house - love the pool next door. It is a nice size and during the day it is practically a private pool for us. Everyone else is working and at school. Ariana and I go out everyday. We love it!

9 Months Going on Terrible Two´s?

Who can resist that sad face...

Ariana is 9 months old today, yay! We have her Dr. Appointment tomorrow, but I know she weighs a little over 20 lbs, not quite 21 lbs yet, and she is getting alot taller! I think she had a little overnight growth spurt because all of the sudden nothing is out of her reach! She grabs everything! The other day Isaac left his planner in the middle of the coffee table, she couldn´t reach that far last week, but she got it and ripped his page of phone numbers out, then ate it. She somehow got a few digits from every phone number on the page, great. We´ll have to start asking for phone numbers again...

When I am at the desk she´ll reach up and start yanking papers, cords, speakers - whatever she can get a hold of - off the desk, I´m sure it´s a ploy to get my attention and it totally works. She yanked my laptop off a few days ago and she thought that was pretty funny. She´s a crack up. I just hope she doesn´t start thinking that her name is really“dammit Ari”. I´m working vigilantly on that though, it´s shocking how it just slips out involuntarily – not in anger, more like a mumbled sigh as I am doing damage control behind her. I wouldn´t trade her for anything though!

She loves to throw whatever she´s no longer interested in, her bottle, her toys, her glass Gerber food jar – that was fun to clean up. And she has started screaming at me if I take something away or walk into another room without taking her with me. Am I raising a spoiled child or is this just part of the process? I love the cuddles though, she continues to get more cuddly and is super content just to lay against me while I read a book or rest a little. I just finished Breaking Dawn, the last book in the Twilight series. I would put her Baby Einstein video on while I read and she would kneel next to me with her chin resting on my torso watching her video. We both liked that. I need to get another good book.

What? I´m not up to anything....

To Cut or Not to Cut?

So, everytime I see some of our family members here they ask me why I haven´t cut Ari´s hair yet. It´s kind of stringy in the back and around her face from her newborn hair, but what has come in since then is a little more full and wavy. They insist that if I cut it now it will grow in fuller and faster. I don´t know why it is so hard for me, hair always grows back (well in most cases, sorry baldies). But I love to pull her hair up in a ponytail or pigtails so it doesn´t get all sweaty and stick to her head.

So what do you think? Cut now or not yet?

(I also get hammered with the question why I haven´t pierced her ears yet, it´s kind of a tradition to do that to baby girls in latinamerican countries. Haven´t been able to bring myself to do that either, we´ll see...)

Recipie Help

I would like to reach out and ask for some recipie help. I am in a menu slump. Every week I cook the same few dishes over and over and can´t seem to think of some better ideas. I´ve purused the internet a bit, but nothing seems to stick. We have the weekly pasta with meat sauce, BBQ chicken and Potatoes, Chop Suey, Tacos, and of course the typical Panamanian dish of rice, lentles and either meat or chicken in a creole sauce. We have this dish about twice a week. Ocassionally I throw in grilled sea bass, shepherd´s pie, chicken enchilada casserole or a chicken cordon bleu casserole. That is about the extent of my menu planning.

I would love some new, not too complicated menu ideas. I cook chicken more than red meat because Isaac is watching his cholesterol but the chicken dishes are where I feel the most stuck. I don´t have many chicken ideas, I definately prefer beef meals.

Anyway, whatever you have, I´ll try!

Mamones

You may be wondering what this little hairy critter is. It´s actually one of my favorite fruits here in Panama. It´s called a Mamon Chino. The only unpleasant part is getting over the weird feeling of sticking the “hairy” peel in your mouth to break it open, the peel is about the consistency of an orange peel. But the fruit is so yummy! Dad, you´ve ordered this in chinese restaurants, I think they call it a leechy nut. China may have their own version of it, but same taste, same family. I would just love to know how they de-pit them!

Service Project

Last week Isaac went with the ward to help clean up the property of a single mother with four kids. There was a big dirt hill right behind her house that posed a mud slide risk. They decided to level it as much as possible to reduce the risk.

Ari, Ari

Not sure how I feel about this picture. Not sure if it´s pretty or spooky...

Ariana is progressing so much. She has 2 cute little teeth on the bottom. She makes this cute little snorting face that really accentuates them. I think she has allergies and she does the little snorting thing because her nose itches. Regardless, it´s really cute.

The "snort" face, no teeth in this one though

She stands up to everything but still doesn´t know how to lower herself back down, so after she gets tired of standing she starts howling for me to come lower her down. I tried to just show her how to get down, but she lets go of whatever she is holding on to and clings to me the minute I´m there. We´ll work on it.

She is sleeping through the nights much better now, thank you for all of the comments and advice. The biggest key was getting her to go to sleep - at naps and bedtime - by herself. I didn´t realize that putting her to sleep everynight in my arms made it so hard for her to go back to sleep once she woke up in the middle of the night. Now she refuses to go to sleep in my arms, lol. Training her didn´t turn out to be very hard. Training Isaac is another issue entirely. He is so concerned that Ari is suffering that it has been a real test for him not to jump up and get her in the middle of the night. He is such a good dad. How many wives can “complain” that their husbands are too attentive to the kids.

She has become cuddly lately, I love it. She has always been clingy, but not very cuddly.

The other day I was lamenting some of the things I miss from home. Then Ari started getting fussy (we were in the car), so I turned it into a little “I love you more than” game.

“I love you more than hot showers (that´s alot), more than carpet, more than Cafe Rio (although I may have to ditch her for a weekend to share that love), more than my family, sorry guys, more than my washer and dryer, more than my dishwasher, more than windows and doors that close”... the list goes on. That´s allota love!

Life is Slowing Down

So between the hat, lathered sunscreen and the little floaty umbrella Ari was sunburn free after our three week stay at the beach. Yay! (I know, I know, overprotective...)

Ariana and cousin Avery

Well, I am starting to feel a sense of monotony here in Panama now. Life is finally starting to slow down and have a steady rythum. Which means a little less to write about (many of you are probably happy to see the end of three or four long posts each month).

This month Isaac finished working on our bedroom. He installed some cieling tiles (styrofoam squares hung from the tin roof) which really blocks out the heat and the pounding sound of the rain. It was unbareable hot in the bedroom with just the tin roof. We have been sleeping in the living room for the last six months because it already had the styrofoam tiles. It´s so nice now though, that I don´t have to crawl out of the livingroom in my unmentionables everytime the Jehova´s Witnesses come to the door, they always come so early! Now we can´t even hear them from the bedroom, haha.

Here, no body knocks on the door. They stand at the edge of your property and yell "buenas" until you come to the door. It´s an interesting custom. Maybe it´s because almost everybody owns dogs. The property lines aren´t that far from the front door though, and my big living room windows give everybody a clear shot of our livingroom. I just hope the neighbors haven´t seen more of us than we would have liked. Yikes.

Two weeks ago Isaac was called in for a stake interview. The 2nd counselor asked if he would be willing to accept any calling. He said yes. "Would your wife support you in any calling?" Yes.

Then the interviewer told Isaac to make sure he was on time to stake conference the following Sunday so that he would know what his calling would be when they sustained him. What?! He was a little nervous at first they would call him as a bishop, our bishop only has a few more months to go. But they called him as a High Councelman for the stake. He´s okay with that. The upside - no more Elder´s Quorom President callings (unless they send us to a spanish branch again when we get back to the states, I think in that case they could call him as EQP again). We´ll cross our fingers (not to go to another branch, lol).

Fun in the Sun

For the past three weeks we have been staying at a beach house with Manuel and Chelsea. It was sooo nice. There was air-conditioning, which is always a treat, hot water – heaven, and the house was just overall very nice. There was a private pool in the backyard, then the beach started at the end of the yard. It was so nice of them to let us stay with them!

Last night we finally returned home and I thought, this place isn´t very pretty, and it´s got a lot of problems, but it´s home and it feels nice to be home. I felt that way for about two hours, until the mosquitos started biting and I took my cold shower. I want to go back to the beach house…

When Chelsea came to see our house and we spent an hour here checking email, she saw ants coming in the front door. She said, “Katie, how do you keep the ants out”, I just laughed and said, you don´t. “So you just kill them?”, I just laughed again, that would be a never ending task. “We just co-habitate". They don´t bug me as long as they stay off of me and my daughter.”

So that night I accidentally invaded their space in my front yard when I stepped, and lingered, in a single file line of “Army Ants”; the giant red ones that move bushes from one side of the yard to the other. It was dark, so I didn´t realize it right away until I felt them going over the top of my foot. I jumped out of their line and forgot about it – until a half hour later when I felt some definate biting/pinching at the back of my knee. I actually thought it was a spider and I kind of freaked. I started slapping the back of my pants, which made the pinching worse, then I just dropped my pants completely in front of Isaac and his mom and saw this huge red ant hanging on my skin, I kept trying to slap it off but it wouldn´t let go. Isaac finally grabbed it off. His mom, laughing at me, came over to inspect the offender, “Ohh, that one is a queen!” It was much larger than the others in the regular line up. Just my luck to loiter in the royal procession...

Some family members took some fun pool pictures of Ari. I´ll put them up as soon as I get them.

Temple Dedication and Mission Reunions

Isaac´s Mission Pres. and wife. Ariana had a nice big blowout pre-picture.

This month has been such a wonderful experience. The Panama temple was dedicated on August 10, 2008 by President Monson. So many members where able to witness this unique experience. The Panamanians are so excited to finally have their own temple!
Manuel and Isaac were both interviewed by Carol Mikita following the session they went to.

The night before there was a cultural event where each stake in the country, I think there are 11 stakes, had a presentation preformed by their young men and women. It was fun to watch all of the dances, I know they have spent months working on them. We saw SO many members and return missionaries there from all over the country. Isaac and I were both able to say hello to people we haven´t seen since our missions.

The evening of the dedication we had a mission reunion with 5 mission presidents and their wives (Bowler, Seegmiller, Williams, Boren, and Duffin). I saw both of my presidents, and Isaac´s president was there also. Isaac has wanted to see him again for such a long time. It was so fun to see them and the return missionaries that were able to come down. I was impressed at the turnout.

On Monday night, the 11th, Manuel and Isaac, with the help of another friend, were able to organize a get together for their old ward. We met in the church building they went to back then (Marcasa). There were tons of people that came, it was great! Most of them grew up together and many haven´t seen each other in almost 20 years. There have been two general authorities out of Panama and they both came from that ward, I am so glad that Isaac grew up with those influences around him. Some of the members there aren´t active anymore, but I hope this get together will ignite some interest again.

Some of the Marcasa Gang

July Collage

What a Cutie! I love the little faces she is starting to make all the time!

Same Thing, Another Month

Ari With Abuelita

A group of the young women when we went to the temple openhouse

Ariana´s hair-do by her two year old cousin Avery

It seems like this month just flew by and there isn´t anything super exciting that I can think of that is different than my post last month. Ariana is very proficient in the crawling department, although she still won´t follow me into another room, she just cries when she sees me leave and calms down when I come back. I guess it is good though, I only have to keep one area baby proof still.

What amazes me is that she is standing up everywhere. She loves to pull herself up to the furniture to stand, which I know is a totally normal thing, but in a six month old? She´ll be 7 months tomorrow, but she has been pulling herself up for a couple of weeks now. I think she´ll be a nine month old walker. Her balance has even improved alot the last few days. I guess a few hard knocks on the tile makes her a fast learner. I try to cushion all of her favorite standing areas as much as possible but she always seems to find her way out of the cushion zone. Maybe she´s a thrill seeker, great.

Manuel (Isaac´s brother) and Chelsea flew in yesterday. We are excited that they could come with their 4 kids. They are here just in time for the Temple open house and dedication. They´ll stay for 3 weeks, that means three weeks of beach for us too, yay. It´s funny that we live here in a tropical paradise yet we only go to the beach when we have visitors. We should get out more often.

Isaac is finishing up his finals this week. One semster down, many more to go.

Any Thoughts?

We would like some advice from the parents out there. For the past three weeks or so Ariana has started waking up at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning, random times, no schedule . The month before she finally started sleeping in until about 6 or 7. Now she rarely sleeps through the night. Do you:

A. Pick her up after one or two minutes, try to soothe her and give her a bottle.

B. Let her cry for 5 minutes or so to see if she will go back to sleep and give her a bottle if she doesn´t.

C. Ignore her completely, she´ll go back to sleep eventually.

Any thoughts on the subject would be very appreciated!

Ariana at Six Months Old

I can´t believe how much a baby progresses from day to day. This month Ariana has become so active and everyday she is learning and doing something new. This month she started holding her own bottle (Yay!) and crawling (Uh-oh). She is not all out speeding around yet, but she gets a little faster and steadier every day. If I put her on the floor I put her on a bedspread or her little foam alphabet pad, but for some reason she goes straight for the tile. When she gets there, she just lays down on her tummy and starts licking the tile. Weird! I clap my hands at her and say “Ari, no!” but she just looks up at me, laughs and goes back to licking. Is she lacking something in her diet? Now I am afraid to leave her on the bed because she sees the tile from there and tries to go for it but of course doesn´t realize there is a drop involved. She is starting to move fast enough now that I don´t think I can let her play there anymore.

Just today she started boosting herself up onto her knees. She climbs up the wall with her hands and kneels there holding onto the wall or her little rocker, what ever she can pull herself up to (my leg). She was kneeling up to her little chair a few minutes ago, and had her first bonk against the tile. It sounds horrible when a head hits the tile (carpet isn´t used here, just tile floors or cement floors. Hard on crawling and walking, but I heard they´re great for potty training). But a little cuddling, caressing and juice resolved the tears pretty quick, so I don´t think there is any permanent damage.

She weighed in last week at 17 lbs 10 ounces. She only gained one pound last month. She´s a little bit anti-social, I think because she is holed up with just me all day. At church and the store she gets a little aggravated when people try to hold her. She already has a reputation as being fussy at church. She´s not at home though, she is very calm until she´s tired, then she´s a bit of a screamer. Cherish observed that she has no middle ground. She goes from a 0 to 10 in about a half a second. It´s just good that she´s usually a 0.

We are enjoying her so much and happy to be here with her.

Yanguez update

We are now officially land owners in Panama. The title took about three weeks to get and now we are working on building permits, hopefully we can start building a house pronto.

I am in the young women´s presidency at church and Isaac is a sub in the Elder´s Quorum Presidency (the actual counselors are currently inactive, but they don´t want to release them hoping that obligation will help them come back), Isaac has also just been called to be a Sunday school teacher. They´ve also called me as choir director, and anyone who knows me very well knows how funny that is. But I know the tunes to most of the songs, so that qualifies me. We had our first preformance 2 weeks ago, after only three weeks of practice. Not bad, but not great.

Isaac is almost finished with his first semester in the University of Panama Nursing Program. He says he would rather be studying in Utah though. He is doing well and is moving forward.

A week and a half ago someone dropped off a little puppy on our porch at 4 am. Since we sleep in the livingroom we heard her yelping right away. She was really little and all wet and shaking. Isaac gave her some warm milk and put her back in the laundry room. The next morning we noticed she had thrown up the milk and had diarrhea. We kept trying to give her milk, but over the next day and a half she got really weak and the diarrhea was getting worse. Isaac took her to the vet and they said she had Parvovirus, fleas and ticks. They gave her a couple of shots for the virus and a Gatorade type drink to try to rehydrate her. They told us that 80% of puppies with parvovirus don´t make it. Isaac helped her with the drink every four hours and pulled about 30 ticks out of her ears, belly, paws, etc. (The ticks here, called agarapatas, are huge and nasty. They are big pulsating bags of blood that can get as big as my thumb nail when they are full. Gross.) She seemed to be recovering, a few days after the shot; she was walking around, yapping a bit again and even tried to climb the big steps out of the laundry room. Then the following days she started getting weak again, until she couldn´t even walk the day Isaac took her back for her follow up shot. They gave him some stronger vitamins and some other things to nurse her with, saying that the virus will sometimes attack the heart or liver after the GI tract. She died that evening. It was really hard to see her suffer. We weren´t even planning on keeping her, but we wanted to help her live. Sad.

I am including a picture of an ant that was in season for about 2 weeks. Destiny was telling me about the huge ants in the new Indiana Jones movie. I told her we have them just as big here, but with wings. If you had your car parked under a light at night, hundreds would get stuck to the moisture of the roof. It was kinda creepy. I took the picture of it next to a juice bottle so you can relate the size a little better.

CONGRATULATIONS HEIDI! Heidi, yep, the youngest Morrell from the Paul and MaryAnne clan, just had a baby boy on June 27th. His name is Elyn Heston Brown. Way to go little sis!

Who Are You?

So I got tagged, but I changed the questionaire, is that ok in the blog world?

Place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not. This is for your entire life!

(x) Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
(x) Gone on a blind date
(x) Gone out with someone you met on the internet
(xx) Skipped school (Dad always said "Don´t let school get in the way of your education")
(v) Watched someone die (watched a puppy die and have seen a lot of dead people, sad)
( ) Been to Canada (nope, just Europe, Central America and South America...)
( ) Been to Mexico
(X) Been to Florida
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
( ) Felt like dying
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang Karaoke (One of the hardest things for me to do)
( ) Paid for a meal with only coins
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?
(X) Made prank phone calls.
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out your nose
( ) Laughed until you peed your pants
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain (does rollerblading count?)
(X) Played Chinese stoplight
( ) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone you care about
(X) Gone ice-skating (once - and I chipped my elbow - ouch!)
(x) Been skinny dipping outdoors
(X) Gone to the movies in a foreign language

1. Any nicknames? blondie, fula
2. Mother's name? mom
3. Favorite drink? Diet Coke
4 . Tattoos? no
5. Body Piercing? Nope
6. How much do you love your job? What Job
7. Birthplace? Germany
8. Favorite vacation spot? Lake Powell
9. Ever been to Africa ? not yet - soon
10. Ever eaten cookies for dinner? cookie dough
11. Ever been on TV? Yes
12. Ever steal a traffic sign? No
13. Ever been in a car accident? Does running over someone count?
14. Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? 5 door - stupid wagon
15. Favorite salad dressing? Cafe Rio´s tomatillo
16. Favorite pie? Humble pie- but only when I serve it.
17. Favorite number? 1
18. Favorite movie? Return to me
19. Favorite holiday? Thankgsgiving - of course they don´t celebrate that in Panama...
20. Favorite dessert? Chocolate volcano with vanilla icecream (Chili´s)
21. Favorite food? Shepherd´s Pie
22. Favorite day of the week? Friday
25. Favorite smell? Rain (stole that answer from a friend, but I have to agree with him)
26. What do you do to relax? Read a novel
27. How do you see yourself in 10 years? Nurse Practitioner with 4-6 kids
28. 5 people I am tagging: Cherish, Melinda, Carrie, John, Emily

We love visitors!

Cherish and Grandma Westover came to visit the first week in June. We stayed in a condo on the beach, we were on the 20th floor and had a beautiful view of the ocean. It was cloudy most of the time, but that kept it pretty cool, and there was a pretty impressive rainstorm one of the days. I love watching rainstorms like that over the ocean. We went up the mountain to visit a botanical garden/aviary/mini zoo (en el valle de Anton). Grandma LOVED all the flowers and foliage she saw everywhere. I tried to talk her into moving in with me during the dreary Utah winter months, she said we´ll see. hmm. We had a great time with them here. Good sights, good food, good company. We are excited for Isaac´s brother and his family to come this month.

The temple open house starts next week. We´ll be working as volunteers a few days during the open house helping with tours and first aid. The dedication will be August 10th (I think) followed by a mission reunion covering 4 mission presidents at the same time. I´m looking forward to seeing some mission buddies there!

Holy Crap!

So the doctor put Ariana on phase one Gerber juices and baby food. I was excited to be able to start giving her real food, I feel so bad eating in front of her. I gave her juice the next morning for breakfast, the whole four ounces. About an hour later, as I was talking to a neighbor, I heard and felt a BM, which is always a good thing since she had problems with constipation a lot the first few months. But she doesn´t stop, it keeps gurgling out. Then my arm was all warm. I turned her over and she had diarrhea seeping clear up her back. She gave another little pushed and it started coming out of her arm sleeves! I am totally not exaggerating! That was a surprise. I only give her half at a time now.

She hates the spoon concept. She gets pretty mad when she tries to suck on the spoon and doesn´t get the expeted results. I cut a hole in one of the nipples so I can still give her the cearal and baby food, but this way she gets to suck it up. I try it with a spoon first everytime, and I let her hold the spoon while she eats. We are getting there. That stuff stains clothes though. Both her best onsie and my favorite shirt are lost causes now. Bummer.

She weighed in at 16 lbs 11 ounces on Friday. What a chunk! She moves around a lot, I´m still not exactly sure how. She doesn´t scoot or crawl but some how she moves. I think it´s a rocking thing, just shifting her weight back and forth. She´s sneaky.

She reacts and laughs a lot now, I love it! But she is way attached to me. I tried to teach Relief Society on Sunday and the minute I handed her over to someone else she started screaming. Isaac was teaching EQ so I couldn´t have sent her with him either. I couldn´t focus, neither could anyone else. Three or four different women passed her around for about 5 minutes while I stumbled through my lesson trying to be heard over her screaming then I finally put my manual down and went to the back of the room to get her. She stopped crying the second I took her back. I finished the lesson juggling her and my manual but she was happy. Isn´t this supposed to start around 9 months old? I told the RS president that we need to make sure next time I teach that Isaac and I aren´t teaching on the same day.