The Truth Hurts

Up until my senior year of high school a group of friends and I dating back to elementary school (Fight on mighty Central Tigers!) played dodgeball together. Some of my fondest memories of elementary school involve playing in the gym that, at the time, seemed so huge. Armed with boundless energy, we relished pummeling each other for hours with yellow balls and, every once in a while, "accidentally" losing control of a ball and nailing girls we liked and/or disliked (sorry Suzie Wadley that ball just got away from me.)

This past Christmas most of the gang was back in town so we decided to reconvene at Central and relive the glory days. The night before the big day, I began to worry that my 32-yr old body wasn't quite as nimble and flexible as it was 20-yrs ago. I flashed back to the morphine shot I received in the ER of LDS Hospital for my back problems as well as each of the 252 elders quorum moves I had been involved in. No worries, I run 5-times a week I'd be fine. Wrong.

Here we are discussing the ground rules for the game, exchanging insurance information, and communicating our last wishes should some of us not make it out alive. It was about this time that I realized I had designated Heather as the decision maker in my living will and health care power of attorney, which is a big mistake since Heather has already told me she is disregarding my instructions to pull the cord regardless of the doctor's prognosis. But that's a whole different story.

Here's Bartlett, Jake, and Russ as we prepared for battle. I'm not sure why Bartlett chose jeans but to each his own.

The game started and we bolted to action. For the first 3.5 minutes the euphoria of youth swept over me. I dodged, ducked, dove, dived, and worked by badself all over the place - - with moderate to poor success. I soon realized that my original strategy of just being able to outrun everyone was not going to serve me in a game played in a 70'x30' band-box.

After 3-4 rounds of playing (which is only about 15-minutes) I began to feel myself getting sore, a phenomenon I never experienced back in the day. I tried to shake it off, but it kept getting worse. I felt my hamstrings getting tighter and tighter. My back and arm muscles began to hurt. By the 8th game, my bursts of speed had atrophied to slow steps which meant I was a pretty easy target. The only thing saving me was my lack of weight gain since, well, junior high. I may have been slower, but there wasn't a lot of me to hit. This "advantage" only resulted in me being one of the last on our team still in play which led to 5-6 opposing team members hurling their projectiles at me at once. Thankfully there's no pictures of that carnage.

In the end we all survived. I picked up my hamstrings, Achilles tendons, and whatever shreds of self-respect I had left off the gym floor and drove home. I woke up the next morning in significant pain and without much range of movement. Aging is rough. Luckily I had this to come home to.

Catch Up -- Christmas 2009

Afton's second Christmas can be summed up in two words: (1) chocolate and (2) pina colada. (I guess we'll pretend pina colada is one word....)

Afton's Grandpa G got Tony and I advent calendars, and it didn't take long for Afton to figure out what was in them. When we tried to take a happy picture of her cranky self on the Sunday before Christmas, we plied her with little chocolate squares.

She looked great in her red dress from Grandma Debbie.

Did I mention that I had to hide the candy dish my grandmother sent us full of M&Ms? One M&M was not enough. Two was not enough. Ten was not enough. Three fistfuls were not enough. And Afton was routinely proving that they can melt in your small, sweaty hands, rather than just your mouth.

Anyway, Afton got to bed a little late on Christmas Eve, woke up a little early on Christmas morning, was horribly cranky after breakfast, and pitched a fit when we tried to open presents with her. We ended up leaving her in the office to watch a movie while we enjoyed opening our own presents. (Maybe next year we'll get to start the excited rush into the living room to see what Santa has brought.)

But she did warm up after a while (or maybe she just got lonely), and she came out to see what all the new things were.
Later in the day we went to visit Grandpa G before we all went over to Aunt Daisy's for Christmas dinner. I think A-baby is a fan of Puerto Rican Christmases. It began with pina colada, ended with spontaneous Latin dancing, and there was chocolate cake in the middle.

Afton takes her chocolate cake very seriously. She had two (small, but still, two... sigh) pieces. Here she is stuffing the last piece into her mouth.

Despite the rocky start, Afton ended up having a good Christmas day. We are anxious to have a Christmas filled with that magical excitement that kids can add, and we're thinking that maybe, just maybe, next year will be the year.

Catch Up -- Thanksgiving 2009

Off and on in the couple months prior to Thanksgiving, I had been trying to teach Afton to point to her different body parts (eyes, nose, mouth, toes) or maybe even (gasp!) say the actual words. I had limited success. Afton was not interested in anything past pointing to her head, and speech is so, well, not part of A-baby's minimalist communication M.O.

However, she learned the word "pie" in about 30 seconds one night when I offered her a bite to stave off starvation (or so she made it seem) as I prepared her actual dinner. Every time I opened the refrigerator that night and for days after, Afton would run to it yelling "PIE!!!" and try to claw another bite or two out of it with her hands.
On Thanksgiving day, she ended up eating an entire piece of pumpkin pie for her dinner before we even noticed. Needless to say, she was happy.

We also got a brief visit from my parents who were flying out of Salt Lake for their Thanksgiving vacation. (They never tire of telling us how great it is to be empty nesters.) The Aftonator commandeered her grandfather for a while with a few stories. And yes, most days Afton prefers as little clothes as possible.

Excuses for not Blogging

Every time I've looked at our blog in the last while, I've thought, "Has it really been that long?" While I suppose you don't need an excuse for not blogging, we have them. For better or worse, they are as follows:

(1) The holidays. Lame, I know. Everybody had the holidays. But it made life busy.

(2) We got a new camera. It's actually a pretty nice one. I thought it was so nice that even a technological moron such as myself would take perfectly crisp and clear pictures. I was wrong. My pictures are still blurry. Almost more so... And then the camera is a bit bigger, so I'm afraid to touch it for fear I will drop it. Tony took some pictures, but I didn't know what cord belonged to the new camera, and I therefore never downloaded anything for a couple months. Lame, lame, lame.

(3) Morning sickness. Not lame. Very real. It makes motivation to do anything drop to zero. Yes, we are expecting Baby #2 mid-July. We're excited, even though it is a bit more muted. It's not that we want #2 any less, it's just that we are no longer innocent. We know about the sleepless nights. And then there's the little matter of the A-baby who we suspect will be seriously peeved (to say the least) at having to share time, attention, toys, anything with #2 (or anyone). But, we heard #2's heartbeat this past week and even saw a little ultrasound. #2 is happily swimming around, and we are happy too.

That's all. More catch-up posts later.

The Definition of Insanity

Every time the subject of family pictures comes up, Tony likes to remind me that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result.

Three years ago my whole family got together as one brother was coming home from a mission and another was leaving. Perfect time for a family picture, right? I found a great location at a local park with lots of stone fences. My brother, Chris, lined up a photographer friend in the area. We coordinated our clothes.

Then three things happened to complicate the actual session: (1) It rains. (2) The photographer shows up an hour late. (3) The photographer turns out to be a "photographer" -- that is, just a guy with a fancy camera who has no experience posing anything or anybody. My not-particularly-well-hidden frustration prompted my father, as he drove back to my house, to tell my two younger brothers and my mom to each find one nice thing to say to me about the family pictures. (I find it ironic that my father, the youngest of six Eastern Oregon farmboys, always ends up doing emotional damage control for his daughter.) Some of the pictures we took with our own digital cameras while we were waiting for the "photographer" turned out half-way decent.

Fast forward to this past summer. The whole family gathers for Jordan's North Carolina BBQ and the 4th of July. What a great opportunity for another family picture! Actually, this process turns out much better, the only problem being that we now have kids and we took the picture in the evening, just before their bedtime when they were already whacked out due to traveling.

But, I really loved the pictures of me and my brothers...

And this one of us and my parents...
The entire group shot is great too. However, I ask you, how is it that the shortest person in the family ends up standing in a hole? For the record, Tony is only nine inches taller than me and my mom is only three...

My "favorite," though, is this one. I look like I'm pinning Tony against the barn to keep him from escaping. What I am actually doing is trying to keep a tired, cranky, wiggly toddler from escaping. Sigh... all my siblings' individual family shots look nice...

This fall, I told Tony that I wanted a family picture for our Christmas card. He shook his head, but he knew this wasn't negotiable. I promised to set my expectations incredibly low: one good picture of Afton and I'd be ecstatic. We arranged for a friend--a bona fide photographer--to take some pictures by these railroad tracks. We got to the session, situated ourselves for the first pose, and then made the fatal mistake of taking away the rocks that Afton had happily found all over the track. There was screaming. There was flailing. There was kicking and thrashing and inconsolable crying. Ordinarily we'd just let the fit run its course, but, well, we're on railroad tracks and she's wearing a white shirt....

As someone once told me, with pictures of kids, you really just need 5 seconds of good to get one picture that's not too bad. Who would have ever guessed this was proceeded by ten minutes of tantrum, complete with big big tears?

So there you have it -- 'til next year :). I'm okay with being crazy.

Mr. Mom

As with Gremlins, there are a few simple rules associated with caring for Afton. (1) When all else fails, feed her broccoli for dinner. (2) Give her her pink blanket and pink bunny whenever she needs comfort or sleep. And (3) Never, ever, leave her unattended while she has access to the straps of her diaper.

On Wednesday, Tony took the day off of work to hang out with his niece and nephew (who had spent the night the night before) and to take care of Afton so I could get a much-needed full day at work. A little after noon, I received this email:

So. After lunch I stuck Afton in her crib to "take a nap." I changed her out of her pj's and figured I would change her into clothes after the "nap." After 35-minutes of hearing her talk and scream and babble, I didn't hear anything for a few minutes. I went in to take her out and saw her standing naked in her crib. I suddenly remembered you telling me that when Afton protests in her crib she does so by taking off her diaper. To my horror, at the opposite end of where Afton was standing was the pile of poop. A big pile. A smelly pile. A brown pile. Afton just beamed; seeming to know what she had done and that while I may have won the initial battle, she had won the war.

Last night, Tony slept in the basement so he could get 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep--one extra hour courtesy of daylight savings time. Meanwhile, I took care of Afton who woke up at 5 a.m. -- oblivious to the time change. After returning home from church this afternoon, Tony told me he could watch Afton so that I could take a nap.

Tony took Afton who was wearing only a dress--meaning no tights, no pants, no bloomers, nothing over her diaper--to his mancave, turned on an animated movie, got a blanket himself, and after a while, (accidentally I suppose) fell asleep on the floor. He woke up smelling something awful and opened his eyes to see only Afton's bare naked sweet cheeks (the cheeks on the backside, that is). It took him a moment to realize that not only had Afton taken off her diaper and pooped in the corner, but she had also promptly sat on his sleeping face while having some remnants of the poop pile still stuck to those sweet cheeks. As part of the clean-up process, Tony not only had to clean the carpet and Afton's backside, but he also had to wash his own poop-smeared face.

Much to Tony's chagrin, my first response was uncontrollable laughter and "This is soooo blog-worthy!"

Afton's response was probably something like: Hee-hee... Gotcha!

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Every once in a while, I think it's good to rock your kid's world by doing crazy things like having a visit from relatives.

(We shall entitle this photo, "Happy Halloween Courtesy of Grandma Debbie.") Afton was so quick to warm up to them that Aunt Audra actually asked at one point, "Since she never smiles, how do you know when she likes something?" I said, "Wait for her dad to walk through the back door." In the midst of Afton's distress over crowds that are bigger than three people, I have vascillated between feeling like I'm the world's worst parent for subjecting her to torture and feeling like the sweet A-Bear needs to get a grip. (Yes, I know she'll figure it out in time.)

Despite Afton's skepticism about all the people who are simply anxious to love and get to know her--including little Elsa who has learned from the other side of the family that girl cousins are way fun--we had a good time. One afternoon, we hit the zoo and took a spin on the "conservation carousel."

(Afton actually did smile for this actvity, and then she cried when we had to get off. As we waited in line, she kept trying to squeeze herself through the fence to get in... She loves that thing.)

And as a fantastic gift, Chris and Audra insisted that they babysit Afton one evening so Tony and I could go on a date. Tony came home from work with this gorgeous autumnal arrangement in celebration of the fifth anniversary of our first date.

Yes, yes, we still celebrate that one.

Then, just as Elsa and Gibson were leaving, Afton's other cousins arrived. The wild rumpus may continue!