Rudy's Favorite Things

Here's a few pictures that express some of Rudy's most intense interests these days:

Rudy like doing "tricks" like turning his head while walking. He's constantly challenging his abilities to see what he can do. He's such a great example to me: willing to risk failure in order to progress. (And sometimes he does fail... but walking into walls or off side walk curbs doesn't stop him for long) :)

Rudy is fascinated with "work". Here he has shoveled up my shoe (well, more like shoveled into my shoe) and then picked both shoe and shovel up in his own little world of very important tasks to be completed. What a cutie.

When Rudy finds something fascinating, he does this look, accompanied by a slow, guttural "Wooooooooowwwwww". It is hilarious to watch, and wonderful to notice the things that elicit such displays of wonder. In this case it was looking up and realizing he was under our stair way.

Finally, Rudy loves all things technical. You can't really see from this angle, but Rudy's fiddling with a combination lock attaching the bike to the bike rack. (I choose to see this as a sign that he'll be a gear head, not thief, since he's interested in turning the lock and has no clue that it even does open) :)

There's our little man in a nutshell. He's such a blessing in our lives!

Our First Christmas Miracle

Rudy checking out the new arrivals.

On Saturday, I came home from running errands and found a big Costco size box of diapers and another huge box of wipes waiting for me by our door. Wow! Extreme ding-dong ditching, huh? At first we thought it must be from my mother-in-law, 'cause she'd been asking Jason about our diapering status a few days earlier. When she denied any association with the event, we were, and remain, stumped.

We typically use cloth diapers, and I really enjoy it, for the most part. The cloth diapers are more bulky than paper, so it's hard to find pants that fit over Rudy's bubble bum, but otherwise, it feels good to be more earth and money friendly. That said, it's always nice to have a disposable option available, for weekend trips and the like.

On that Saturday evening, I didn't know how valuable those diapers would be. I just thought, "How nice of someone to be so generous and thoughtful." By Sunday afternoon, I realized that my Father in Heaven had provided for my needs before I even knew I had them.

Rudy has had pretty intense diarrhea for the last 24 hours or so. He has (literally) blown through more diapers than I would have ever been able to stay on top of if we were using cloth. We'd have run out sometime last night and had to do a load of diapers in the middle of the night while hoping Rudy didn't have any "incidents" before fresh diapers were available. I know this isn't a huge crisis, but it feels so good to know that God knows and cares about our needs (even minor things like making an attack of the runs less frazzling for all involved).

This mystery delivery couldn't have been more perfectly timed. I believe that someone must have been following a prompting from our Father in Heaven. Like Elder Jeffery R. Holland said in his last Conference talk, "My brothers and sisters, I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In so doing am I testifying that God never leaves us alone, never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face" (The Ministry of Angels, Oct. 2008 General Conference). I'm so glad that whoever dropped those diapers on our doorstep followed the prompting they were given. They have blessed the our family with convenience and testimony.

Be Gone, Foul Filth!

I shampooed our carpet today. This muck is what came out of it. I bet if I did it again tomorrow, I'd get more of the same, but I'm not gonna think about that. I'm just gonna pat myself on the back and think about all the filth that now resides in the plumbing system instead of our humble home. Hoo-AHH!

Rudy's First Haircut!

After a bit of a shabby start, Rudy's first haircut turned out to be a success after all. Originally, I tried to cut his hair by myself. One exceptionally bald patch later, I decided to call upon greater experience. A friend and neighbor of mine is a beauty school graduate and mother of two. She cuts baby hair with a grace unimagined by someone such as myself. :) She even managed to almost fix my blunder.
Rudy did awesomely well, which was quite encouraging to me. Maybe next time I'll give it a shot with Jason's help. Here are the tips I learned about cutting a baby boy's hair:
1) Have the baby sit on some one's lap who can help keep little hands out of the way, etc.
2) Interest the baby in something: a toy, a movie, etc.
3) Begin by going around the 'parameter'. Hold the hair in your fingers and then cut. (This helps with the curious turns of the head issue that resulted in my bald patch incident.)
4) Next, put the baby's hair into a mohawk and give yourself a guideline for how short you want to trim the hair.
5) Now gather pieces of hair in your fingers perpendicular to the mohawk cut and even out the long pieces on either side to match the cut you made in the mohawk.
6) Progress down the sides of the head, matching the length you have established.
7) If you're feeling really gutsy, you can blend the cuts by combing the hair up on the sides and just taking a tiny bit off the edges.
8)Voila, you have a smashingly dapper young man before you. (And ultra fine hair bits everywhere you don't want them) :)
Maybe those instructions aren't specific enough to ensure success for someone who hasn't seen it done, but I'm hoping that in a month, when I'm trying to touch up Rudy's hair, it will be enough to jog my memory.

WE HAVE A PUPPY!

Ok, my parents have a puppy, but that's almost better; we get to visit and enjoy all Sam's cuteness without the poop scooping, carpet cleaning, dog training, etc. duties. As my brother and his wife said, it's like having a grandchild. :)
Vati has been agonizingly dogless for 12 plus years. For his birthday, he bought Sam, an 8 week old,quarter black lab, quarter pointer and half pure golden retriever. That means he'll get to be around 50-60 lbs!
Mutti saw the puppies for sale in front of the grocery store last Friday. She realized that these were just the kind of dogs Vati has been wanting, and thought what a good time it would be to bring a dog into the family. She called Vati to check them out and he acted disinterested, though he secretly arranged to pick up one of the dogs the following Monday night. Then he told me all about it and made me promise secrecy. When it comes to exciting news, I am NOT a good secret keeper. I kept feeling the good news bubbling up, trying to get out, while we were all together on Sunday for a combined birthday dinner for Vati and Thomas.
Luckily, the secret survived and Sam enjoyed a triumphal entrance into the family. Rudy and I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at my parents' house so that the two little guys could get acquainted. They have already exchanged hearty licks (gross, I know, but what can you do with two babies?) I think they're gonna be great friends.

We Can Do It!

I read Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" at the beginning of the week. A pretty intense story of a black woman living in the South in the early to mid 1900's who spends most of her life just trying to survive all the hard blows (sometimes literally) life deals her.
I can understand why it's on the banned books list, though I'm very glad I read it. It helped me to finally really get a clue about what life as a woman was like before all the women's rights stuff happened. It made me really grateful for the freedom, dignity and confidence I enjoy as a woman of this generation. I can only imagine how many women's shoulders I am standing on, who, over the last few generations have fought, prayed, and persevered to give their daughters a better world. I always thought the "We can do it!" poster was a little over the top, but now, I find myself cheering on that steel worker chick and saying, "Yeah! We CAN do it! We can do whatever we put our minds to!"

Totally AWESOME Saturday

So, I was already totally stoked for Saturday to come all last week 'cause we planned on spending the day in Salt Lake City as a family, but the day brought even cooler awesomeness than expected!
During Rudy's morning nap, as we were getting everything ready to head out for the day, Jason posted our '98 Neon on Craigslist...AGAIN. We'd been trying to sell that monster for over a year...but all it did was keep slowly sucking more and more money to make it 'sellable'. Oi. Needless to say, I did not have very high hopes for this latest posting to bring any better results than the last cagillian had.
When someone called Jason 45 minutes later all excited to buy the beast, I couldn't believe it. "Call him back and make sure he knows the safety and emissions is expired," I told Jason, not wanting another dead end checking out of the car to get in the way of our fun day I'd been anticipating all week long. Well, a hour later, we were signing paper work and accepting cold, hard cash.
HOO-Ray! What a blessing! It's like the entire universe aligned, and then all the cosmos smiled down right on us. Or we have a loving Heavenly Father who knows his children could really use a break right about now. The guy who bought the car was in town from Colorado to pick up a different car, which fell through. Not wanting to waste a trip, he hopped onto Craigslist at the local library to see if he could find anything else worth buying. Deeming our car a good deal, he called us, just as we were literally walking out the door. We NEVER pick up the phone, but for some reason, Jason grabbed it. The dude didn't care about safety and emissions because he'd have to re-register it in Colorado anyway, plus he's just planning on putting a little work into it and then reselling it for a profit there. More power to him. I'm just glad to finally have that money sucking monster off our hands and some money in the bank.
After that, we cruised off to Salt Lake to go to our future sister in law's bridal shower, visit my grandparents, and go on a date to Jason's favorite restaurant, The Blue Plate Diner. The Blue Plate visit was to celebrate Jason's birthday, which was in JULY. What can I say, Salt Lake is kind of out of the way and time and money have been tight lately. Jason wanted to hold out for the Blue Plate, though, so hold out we did.
At my grandparents' house, I introduced Rudy to the fisher price castle we played with as children. It was so cool to rediscover all the hidden doors, etc., and to see Rudy's eyes go big with delight at the toy. Anyway, the day was a great one. One of those days you can just bask in the goodness of as you fall asleep that night.

Adios, Neon. Best of luck in Colorado.