Family Update

Since my blog seems a little silly and frivolous these past few days, I'm not quite sure what to write about. Our life has been thrown into perspective by my dad's unexpected illness, and something I normally would have blogged about seems kind of lame today. Hopefully soon we'll be more sure about his situation and all will be well; please keep him in your prayers.

I thought I would just write a little family update, since I never do anything like that, and one day it will be nice to look back and see what we were all up to. So, in other words, this might be kind of boring for you, as in "Christmas-letter-boring." Feel free to move on to your next blog. :)

Neal is very busy in his second year of a three-year residency in Endodontics. (That means root canals; fun, huh?) He goes to school every day and once in a while has an afternoon off. During those afternoons and every other Saturday, he works at local dentists' offices doing root canals on their patients. He gets paid half of their fee, so it works out pretty well. It's wonderful finally having some income after all these years of education and slavery to the dental school! I appreciate his abilities and talents so much and feel so blessed to be married to someone so ambitious, determined, and patient. Typical of Neal, he's got lots of hobbies all going on simultaneously. Along with the yard, which sometimes feels like a hobby (the garden part anyway), he has three snakes, a tarantula and a new little saltwater tank to occupy his mind. Who knows how he finds time to enjoy any of these things, but I've learned that they are necessary outlets and diversions for Neal, so I enjoy them, too. Well, kind of. Snakes and spiders? Yes, I'm crazy, but I love the boy so I don't mind the creepy crawlies.

I'm obviously not enjoying a whole lot of free time since the arrival of our sweet little Miles, but his presence in our family is such a blessing. He's slowed us all down a bit and causes us to take a little time to sit still and smile every day. I have two days a week when Audrey and Parker are both in school, so I usually take those days to do the grocery shopping and take naps, which is great. I'm trying to get back into my calling as Primary chorister, but it's kind of tricky with Miles around. The Primary Sacrament Meeting program is coming up in a few weeks, and after that, maybe it won't feel so urgent or stressful! I kind of come and go on my favorite hobby, researching and compiling family history, but I'm gearing up for more action that way. The rest of my days are spent on errands and playdates and now that there are two in school, we spend a good amount of time in the car. Thankfully, a new friend of mine is picking Audrey up each day, so that saves me a lot of stress (waking the baby, sitting in the hot carpool line, etc.) I'm really looking forward to Stephanie's visit next month, and visits from my parents after that. We're also excited for our trip to visit Neal's family in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. I feel like I've pretty much fully recovered from my c-section and bout with pneumonia, now if I could just get this baby to sleep through the night! Yeah, right.

Audrey is loving all the adventures she has at kindergarten every day. They require the little five-year-olds here to go to school from 8 to 3, five days a week, so the hours are pretty intense. She's very worn out by bedtime and by Friday, she is really ready to veg out. But I think we're going to sign her up for Girl Scouts soon; she'll be a "Daisy Scout" (how cute!). It seems like something that would be right up her alley--learning all sorts of interesting things and making new friends. She's also said she wants to take ballet, so maybe we'll look into that, too. She takes the gifted test today at school, which I'm kind of nervous about. I want her to not be shy, to show the tester person that she knows the answers to things (if she does), and not to be ashamed of her amazing little brain. I guess we'll see how it turns out! She's only in kindergarten, of course, so it's not that big of a deal, but I want to be sure she's being challenged and not bored in her class. In her free time lately, she's been playing with our bird, Twiggy, whom she adores. She loves using the easel (white board and chalk board) in her room, writing little statements and stories, or copying the shapes of the states from the map in her room. So far she's done Maine, Texas (of course) and Indiana. She still loves to read more than anything else, and loves to boss Parker around, true to form.

Parker is still our easy-going, sweet little huggable boy, but he doesn't seem so little anymore, with the addition of his teeny brother! He's in preschool twice a week, which he's starting to like more and more. At first, he would say things like, "school just isn't fun for me," which of course worried me and caused me to second-guess our decision to enroll him. But it's been good for him to get out of the house, since that's where he'd be (cooped up like me!) if he wasn't in school. He's still really into superheroes and unfortunately, has begun an obsession with computer games. We try to nip it in the bud, though, setting the timer, making Sunday a no-computer day (for all of us!), etc. I vow to not have a child addicted to computer games for the rest of his life! Parker learned how to swim really well this summer and has now figured out how to ride a scooter. He's also getting much better at riding his own bike without being pushed with the handle. I'm sure by Christmas he'll be good enough that he just might get a new bike from Santa. He also loves to fight with his foam swords and play baseball.

Miles is everything a baby should be: cuddly, chubby (sort of), sweet-smelling and adorable. I can't get enough of his sweet little warm baby-ness. His soft little temples and fluffy head of sparse red hair are enough to make me melt, even when he's crying, which he doesn't even do very often. He's a very calm little baby, very observant and alert. He's so close to smiling, he'll do it any minute and I can't wait for the first real one!