Mel's Fantastical Insights

Christmas I think went well in our house. Jason and I weren't up too late wrapping anything and Daniel doesn't really wake up too early so it was nice. I didn't wrap all the books I got Daniel so when he first saw the tree and presents he just wanted to look at the truck books that he got. After about ten minutes we convinced him to look at something else. Then we put all these new cars for him in his stocking and encouraged him to pull them out. Jason had wrapped one thing that was in the top of the stocking and Daniel pulled it out, looked at it carefully, threw it on the ground and then went back to the books. I pulled out the "sally" car from CARS and then the hunt in the stocking for more cares began. We had him stop every few minutes and open some more presents. After a lot of not interesting things we had him open his new Fisher Price Air Plane. He of course assumed that it was for transporting all of his new cars and his new trains. So now he j

The doctor made our guesses official on Tuesday when we saw that clearly our little fetus is a girl. I am fairly excited. It is weird though when we found out that Daniel was a boy I wondered what I would do with a boy. Now I wonder what I will do with a girl. Especially because I can't even do my own hair how am I going to make a little girl have cute hair? Maybe I will take a class. Anyway, Jason has kind of given up on his Charlotte Webb name, but if you would like to vote on the real names that we have chosen, visit Jason's blog. http://bigjason.blogspot.com/

So we bought a van. I know I know, we only have one kid. We debated for a long time and then decided we could either buy a second car and then a bigger car when we have kid three, or just buy a big car now. That big car ended up being a van. We really like it so far. Mostly I just like having a car again and not having to work around Jason's work schedule. We are now official owners of a real family vehicle. Hopefully now I do my Christmas shopping. The second thing that made me a "real mom" this weekend happened shortly after we bought the van. We went down on Saturday afternoon thinking it wouldn't take long, and of course it did. Jason's work party (up in Layton), was coming up and so I left Jason to do the paper work and raced home to get ready to leave Daniel with babysitter number two for the day. My sister Tiffany showed up and I was half dressed and gave her all the instructions while I put my nylons on. I was telling her what to feed Daniel and

These are a few of my favorites from our trip. You have to click on the picture to see all of them. Hawaii 2008

Well we made it back from Hawaii and Jason and I decided we would write down all the things we hated about our trip so we would remember not to be talked into another one anytime soon. Like in the next ten years. Before we left I thought taking Daniel to a restaurant was a bad experience, now I know it is nothing like flying. So here are some of my reasons: 1. I bet before 9/11 it wasn't so bad, but security at the airport takes four years to get through when you travel with a kid. So it went something like this. We travel with a cpap machine, laptop, video camera, baby stuff and a tired cranky baby. You have to strip everything off, belts, shoes, the binky and any other security item that your kid has and walk through the security thing. Jason always has to go with his Cpap machine so I was left with Daniel and the eights bins of stuff to put back, trying to get me and Daniel redressed and had to move all the carry ons. It was insane. The first time through in SLC when t

So traveling here was not too bad. Daniel was perfect on both flights He had a hard time with the noisy children. Nonetheless it would still take a lot to get me to come back here with small children. It's just too long of a day to fly. Anyway, this morning we woke up at 6am and had a lot of fun. We walked to the beach (which is a thirty second walk) and saw some wildlife. Daniel and I watched sea turtles bob their heads up and down for awhile. Jason went to take pictures of a seal on the beach. Daniel really wants to see a shark and I am hoping that does not happen. Whales and dolphins, fine but a shark, no thanks. The only bad part is that it is raining. I mean lots and lots of rain, so much so that I bought an umbrella and for those who don't know, I hate umbrellas. But I can't take pictures in the pouring rain and Daniel hates when the rain hits his face. Though that doesn't really stop his desire to spend all waking moments outside. I have been trying

I had prepared and worried for weeks over doing sharing time, mostly because I was worried that I would bore the older kids and end up using words that the sunbeams did not understand. So today was the big test. This morning started out with a bang, Daniel woke up super grumpy and with a fever. Jason and I were both teaching so Daniel got dragged to church in his pjs, with his binky and blanket in tow. Sharing time comes right at the beginning and as I stood up in front of Junior Primary I was terrified. As a missionary when I got nervous to talk to people I would toss my scriptures back and forth between my hands so I looked down to grab my scriptures and due the crazy morning we had with Daniel, they did not make it to church with me. Ashley was nice enough to lend me hers and I ended up using the wrong scripture for Junior Primary but I don't think any of them understood it anyway so it really didn't matter. Our theme today was "I am thankful for my body." T

I haven't posted in over a week I apologize to my four or five readers. Tiffany had her baby, hooray! Joshua was born on October 25th. He is really cute and Daniel likes to hold him. Daniel did not grasp the concept of Halloween and mom and dad have eaten most of his candy. He did allow me to take some pictures with his cousins but as you can see from his face he was none too pleased. But today, it snowed! Daniel loves to go outside so I got us all bundled up (mostly to go out and save my rosemary from freezing to death), and took us outside. It did not go as planned. Daniel was too nervous to walk in the snow and did not want to touch, taste, smell, or sit in the snow. Nor did he want mom to touch the snow. Yet all those things did not deter his obsession to be outside. So we spent about 1/2 hour standing in the snow today.

So this last week I cleaned my room, from the closet to the nightstands and everywhere in between. Daniel enjoyed being in the closet a bunch and also loved being able to lay on my bed all day. He loves laying on the pillows and then flopping on the blankets and well really, he just likes moving. On a more serious note, Jason and I have tired on listening to annoying music and have once again switched to listening to NPR. Jason has more opportunity to listen since he drives more often and frankly Daniel doesn't appreciate that NPR is not singing Veggie Tunes every few minutes. The funny thing is that now we are news junkies. Jason knows everything that is going on about everything. From the problems on the Mexican border with the bandits, and all the campaign issues, and has followed the economic disasters faithfully. It is the first time in our marriage that I am the ill-informed one. I have to be honest, it is kind of hard for me to be in this position. Hence I too have

Daniel did really well during the eight hours of Conference that was on over the weekend. He folded his arms when every speaker got up to address the congregation especially when President Monson spoke. I told him Pres. Monson was talking to us about temples and so he would point at the temple picture and make a horse sound which we aren't sure where that came from but at least he is using his imagination. He was just convinced that everyone was praying the whole time. The music was inspiring to him as well and caused him to rock out every time they sang. Daniel did have a hard time on Sunday morning so Jason built him a fort. The fort held some challenges. We tried building it with the kitchen chairs but Daniel just wanted to sit on them. So we moved the couch and Jason built a better fort between the couch and the chair. We gave him a flashlight and his favorite thing was to come in and out of the "door." The only truly hard thing about Daniel is how particula

This week we went to the doctor, all of us actually. Daniel went and he is 23 lbs and 31 inches tall. I went and we do indeed have a baby growing inside me. Jason also went but I don't remember what for so I guess it doesn't matter. Anyway, our pediatrician told me that Daniel is at the age where he will start to climb. Literally the second we walked through the door he started. He now tries to climb over the arms of the couch, on the coffee table, the chairs, the shoe rack, and his table and chairs. So far no casualties yet but I am sure eventually we will end up with broken stuff or a broken Daniel. We discovered today that the main reason for his climbing is that Daniel wishes for everything in the house to be used as a slide. I think that if he had his way half the house would be a playground while the other house would just be full of his drinks and snacks.

So Daniel is really becoming quite funny. This last week he has been working on his verbal skills. At last count he can say about 50 words on his own and then he can say many more with lots of prompting. Sometimes he knows what word comes next in our promptings and he shouts those ones out with gusto. Colors are his new learning this week and so far most everything is blue, a few things are black and fewer things are red. As to not confuse him we try to mainly ask him what color blue things are and then we applaud his correct answer. Cars are also a big ticket item at the Webb house. He loves trucks, cars, and especially lawn mowers. Wednesday is my least favorite day of the week since the landscape guys come and do maintenance that day. The lawn mowers are here from 8am to 3pm since our apartment complex is large and Daniel insists that we watch them, the whole time. We set a compromise to we can watch them if they are near our building but he just is so obsessed with lawn m

Daniel has graduated to a booster seat and now sits with us at the table for about twenty seconds longer than he did in his high chair. It is an improvement though because now we say "would you like to sit in your big boy chair?" and of course he comes running. We'll see how long it lasts. I give it about a week. As many of you know I have been waiting somewhat impatiently for Daniel to start talking, and really I just want him to make animal noises because I think that is so funny when kids do that. So last night at dinner Daniel of course had thrown his on the floor and we were trying to get him to say words and noises. He made a "ruff" sound for the dog, a "meow" type sound for the cat and then we asked him what a horse said. He smiled and out of his mouth came this shrill type of neigh (which was the very first time he'd ever responded to the horse question) and it was awesome. Apparently our laughing encouraged this shriek from continu

So a few months ago Jason and I decided to try to make our lives a little greener. Since that time we have sold one of our cars (the gas guzzler)and bought bikes and a trailer, we are trying to use reusable grocery bags, and switched away from using bottled water everywhere we go. We found these cool Nalgene bottles (reusable plastic bottles)that have been awesome for us. The big problem with them has been that Daniel has been fascinated with them. He has almost perfected dumping huge amounts of water on his face while trying to drink from my bottle which is pretty impressive to watch. So today, we went up to REI to get some more biking stuff and saw that Nalgene makes a toddler water bottle. Imagine, I thought to myself, would I really add another sippy cup to Daniel's infinite collection? The answer was easy when I saw his reaction to the bottle I was holding in my hand, euphoria. He got to pick out his color bottle, he picked blue just like mine, and carried it up almost

Sometimes I wonder if we are insane for spending as much money on baby stuff as we do. As a student of history I wonder how anyone made it without "signing time", or plastic blocks, or disposable diapers! How any baby survived without diaper ointment and how mother's still had time to do anything else I guess is something I will never truly understand. We purchased a Chariot Cougar 2 (basically a bike trailer) today after much deliberation. Granted it is really cool and avocado green at that, but only time will tell if it was worth the money. Daniel of course will never care nor understand why his ride behind my bike cost twice as much as my actual bike. Nor will he know how much trouble I went through to get the green trailer despite the popularity of the red one. Even though it takes up the whole trunk of our little subaru, hopefully Daniel will enjoy the view of my back tire from his seat.