Waffles, Swimming, a Rash, and Adjusting

12.5 hours after leaving home yesterday, we made it to Scottsdale.  There were several times during that drive that I tried to calculate whether it would be faster to keep going to Scottsdale or just to turn around and go home.  That probably tells you enough about the drive.  :)

We started today at Daily Jam, one of our favorite restaurants we found when we came down in February.  That place is fantastic: voted best waffles in the state by The Food Network, and - best of all - those waffles just happen to be gluten free.  HALLELUJAH.  As usual I had my Greek omelet, TJ had his breakfast tacos, and between the three of us we put down two plates of waffles with strawberries and cream.  We sat outside and Reed loved watching the birds, getting especially enthusiastic when one was on the "table!"  

After what seemed like nine years of getting ready (putting on sunscreen, getting all four of us changed, packing towels and diapers and hats, feeding Holland, etc.) we made it to the pool.  I put my foot in and let out a bit of a squeal: so darn cold!  We went in anyway (at least three of us - Holland flatly refused after having one toe touch the water.  Instead she slept).  Reed walked around the whole pool about a dozen times - his cute little floatie bobbing as he ran - and was having a ball kicking his feet in the deep end with either TJ or me.  

Once Reed saw both TJ and me swimming IN the pool he eventually came in.  Once he was used to the cool water he loved it.  He stood on the side and jumped in to us over and over again, counting to a different number each time so we never quite knew when to expect him: sometimes five, sometimes two, sometimes nothing but a quick jump.  He was cold enough to be shivering but did not want swim time to end.

After naps we went to Los Sombreros for dinner and holy smokes.  It did not disappoint.  How are we supposed to decide where to eat tomorrow?  There are so many fantastic places it is getting hard to choose.  And that is why we came to Scottsdale.  :)  I sure wish we had more GF options in Salt Lake.  It's fun to be here.

Reed has broken out with a strange rash on his face and behind his ears.  Big red spots.  At first I feared I had done a poor job with the sunscreen on his face (we got the stick kind and today was our first time using it), but he went on a walk with TJ tonight and came home with more spots than he left with, so now we're a bit uncertain.  You might think bug bites, but they're only on his head though he went out walking with shorts and a t-shirt on and didn't get any bites on his arms or legs.  ???  Nurse Eileen suggested some Benadryl which we're hoping has the side effect of helping him sleep all night (is that terrible??)  I sure hope it's all cleared up by morning.

  

Also, this is just real life with a newborn.  Well, at least this newborn.  Poor girl.

I have to remind myself that we're still adjusting to being a family of four (this is our first vacation all together!)  I've shifted my expectations to just understand that it will always take 40-60 minutes to get out the door.  It also feels like we've packed a suitcase in the diaper bag.  One day I'll look back and laugh that two kids was a struggle, but it is really taking some adjusting!

HOME

We are home. 

From where I sit I can hear Reed with TJ. They are reading Reed’s new book from Holland: she knows him well, as it’s a book about a digger. He is calling out the truck noises as TJ narrates the story, Holland sleeping on her crib in the next room. 

My body aches but my heart throbs: it is overflowing with love. I’m so glad to be home to my baby boy. I’m so grateful to have the best imaginable partner by my side, meeting my every need. Together we are thrilled to welcome this sweet little girl-a girl!-to our family. 

We are home.

Reed - 22 Months

We have a c-section scheduled for March 21, which is just nine days away.  Time with just Reed is slipping through my fingers so quickly, no matter how I try to hold on to and cherish it.  I want to capture the hours and days we have together right now, freeze in my memory his little personality and the funny things he does.  I have a terrible memory and know that anything I record will be valuable later, so here's a list of things I want to remember about this darling little boy.

• On February 22, the night before TJ and I had a trip scheduled to Phoenix, we put Reed down to bed in his crib (as usual).  He fussed (not super uncommon) and we were waiting it out when he walked into the room, grinning behind his binky.  My lands.  He learned to climb out of his crib, and even when we raised the side rail all the way up he would go up and over within just a few seconds.  After battling him for several nights and naps, we put a twin bed into his room, and use his sleeper tent (his travel bed that zips all the way closed) if he chooses to get out of bed.  We're about two weeks in on a twin and he's getting better, though sometimes he just wants to sleep in his tent, which is fine with us.  :)  He doesn't sleep nearly as long now that he can get up at will and I'm not sure I'll ever respond calmly when he walks into our room at 4 AM and screams "Mommy!"

• Reed still loves (understatement) his blankets and binkies.  He has three swaddle blankets that he sleeps with every day/night, carries around, and rubs the tags on to calm down: he's had all three since he was a newborn and now that they've been washed over and over they're much smaller, but still soothing to him.  One is white with grey polka dots, one is white with turquoise flowers, and one is white with navy constellations.  He also sleeps with his Saranoni blanket every night.  We are working on making his binkies just for bedtime - and he's getting better at that - but he loves them so much that I can't imagine trying to take them away!

• He loves to sing and we love to hear his little voice.  The two songs he sings are "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."  Sometimes he likes us to sing with him and other times as soon as he hears our voices he'll say, "No.  No."  :)  When he sings Twinkle Twinkle he usually gets stuck on the line "Up above the world so high" and repeats it over and over.
• Papa (TJ's dad) often comments that Reed's name is perfectly fitting: Reed loves to read.  We read together virtually every day, recite books if there isn't one in our hands, and have recently started reading The Friend while he eats.  Several times each day Reed can be found on the floor in the front room or the family room or his bedroom, pulling books out and flipping through them on his own.  He really loves his non-fiction books that show pictures of lots of different things: 100 animals or 100 common words or vehicles or something.  He'll point to them and say the name (or make the noise) of the thing and when we "read" him those books he just wants us to tell him each item.  He also loves his Richard Scarry books (especially finding all the vehicles), his interactive "Heads" book (and the similar "Tails" one, though not as much), and several different books about trucks (which is pronounces "cuts").

• We have taken down his counter-top seat and just have him sit in his booster seat at the table.  Usually we sit right next to him and he almost always rests his feet on one of our legs throughout the meal.  :)
• Reed is still a terribly picky eater.  It gives us a whole lot of angst!  He loves Ramen noodles (noo noo), rice (ice), black beans (bees), Cheerios, Chex, watermelon (inexplicably "ba ba"), pineapple (also "ba ba"), bananas ("ma ma"), apples, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, popcorn, crackers, green smoothies, CHOCOLATE, cashews, peanuts, peanut butter (yet another "ba ba"), dried apricots, craisins, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, yogurt, and a few other random things.  He refuses to eat meat in any/all forms, and will even spit out a bite if you happen to hide a tiny morsel of meat in it.  

• When he walks he often swings his left arm back and forth.  It's incredibly endearing.
• He seems to be left-handed.  Sometimes he'll use his right but he ALWAYS leads with his left foot.
• I know I'm his mom, but Reed is pretty impressive with animal noises.  He knows dozens of animals.  Some of my favorites include elephant, crab (he pinches his fingers together), mouse (Tiny taught him to squeak), bee (which he just grunts "BEEE" every time), chicken, moose, turtle, hippo (his most recent favorite), turtle, any bird (he makes a bird call to all of them), and duck.  He even knows random ones (from his books) like polar bear and walrus, giraffe and alligator (he chomps his teeth together).
• Reed loves to figure things out.  He is pretty analytical.  He's our only child, so maybe that's normal, but he really loves finding how things work.  He can often be found unscrewing the knobs from our cupboards.  He loves flashlights and knows how each of them turns on/off - he also takes them apart and then puts the spring and batteries back in.  He can open doors, is figuring out how to pick hangers up (a tricky skill), and has mastered how to turn his white noise machine off and on.  He opens toothpaste, unscrews lotion, and has recently started opening and eating my chapstick.

• Related to the above, Reed loves helping with the "wash."  He stands on a laundry basket next to the washing machine and loads up the dirty clothes.  He gets to dump the soap in, throw in the cup, close the lid, and push the button before opening the lid to watch the water.  He so loves doing laundry that I find him taking clean clothes and - standing on his tippy toes - putting them into the washer.
• One of the books we read recently had a page where a bunch of animals laughed.  From that page (that said things like "ha ha ha" and "hee hee hee" and "ho ho ho") Reed has learned to fake laugh, which is pretty hysterical.  :)
• We have an audiobook called "A Weekend with Wendell" on my phone that Reed loves.  He's never watched the pictures while we listen to it (he doesn't know there are any), so he just loves it for the narration/music.  His favorite line is when the narrator says "Soon" and he'll request the book by saying to me "Soon" in a similar voice.  When he hears his favorite part he stops when he's doing, listens, and then just smiles.
• Reed loves to be tickled.  He also loves "This Little Piggy" and will give you his foot to do it over and over again.
• Over the past couple weeks we've been working on colors.  He's got orange down (we've thought for several months it's his favorite color, as it's almost always his first choice) and has a very funny way of saying it (I'd have no idea how to type it, but we've got a video or twelve).  Most of the other colors he calls "geen."  :)

• Reed is a good helper and is hitting a stage when I can ask him to do things and he gladly will.  For example, I was in my bathroom one day and said, "Reed, we're all out of soap in here.  Can you go get me some soap?"  I showed him the soap container and repeated it a couple times and he walked out.  A few minutes later I heard him grunting and opened the door to see him carrying four containers of hand soap from the other bathroom.  :)  Similarly, one day he wanted black beans so while I was working in the kitchen I showed him they were all gone in the pantry.  I asked him to go get some more from the basement on the shelf.  He slid down the stairs and after 2-3 minutes, when I was getting curious about what he was doing, I walked over to the stairs to see he had indeed gone to the basement, opened the door, found the black beans on the food storage shelf, crawled back up the stairs carrying a can (which he set at the top of the landing) and was back down the stairs shutting the door.  It was fabulous!  Since then bringing up black beans has become a game: his current record is working for maybe 20 minutes to bring up ten cans.

• This should maybe be the first thing on the list: Reed LOVES vehicles, especially trucks (pick-up trucks), construction vehicles (diggers, dump trucks, cement mixers, and cranes specifically), buses, airplanes, and helicopters.  He calls trucks "cuts" and diggers "digga" (using his arm to make a scooping motion), dump trucks are "beep beeps" and cranes he clicks his tongues for (to show how the hook clicks).  He calls airplanes "me" (?) and helicopters "cocka".  He stops what he's doing several times a day to listen to airplanes and helicopters outside, calling out which one it is.

• Since Reed has been in his own room (about seven feet away from ours), we have slept with our doors open so we could hear him in the night.  In preparation for this new baby, we bought a white noise machine for Reed, to help him sleep through the baby's cries.  The machine came with about 27 different noise options and I intended to use something like "appliance" or "ocean" or something.  But Reed heard "Rock-a-bye Baby" and goes ballistic if anything else is put on it.  The new soundtrack to our life is that darn song, which plays about 12 of every 24 hours around here.
• Reed is a good sport about going on walks with me.  We bundle him up in his snow pants, coat, mittens, fur-lined boots, and hat, and head out to the busy roads for our walk.  He gets terribly bored in neighborhoods, where there are few vehicles to see.  While we walk he calls out most everything he sees.  Yesterday's walk was particularly enjoyable for him: we saw two dogs, several airplanes, a cement mixer, dump truck, digger, fire truck (with firemen who waved back!), birds, and a helicopter.  He'll point out, name, and talk about all of those as we walk (crying when we walk away from the construction trucks).

• Reed recognizes the temple each time we pass it and calls out "temple."  When it's out of sight he says "me mo, me mo," which is how he requests more of something.  It's always a good reminder to me that we do need the temple more.
• "Me mo" was probably Reed's first meaningful phrase (we first heard it in November driving away from the temple after Paige's wedding).  It has come to mean "I want more" or that something is all gone (like if I finish drinking my smoothie he'll say "me mo").  This phrase is particularly humorous to me when it's something I just can't give him more of: more airplanes flying overhead right now, or more trucks passing on the road, for example.  
• Reed pronounces milk "mickow" with a guttural sound on the "kow".  It is hilarious.

• He loves his duplo blocks and plays with them almost every day.  He has a couple pieces that make a dump truck when put together correctly.  For a long time he would bring me the wheels and the bucket and ask for a dump truck: I always told him to look for the black piece to put them together.  So now he'll dump out his blocks and yell "Piece?  Piece?" until he finds that one piece.
• TJ thinks it's pretty funny that I've taught him to call things he wants or is looking for.  He'll walk around the house yelling, "Binkies?" or "Tags?" (his blankets).  But he'll also yell "boot?" or "Mickow?"  :)
• Reed's getting quite good at verbalizing what he wants/needs.  When we don't understand we'll ask him to show us and he'll grab our hand and take us to what he wants.  

• Reed likes to take baths but his favorite part is after we dry him off and tell him to run "bunder bear" into his room.  He jumps down naked and runs, squealing with laughter, up and down the hall.  :)
• He calls me Mommy and TJ Daddy, though we're not sure how he learned to add the "y" at the end.  Though he responds to Reed, if you ask him his name, he doesn't know it yet.

I could (obviously) go on and on, but this captures a few things I want to remember right now.  We love this little guy with all our hearts.  We're just counting on our hearts growing to make room for more love for this baby next week, because there's no way we could love Reed any less.  He has made life so meaningful for us - we're grateful every day to have him!

Perfectly Imperfect Present

On Tuesday night, after Reed had gone to bed, TJ was on his laptop working on our finances as I cleaned up the pile of books Reed had spread across the family room.  Reed was getting sick, TJ was still getting over a cold, and we were both tired, when he said, "ASU is a no go."  Just like that.  Just that quickly. 

TJ applied for a doctorate program at ASU on December 1st and with their estimated notification timeline of "four weeks" we have been anxiously waiting to hear whether we'd be accepted.  He's kept his email open for months, watching for the email that would tell us yes or no: are we moving?  Is he leaving his job?  Are we totally switching career paths?  As we've thought and debated and prayed about our future, we've truly believed that this doctorate program is the right place for us: it's only 2.5 years, it is relatively close to home and our families, and it's by far been the most captivating topic TJ has seen for what he'd like to both study and teach.  We've felt really good about the program and the path it would lead us down to help TJ become a professor.  So we were both surprised and disappointed to find out he wasn't accepted.

Yesterday felt a bit bleak to me.  In addition to the letdown about ASU, we're all feeling a bit sick, the weather is miserable, this pregnancy is just plain hard, and TJ had a busy day at work followed by a long night at school.  I was rocking sick Reed in the glider when there was a knock at the door, then a ring at the doorbell.  I virtually never answer the door when I'm home alone, so stayed in the chair, reading about trucks and cranes and trains when I noticed the car didn't leave the driveway.  I checked my phone and saw a message from Sunshine Floral, that they were at my house with a bouquet for me if I was home.

It's a perfect bouquet: purple tulips and yellow lilies, and other bright and happy flowers I don't know the names of.  I set them in the middle of the island and greedily opened the card, anxious to see what message sweet TJ had sent.  It was a simple note, just one line: "How could life get any better?" 

Tears came to my eyes then - as they do now - thinking about how perfect things are right now, imperfect though they may be.  We have a rich, meaningful marriage and we both know that our spouse cherishes us: what a rare blessing.  Every day we smile as we watch this darling little boy - our son - laugh and learn and play with us.  Inside my belly I feel a new little family member kicking and punching and digging in to my ribs, and we're less than fifty days from meeting him or her.  We have fantastic families and rich friendships and good health.  Our cupboards are full, we have cars in the garage, a warm home during these storms, good books to read, and money to spare. 

I know there are hard days ahead.  Pregnancy is still wearing on me and the long nights are getting a little rough.  My hands are bleeding from washing them after all this nose wiping and poor Reed is sneezing his brains out. 

But I'm really not sure life could get any better.  It is rich and full and it's ours, and things don't get much better than that.

Winter Walking

We've made a conscientious effort to make walking a regular part of our family culture.  When TJ and I were engaged I would frequently invite him to go walk with me - there's a fabulous park with a walking path halfway between our parents' houses - and I think he turned me down every time.  :)  After we got married he started joining me on my walks and, after a while, came to love them: it's so relaxing and rejuvenating to be out in nature.  It's a great way to have conversations.  It just feels good to move your body and it's a nice way to spend time without being tied to devices.

So we've made it a high priority to make sure Reed is comfortable being in his stroller for long walks (60-90 minutes) since he was born.  After we returned from the hospital (he was born via c-section) we started putting him in his stroller at 6 days old and walking down the street, just a few houses at a time, as I built up strength and stamina.  We've walked hundreds of miles now as a family and even taken Reed with us on many runs.

But sometime in the past few months we got out of the habit of walking.  It was probably a combination of issues: TJ being in the bishopric, starting teaching school, the days getting shorter, morning sickness then sciatic pain, then frigid temperatures.  I realized I was missing walking a couple months ago and tried to resume, but it was super cold and Reed would pull his mittens and blanket off again and again, then sob because he was so cold.

Finally we've found the appropriate cold-weather outfit for him to wear: snow pants (that I can't get over - I love how chubby his legs look and how he waddles when he wears them), fur-lined boots that he has asks to wear all the time, a warm coat with a hood he can't pull off, and mittens so long they stay tucked into his coat. 

Today marks the third consecutive day we've bundled up and headed outside for our walk.  He's been so happy to go!  I love that he doesn't cry when we put on his mittens and he walks right to the garage door when it's time to go. 

A favorite trait of the mittens?  We haven't figured out how to work together to get his thumbs in the right spot, so his hands always appear to be turned wonky ways, since they're just in fists at the end of the glove.

While we're walking he calls out when he sees a truck or a bus (especially exciting).  He makes bird sounds anytime he spots a bird and he frequently sings to himself.  It's so nice to get out, soaking up what little sunshine there is, and we're both happier when we get home.  Hooray for walking!

My Family

Two months ago my little sister got married.  She's #10 of the 11 kids in our family and it was such fun to gather and celebrate HER and her darling husband.  

I went through the 1,000 or so wedding pictures yesterday and found a few shots of my (growing up) family that I just adore.  I feel so darn lucky to have been raised by fantastic parents, with a whole crew of deeply good people around me.  

Sometimes when life gets overwhelming I remind myself that I have a whole army of people cheering me on.  These are some of my biggest supporters and I am truly grateful that they're my family, forever.

The 8 Milar Sisters

All my siblings.  I am the very middle in order (#6 of 11) - the oldest is the blonde right above me and the youngest is the sister right next to her.

My parents, siblings, and their spouses.  Tiny (on my left) is the last single sibling.  Can't wait to meet her husband!

Noo Noo

We recently spent a week and a half staying with my sister's family while she and her husband were on an international trip.  One of the (many) great things about being there was Reed's exposure to new foods and kids eating so many new-to-him things!  I didn't realize the positive impact it would have on Reed to see kids eating foods: I feel like he tried lots of things he had refused before and came home with a few new things he really loves.

Presenting: noo noo.  Brown rice Ramen noodles that Reed now ADORES.  There was one day in Alpine when he refused to eat anything but noo noo, pointing to the cupboard they were in and sobbing "noo noo" over and over and over again. 

Now that we're home, we've tried to space out how frequently we have noodles, but Reed's love seems pretty unfazed!  He is incredibly annoyed when they stick to his fingers but is also at a very independent stage where he insists on feeding himself (I think we're averaging four outfits a day right now).  Noo noo are pretty tricky for a little guy, but he's getting some in!