Max is Eight Months Old (six days ago)

We love having Kaleb as an older cousin because his parents bought him such cute BYU gear.

2008

I meant to put a little look at the year in our Christmas cards this year but never got around to it so I'm going to post what I want to remember here:

Jan - Thatch (our border collie/australian shepherd) entered our lives thanks to Chris thinking that Murphy needed a friend so that she would stop pestering us.
Jan - May - I was pregnant, need I say more on that?
Jan - June - Chris worked at the hospital in St. George and I learned to hate 45 minute commutes as much as he did. And downloading the cost of the gas into Quicken. Ouch.
May 3 - I graduated with my Masters in Business Administration from Southern Utah University.
May 7 - Max was born. Please refer to that post if you want any other details on that...
End of May - we bought our Honda minivan and got a car payment (yuck)
Beginning of June - we moved to St. George from Cedar City, UT. Chris ended his one-year "fellowship" with Intermountain Healthcare and began his new job as a Practice Manager for a group of general surgeons in town.
June 17 - We celebrated our second anniversary. And I thought, "I can't believe we already have a kid! What were we thinking????"
June - Murphy competed in her first flyball tournament - YaY!
End of June - sold my Honda Accord - just in time to not pay for car insurance and registration again
July - (maybe still going on) - Chris worked hard at his job and I worked hard at staying sane with a little baby and two dogs at home and 110 degrees outside. I also looked for a job every other day but never found anything that would work. I miss Seattle and the pay there. I miss my job as an analyst and working with excel. I miss the mental stimulation and Sudoku only does so much for that. But Chris needs to work late sometimes and we have no family and didn't know anyone that I could leave Max with. So it was just never worth it to have me go back to work. Plus Max is just so dang cute I have a hard time leaving him for any amount of time. I also thought about getting pregnant again numerous times but I think I was just trying to make myself less bored. I'm glad I never went through with that.
Sept - Visited NC and had a great time with family and miss them very much, especially now that I have kids.
Sept 20 - My generous father-in-law brought horses down. He even paid for the gas to bring them down and the hay to feed them!! We had waited until September so that we could pay for the gas to bring them down so that was a nice surprise. (I'm kind of careful how we spend our money - especially when we get a new job and I don't know how much we'll have every month.) We still love having the horses and being able to ride when we want.
Beginning of Oct - Max cuts his two bottom teeth - He would say Ow! Ow! Ow! if he could comment - which should tell you how it was for his parents :(
Oct - My sister came to visit from NC and we had a great, great time hanging out with them and were so glad they were able to stay with us despite allergies. Her kids are super cute and loved my dogs. Her little boy would mimic my voice when telling the dogs what to do. It's funny to listen to yourself through the eyes of a four-year-old.
Nov - We sold two of the four horses.
Nov - Went to Thanksgiving with the Gappmayers. Max started sleeping through the night earlier in the month but was not very good this trip. I did not look forward to going back up for Christmas three weeks later. We sold Chris's 2000 Oldsmobile Alero for a whopping $750 (yes!) and went down to one car. So far it's been fine. And cheaper :) We also brought Pixie, who we affectionately called "the rat", home with us and started housetraining which made me glad my dogs are done with all that.
Dec - Max is absolutely adorable and sleeping GREAT. He even slept well when we went up north! It's amazing what sleep-deprivation does to one's life and the difference when you get that sleep (life) back. We spent Christmas and New Years at home together and wouldn't have it any other way. Max is starting to move around a little on his stomach, hold himself up higher, and doesn't mind "tummy-time" as much. I try to push him over if he starts to crawl. Chris sometimes asks if Max has had tummy-time in the day when he gets home and usually he hasn't. I'm not encouraging mobility in this kid. My house is NOT child-proof and if we're just going to buy in a few months, I'm not going to fix it now. Pixie found a home with a nice family with five kids. Good Riddance, I mean, Luck, to her. She got sweeter but we like dogs who weigh more than 6.5 lbs.

This year:

I'll probably try to get pregnant again - eventually.
Hopefully we'll buy a house.
Hopefully we can keep the horses down here.
Hopefully Chris's job will like him and keep him.
Hopefully we can buy a truck so we can bring our horse trailer down.
Hopefully we will still be as happy and healthy and safe at the end of the year as we are right now. (Chris had a dream we had a baby girl the same night I had a dream that I was a widow...)
Does Max start school this year?

Dreams

Max has been sleeping through the night regularly since he turned six months old and we gave him his binky instead of a bottle for a few nights in a row. The other night though he started crying around 12:30am. When I heard him I woke up to see Chris already up and going to give him his binky (shocking!!) so I just went back to sleep. When Chris came back in the room he asked me a question from the door. I thought I heard him correctly but wasn't sure. I asked, "What?" and he came over to the bed, sat down, concentrated very hard and said:

"Does the dogs' food bowl have an on/off switch?"

Instead of laughing (which I did the next day), I realized he was serious and he just wanted an answer to his question. I said "No" and he went to his side of the bed and fell asleep. Of course he has no idea what his dream was about and why he asked that. He couldn't even remember the question the next day. But I made sure I remembered.

The Joy of Being a Mother

This is the latest Goodwill pile in my house. I hate clutter and am constantly throwing things out. But this pile is different. I gave myself a lot of time to fit back into my old clothes. But now Max is 8 months old and I am within a few pounds of my starting weight. Yet after lots of walks, thousands of sit-ups, and 8 months to let things get back to where they were, I still can't wear some of my clothes. Some seem to be too short and some just seem to make me look wide. So I've come to accept that my body has just changed forever unless I want to spend hours at the gym everyday (which I am way too lazy to do and am still not convinced that my ribs and hips are going to go back to where they were). And the skin that stretched out to accomodate a growing baby is just going to stretch out again with the next one. So I'm getting rid of the shirts that I keep trying on that still don't look right and I'm just going to go shopping. Ugh.

Dogs, Dogs, and More Dogs

Chris gets teased by his family for allowing dogs inside his house and he blames me. But on Christmas Eve I found this when I came into the room. Even the chihuahua (who didn't really care for Chris) was on his lap! By the way, the chihuahua, Pixie, was a "foster" from Chris's grandparents and we found a home for her a few days ago.
Later Pixie came to sit by me and Chris was left with the other two.

Then they all climbed on my lap a few days later.

We babysat our neighbor's dog for a couple days last week. Pixie wouldn't look at the camera.

We had flyball practice at our house last weekend and this is how many dogs were over. One lady brought six of her dogs and another brought her four. We were still missing one teammate and his four dogs. And people think we're crazy for having our two!This is our neighbor's dog with her horse (and our horse on the left). I thought it was a sweet picture.

We're back to just having two dogs (until Jan. 14 when we're pet sitting our landlord's dog) and we decided we don't ever want more than two, probably. We like our two and it seems so much quieter around the house now. And we still have our two horses since selling the other two.

There's No Place Like Home...

...for the holidays. We just stayed home for Christmas after going to see Chris's parents the weekend before. Chris went in for a few hours Christmas Eve but we just relaxed the rest of the weekend. Hopefully next weekend the weather will be nicer and we will go drive through Zion's or the Grand Canyon. If anyone is around or wants to come down, just call!

Remember this?

Well, he's quite screeching and has a new habit.

It's quite impressive - he can wiggle his uvula (you know - the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat, go ahead and try it). I didn't really know it was possible but I came to find out that more than half the Gappmayer clan can do this little trick. It's quite a bit quieter than the screeching.

But I have a question for those of you who go to church for three hours every week. When he does this in church or just babbles or squeals, he's obviously happy but he can get pretty loud. Should I take him out of the meeting? If he's loud during Sacrament Meeting, I usually go to the back of the church. But during Relief Society (when all the women meet alone), it's a smaller room and I think it's really distracting. Sometimes I wonder if the women are turning around and looking because they're annoyed or because they think it's cute. Sometimes he "talks" for half an hour. Shouldn't I take him out?

Thanksgiving and Christmas

All four babies born between October 2007 and May 2008 were at my in-laws for a Christmas party Dec. 20. They are sure growing up fast. The craziest part is the fact that my three sisters-in-law are all pregnant again! I love how in the picture above three of the four babies have their hands in their mouths. I'll be really glad when Max is done teething.
Max got so tired over the weekend that he just laid across Chris' lap at the party Saturday night. He would never, ever do that at home. We went up on Wednesday for the adults' party and Max got dragged everywhere and anywhere over the next couple of days. We got to see lots of friends and family and he was a trooper, but it wore him out.
We didn't set up a Christmas tree at home this year so we borrowed my in-laws for a few pictures. My awesome and very talented sister-in-law cut my hair on Thursday too. THANKS ANTHEA!!!
The picture above is the only one out of a dozen or so that we took that turned out AND didn't have Max's hand in his mouth.Chris' Grandma Healy crocheted Max this ball. Max loved it! He loved seeing her at Thanksgiving too (as in the pictures below). I was so relieved he was a in a good mood for both visits. Christmas was a lot better than Thanksgiving as far as sleeping through the night, but naps were still erratic and shorter than usual. He was really fussy right before we went over and I thought he would just cry the whole time. He held off until he was alone with his parents again though. :)