Parentheticals

This week we have been ambling along like we were members of the living dead, or perhaps more like a polar bear in cowboy boots. What I am trying to say is that we have not gotten much sleep. Timothy has made some unusual decisions about the importance of sleep in relation to the three other things that he knows how to do (I am sure any parents out there know the list of four things that a baby can do). Either way, last night we needed to have an intervention. It was three am and he had just pooped for the fifth time in the same number of hours and I had had enough. I gave him a pacifier and a stern (if not coherent) lecture and he finally went to sleep for two whole hours. And they say that parenting is a lost art :). Either way, Rea and Sara were up and in our bed for who knows how long before we became conscious at 6:00 am. To go back in time a bit, I started to go back to work on Wednesday. Alison had her mom help her out a lot, and we are paying some of the yo...

I have been taking time off from work to take care of Timothy.  Generally he has been a pretty good kid, but he wants to eat every hour, and he thinks that he needs to sleep on top of us. We are trying to make him realize that he doesn't actually need to sleep on top of us by putting him down when he sleeps, but it is still something that he prefers quite a bit. Timothy sometimes snorts when he breathes, and a few days ago Sara (upon hearing him snorting) laughed and said "Timothy is a honking pig." Rea went over to grandma's house when Timothy came and when she got back she had a new hair cut. It is shorter so her hair does not get tangled up. Rea refused to comment on her hair cut, but I think that she likes it. After I typed that last sentence Rea responded that she does like it.  Saturday morning we went to a ward breakfast. It was pretty good. Everyone was surprised that we came (with our new baby only four days old). They did not have a ward camp out this...

Baby Timothy 'Blup' James Brown was born. He is 8 lbs and 14.5 oz, 22 inches long, and pretty healthy. He arrived on the 18th at 3:26 pm after 12 hours of labor (active labor started at noon). We went to a birthing center  (warning, embarrassing photos) to have this baby as Alison wanted to have a water birth and they don't do those in hospitals here. We really liked the birth center. It was way better than having a baby in a hospital. Alison is very excited that even though he was such a large baby she didn't tear at all. Her hypnosis worked very (pretty in her own words) well. She was even able to push out the placenta without too much trouble (which caused her much more trouble with Sara). Since we have come home we have mostly been taking care of the new baby. He has small nasal passages, which makes him breathe really funny. He eats and sleeps very well, though. He likes cuddling a lot, and seems to be very peeky. He didn't try to stay awake all night (...

This week we have been waiting for the baby to come. (He still hasn't.) Last Sunday I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting. Alison wrote it for me since she hadn't given a talk in so long (not since we moved in to the ward; I've spoken six times since then). It seemed to be well received, although I had to cut out two thirds of the talk because the other speakers took so long. On Wednesday we had some young women from the ward clean out our goat shed. They had asked for work that they could do to earn money for Girls Camp. (We offered the job to the young men first, to earn money for Camp Helaman, and they weren't interested. The girls were willing to do it, though.) It is pretty clean right now. On Thursday Alison, Rea, and Sara went to Amy's house so the girls could play with Logan. They had lots of fun together. Sara especially loved helping take care of baby Dustin; she loves babies. Hopefully that will continue when we have one. We went to a food storage t...

It is finally so hot that we have - once and for all - put away the winter jackets and boots and gotten all of the summer things out. Grandma Julie found the girls some knee length shorts (Alison believed that I wanted the girls to only wear knee length shorts because I have talked many times about modesty) and rash guards (which the girls love and want to wear constantly). This week we didn't get enough milk to make a cheese. It was the first week that we didn't make a cheese in a long time. Clarabel is down to about 4 cups of milk a day, and Lala is down to about 10 cups a day. Probably next week we will make a cheese. Yesterday we bought some traditional danish blue cheese (which actually has green mold in it, not blue mold). We made some hamburgers with lovely blue cheese on top of them, and decided that we really need to make a moldy cheese some time soon. I have been steeling myself to make moldy cheese for a long time. Alison and I both enjoy moldy cheeses a lot. ...

Rea just told me another joke: Q: Why did the kitty run out into the road when there was a car coming? A: Because it didn't have a mommy and daddy. They both died. This is funny because ... I have no idea. It's not funny at all.  But the girls sure laughed.

Monday was a holiday, so I stayed home and we tried to make some mozzarella. We ended up with a crazy cheese that is nothing like mozzarella. It is pretty much an excellently melting version of cream cheese. It tastes decent so it was not all a loss, but what are you going to do with 5 lbs of meltable cream cheese? Over the past week Alison and I have been playing more games of Harbour. It is still a good game, and perhaps at the next family get together we will try it out. It's weakest point is that it only supports up to 4 players. I have been getting together a group for playtesting games. The original post is  here . As of the time of posting this, we only have three people willing to come. Unless we get more people it is likely that the games will not happen (three people is not really enough for most games). This week things have been a bit crazy at work. Our grandboss trying really hard to make some big project of his not fail, and we are all caught in the middle (the ...