Little Update

We finally got our new keyboard and mouse so that our spelling won’t be so atrocious. YES! All the letters I typed showed up. Now you can attribute all missteps to our own poor spelling and not to our three year old laptop keyboard.

ANNIVERSARY:

The last month has gone by so fast! Time flies when you don’t sleep much. Jonah and I love February and March, though, because we are reminded of our courtship and engagement and wedding every year around this time. Seven big fun years! Can you believe it? This anniversary season was not unlike our whole whirlwind of a first year together… we had a lucky St. George snowstorm during which Jonah made a snowman (we made a snowman on our first date to Boston Common in February 1999), we rode a Harley Davidson in February like after our wedding reception, I’ve been reliving my Jerusalem experience vicariously through Charity and remembering missing Jonah while I was there in 1999, we’ve been able to see and visit with a lot of friends and family, I’ve been painting some pieces and getting back to my pre-marriage art hobby, and we have three kids who demand our constant attention (oh wait, that is NOTHING like when we were first together!). In any case, we’re trying to avoid the whole “seven-year-itch” thing, which is all anyone says when we tell them how long we’ve been married.

And, for the record, we washed cars, worked around the house, and went out to dinner at Painted Pony for our actual anniversary. Jonah also bought me a silk orchid since I killed our live ones.

JONAH:

Jonah’s work is amazing! (I’m trying to avoid the use of the word CRAZY throughout this email. You can test me on it). The house he’s building for some repeat clients of ours is turning out quite grand and beautiful. He’s hoping to pass his four-way rough-in inspections this week (framing, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC) so that my mom Teresa (our partner on this job) isn’t too overburdened while we’re gone to NZ. It’s been quite an intense house so far, but hopefully it will slow down a bit by this summer. Luckily, Jonah really likes the people he’s building for and they have great taste, plus he really likes working with my mom, so it’s been fun for him to some degree. I’m always amazed at how much he knows about construction and at how much he cares to get the best work and the best deal for his clients. What a hero, what a guy.

Jonah’s made the best use of the unseasonably HOT weather we’ve been having, and took his brother Eli and friend Mark Taylor out on the boat last weekend. Great sun, FREEZING water. Made for good water skiing, I guess. Jonah and Aniston have also made a few polar bear club jumps into our neighborhood pool.

AJA:

I’ve been puttering around the house with this new little baby and sometimes moody three-year-old. We’ve finally made headway on our courtyard landscaping, only a year after moving in! I’m also going again on the interior decorating in this too-big house. I can’t believe we’ve lived with it half-filled for so long. There are a dozen bare walls that shouldn’t be, and four dozen areas that are just not put together. I’ve ordered some rugs and figured out the few more pieces of furniture I need, but there’s still quite a bit more work to do. For those of you who know me, it seems weird that I would care, but I really just see this house as an investment to be sold next year, so I’m trying my hardest to care. Somedays, the most I can care is to just make my bed. Next time, we’re staying under 2000 square feet. We only use about 25% of the house anyway. My bedroom, the office, and the kitchen… that’s about all we need. Oh, and a six car garage for Jonah’s projects.

ANISTON:

Man, I love this whole reading and spelling development. The other day, she was trying to get back on the internet after she accidentally closed it and called me in to help her after a URL typed as “pebe es cidis” couldn’t get her to the pbskids.org website. I love it. She actually surprises me with how well she can spell most words, even those tricky words like their or love. She’s making huge leaps and bounds with reading and her teacher’s been sending home books for her to read herself. She gets frustrated when it looks like there are too many words on one page, but will still plod right along. I love this! Can’t wait till she locks herself in her room to be able to read books without interruption.

We’ve also given in and let Aniston take dance lessons again, and now she tiptoes around with her arms making an “O” above her head. She also BEGGED to be in the kids-only musical Annie, even though I took her to see the company’s last production (Bye Bye Birdie) and it was, well, long. She was enthralled with the thought of being on stage (even though I explained she would have no solos or limelight), and even has dreams about Conrad Birdie. We’ll see how this goes… she’ll either love it and we’ve found her niche, or she’ll hate it and we’ve gotten it out of the way.

On the other hand, last week was spring break, and I was seriously going through my imaginary address book to figure out which relative I could ship her off to. The time change plus the longer days equaled not a lot of sleep for Sleeping Beauty, and multiply that by her sudden need to dominate Camden and back talk to me, and then add the small percentage of time spent with the great temperance in her life, her dad, and that equaled one giant crying, yelling, stomping, sassy, bratty mess. Man, I am NOT cut out for home schooling. I don’t even think I’m cut out for Aniston+puberty! Part of the problem (or ploblem, as Aniston says), was that she didn’t get her hair done consistently during break, and I forgot about the lesson we learned during her younger years—tame the hair, calm the child.

But, I still love her more than anything in the world, and she’s delightful in spite of it all.

CAMDEN:

Sometimes in our sweet, even-tempered, loving, obedient Camden, I catch glimpses of a wild man-child trying to escape. It never ceases to amaze me that he can be SO enamored and engulfed by all things “car”, “truck”, “Buzz Lightyear”, “bad guy”, or “animal”. He is SO bored with babies and dress-up. He’s taking gymnastics, and it’s about as feminine as he can handle. Jonah even tries to do his hair with a little flair, and he freaks out and says, NO! ME WANT IT YOWN! (He wants it laying flat down on his head). Such a boy’s boy.

So, Camden makes a “Y” sound at the beginning of nearly every other word, so , for example, fruit snacks are “Yoot Yacks”, “Trunk” and ”Junk” are “Yunk”, and “Cam” is “Yam”. It’s a weird version of Pig Latin, I’m sure. He also refuses to use anything but prepositional pronouns, so instead of “I, she, he, we and they”, he only uses “Me, her, him, us, and them” not matter where they are in the sentence. So, his yimnastics teacher tells him to say, “I am terrific!” and he instead says “Me are yerrific!”. Strange. And it’s even stranger because I think he does it on purpose.

ESTELLE:

Elsie is truly the best little baby. Aniston was the champion eater, Camden was the Olympic sleeper, and Elsie is the GOOD baby. She hardly ever cries and is happy to be laid down by herself in the other room and never leaks out of her diapers or spits up. She’s not a GREAT nurser (she’s tongue tied, remember), but she does well and is very patient if I can’t feed her right away. She sleeps okay through the night, with only a couple wakings. Our biggest problem is that I kind of forget about her because she’s so easy. She weighs 12 and a half pounds now and is in the 95^th percentile for height! That’s a first for my babies. It’s also a first that she’s only 75^th percentile for head circumference (no orange on a toothpick with this one). She smiles and laughs all the time and loves baby toys and mobiles (my other two couldn’t care less). Plus, the last two weeks she’s has a suspicious stuffy nose, and I found out today it was actually the result of a flaming ear infection. She hasn’t been the least bit groggy or grumpy. High pain tolerance, I suppose. Such a sweet girl. It may be that we’re just better parents third time around, but I really think she just came this way.

That being said, three kids are VERY hard. Logistically and emotionally and physically. We’re coping, though, and the true refiner’s fire will be our 18 day vacation. Egads! What were we thinking! Too late now…

SONNA’S BABY

Yes, two days after her due date, and 25 hours (?) after her water broke, Sonna (my sister) had her baby! She gave birth to a beautiful, long, healthy baby girl (9 lbs). The night and day of Sonna’s labor were the longest of my life! How am I going to survive when my daughters give birth if I get this stressed out when it’s just my capable, strong sister? No name for the baby yet. I feel Sonna and Sloan’s pain… it took us a week to name Elsie. Better safe than sorry. Anyway, Sonna had a great New Zealand birth experience and my mom is there now getting to know her fourth grandchild. Anyway, little perfect baby Sonna Jr. was born March 6^th in Auckland, NZ.

VISITORS

We were so lucky to have a number of visits from Jonah’s parents over the last two months. Jonah’s brothers Talmadge and Eli have also made a few appearances, as have the Pothiers (Jonah’s sister Shawni and her family), much to the delight of Aniston and Camden and Elsie, who all have exactly-the-same-age cousins in that fam. We had a few friends stop in during the St. George Parade of Homes in February also. Some more coming the end of this month. We’re trying to enjoy our visitors while the weather still invites them…we’re hard-pressed to get anyone to come stay once the thermometer hits 100.

THE END

Well, in conclusion, I’ve been feeling under the weather the last few days with an earache and severe sore throat, and I was thinking it might be an ear infection or strep throat, but given my history of post-partum unusual illnesses, I expected something more exotic. I was right. I have contracted a virus with the worst name ever given anything: Herpangina. Yes, stay far away from me.

Come visit in 3-6 days when it subsides. Or anytime after that.

Love and non-contagious kisses,

A and J