Martin – 1 year

This little guy had a birthday! He loves being one, he’s not going to lie. He’s a big boy now, and he can climb up the stairs and whine and people will bring him back down. He can stand all by himself. He sleeps all night long and he can eat peanut butter now. Life is good! Except when you try to dress him up. Nobody should have to put up with that!

Martin loved his birthday. Except for the cake. He loved the cake from a distance. Especially the candle part:

It was the eating it part that was a problem. No good:

Maybe next year we’ll put frosting on it or something. Opening presents was great. Throwing wrapping paper around is fun and he even unwrapped part of some of his presents on his own. His sisters were happy to help with the rest.

Martin is growing, growing. He’s been in 12 month clothes for probably a month or six weeks now. He’s so much fun to watch. He loves to pull things out of drawers, buckets, cabinets, between the fridge and the wall, anywhere you can put things. Occasionally he will put something back in a bucket, bin or storage space, but his favorite, by far, is pulling things out.

He’s getting his 1 year molars and those are bugging him some. He mostly sleeps alright still, but he’s a little clingy and cranky. He has learned to stand on his own and when he does, he flings his arms out wide and arches his back like it’s a total thrill to be on two limbs. Either that, or he’s trying to imitate a falling cat.  He also can take a few steps. His sisters swear he took 7 once, but I’ve only seen 3 or 4. You can decide if you trust their counting…

Recently he has discovered that he can put smaller things into bigger things. He found a chapstick and was putting it into a small food container the other day. He couldn’t get it in every time and it was fun to watch his concentration as he tried to get the chapstick to go into the container.

He can climb up stairs, but is scared to go back down them, so he usually gets to the top and then turns around and whines or shrieks until someone goes up the stairs and brings him back down. He knows how to go down the stairs, but has fallen down them, so they scare him. And someone is almost always willing to run up the stairs and carry him down, so, why not?

Martin knows how to say one word: yeah. It’s his answer to any question. Avery in particular has a lot of fun with this. “Martin, do you have long blonde hair?” “Yeah.” “Martin, am I your favorite?” “Yeah.” He says it in different tones occasionally, but any time anyone talks to him he answers “yeah.” He understands more, though. For example, the other day Avery was telling me how well she had done on a test at school and I said “Good job!” and Martin started clapping. He loves clapping. He claps for himself all the time, and sometimes he claps for Avery when she does a good job. My favorite is when he claps for himself while he’s eating. For a week or so he would pause in the middle of eating his food to clap for himself. He has also clapped for himself for throwing my socks in the bathtub. He’s working on that self esteem.

 

 

 

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Martin – 7 months

On his 7 month birthday we discovered three new teeth in Martin’s little gummy smile! Evelyn was playing with him on the ground when she saw them. When we looked we could see three new chompers and it looks like a fourth is trying to break through. That puts him up to 5 (almost 6) teeth!

Martin is pretty proficient at sitting and is getting brave about reaching for things while sitting. Sometimes he reaches so far that he plops onto his tummy. Then he cries because he doesn’t like being on his stomach and someone has to go sit him back up.

He’s a really busy little guy. He grabs at everything. One thing he really likes right now is to be put down on the floor next to a chair or stool. He likes grabbing at the legs and cross bar parts of the chair and pulling and pushing on them. Today he grabbed the cross bar that goes between the legs of our dining chairs and pulled it toward him until he lost his balance and tipped backward. Then he held himself tipped back, but up against the bar until his bum slowly slipped from underneath him and he was lying underneath the chair, still playing with the legs and parts of the chair.

Look! I finally have some hair!

The poor kid really likes his toys, but is starting to get kind of bored with them too, I think. I took an empty body butter container from him recently and gave him a rattle instead and he cried and cried until I gave him the container back. The body butter container was newer and more exciting I guess.

Solid food is going well. He loves oatmeal, rice cereal, pears, and cheerios. He likes corn, spinach mixed with other things, peas, carrots, avocado, peaches, puffs, and pie crust (he stole that one from his sister while she wasn’t looking). He doesn’t like green beans as much, but still eats them sometimes, and he’s decided he doesn’t like beans anymore. The food seems to agree with him too; he’s getting some pretty nice cheeks and a double chin. We’re all pretty happy about that. He and Mom are still on a dairy and egg free diet. The gastroenterologist said we can try one or the other of those at nine months. Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be interesting…

His favorite things are probably being held by his family, being thrown up in the air and being tickled. We can always count on tickles for good laughs from him. We all love him bunches and he’s really a happy little guy, even when he’s teething. Every once in a while though, he’s just had it:

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Martin – 6 months

Martin is 6 months old already, and we have had him around for a whole half a year! He’s such a happy kid. A lot has happened in the last two months.

At his 4 month visit he had dropped in his weight percentiles, which worried the doctor. He had had diarrhea for a couple weeks so they told me to try giving him formula to slow down his digestion and probiotics to try and help the diarrhea. If it hadn’t cleared up in a week, they said to bring him back in. So the next week we were back at the doctor’s office and when we weighed him he had actually lost 4 oz. We started trying all sorts of things at that point and they referred him to a pediatric gastroenterologist.

I would just like to say here that we have one stubborn kid. Both doctors told me to try and get him on a  bottle to get more calories in him and he would not have it. We tried 6 or so different kinds of bottles, three different kinds of formula, and an eye dropper. No go. He screamed and screamed and then after he was done with that, he played with the bottle with his tongue and refused to drink any of it. We went back to nursing every two or so hours, and tried baby oatmeal. After another week he hadn’t lost any more weight, but he hadn’t gained any either.

The gastroenterologist said that he probably just needed more calories and to put oil in his cereal and try to get him to take more formula any way we could. He gave me ideas for making more milk and told me to stay hydrated and eat enough protein. He said, if it wouldn’t stress me out too much, that I could try eating less dairy, soy and egg since those are the most common food allergies in babies. So we tried a million things and did weekly weight checks and he started growing! His tummy slowed down and he started gaining on the percentile charts and hasn’t stopped. He was down at the 3rd percentile for weight when he lost the 4 ounces and he’s now back up at the 46th about a month and a half later. He loves baby oatmeal, and it seems that if I eat eggs he gets diarrhea, so I am currently on a dairy and egg free diet. We can try one or the other again when he’s 9 months.

He’s been a happy baby since I quit dairy at 1 month, but since he’s been gaining weight, he’s been happier even. He’d been happy, but wanted to be held a lot, and now he’s fairly content to sit in a chair or on the floor and play with toys for a while several times a day. And now he has nice chubby thighs and a double chin. We’re so proud!

He learned to roll from his back to his front this month, and he thinks that’s pretty cool because he can reach more toys that way. This last week he’s really gotten good at sitting up by himself. He likes that a lot, and when we lay him down he stretches his head up like he wants to do a sit up and he’d really rather be able to see the world from sitting. He’s a busy little guy, always grabbing and playing. Don’t try eating with him on your lap – your food will soon be in your lap with him.

We’ve started feeding him other foods. He likes peas, oatmeal, cheerios (when he can get them in his mouth), and beans. He didn’t like green beans or squash and we’re still working on pears. He really likes to hold onto a baby carrot and gnaw on it. Don’t take his carrot away unless you are ready to be yelled at. Feeding him is also sometimes hazardous, because sometimes he likes blow mini-raspberries with food still in his mouth.

Martin is very friendly. He smiles at everyone. He loves it when people talk to him and isn’t too bothered by other people holding him. Unless he sees Mom. Then he sometimes gets upset. Sometimes he will go to other people, though, even if Mom is holding him. He likes to look at people and grin at people. He also LOVES to give hugs and slobbery kisses. It’s pretty adorable.

He also got two new teeth! They came in around 5 months and they’re pretty sharp. Just ask his sisters; they’ve gotten their fingers caught in them more than once. So now he can pull hair AND bite! They still adore him though.

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First Week of School

We survived the first week of school! And it wasn’t even too painful!

Avery is starting 5th grade this year and loves her teacher. She tells me every day that today was good because she has her for a teacher.

 

Evelyn is starting 3rd grade. She wakes up and groans “I’m not going to school!” every morning, but she gets there and tells me with a smile that school was “awesome” every day when she gets home.

 

Hazel started preschool this year. She is doing an online preschool and a home preschool where we rotate between people’s houses. She loves them both.

And here they are all together.

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Martin – 4 Months

Martin is 4 months old! He’s growing, but not fast enough for the doctors. Our nurse practitioner is worried that he isn’t gaining weight very quickly.

He’s learning lots of new tricks. He can see people from across the room and gets excited when someone walks into his field of vision. He loves people. He likes his sisters to talk to him and to be held upright so he can see what’s going on. I really think this kid will be happy when he learns to sit because he does not seem to like that he’s stuck on the floor looking up at the ceiling so much. He likes being on the counter where he can see people a little more and the view is different, but it makes Mom nervous to have him up there. So he only gets to be on the counter when I have something that keeps me there for a while. He likes his Bumbo seat and it helps him sit up more, but he often gets distracted by how yummy it apparently is.

Martin has figured out his hands an likes to play with them. He can clasp them together and grab toys with them, but his favorite thing to do with them is to stick his fists in his mouth and gum them. He thinks that’s great, and doesn’t mind at all that is gets drool all over anyone holding him. He has also learned to grab his sisters’ hair, and does so regularly. The sisters do not approve.

He still dislikes tummy time, but he has learned to roll from his tummy to his back! Sometimes he does such a good job of it I can’t keep him on his tummy very well, and sometimes he does such a good job of rolling that he clunks his head on the way over or scares himself.

We have worked on a schedule this month since school is starting. So far we have a good bedtime at about 9:00 and a good wake-up time at about 7:00. Naps are less consistent, but usually there’s one around 8:30, 12:00 or 1:00 and often sometime in the late afternoon or evening. He still has a hard time staying asleep during naps unless someone is holding him. He sleeps well in his own bed at night, though.

Overall he’s a happy little guy, although he does want to be held a lot. He talks and coos and loves pat-a-cake. He hates his car seat but the butterfly toy hanging from it makes it bearable sometimes. He likes it when Avery and Evelyn come home from school because they like to talk to and play with him. He likes to be held over my shoulder and gives me little hugs and pulls my hair out of my hair clip. He’s a sweet little cuddle boy.

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Martin – 3 Months

 

Little Martin is 3 months old and growing fast. As you can probably see from the picture, his 0-3 month clothes are getting pretty tight. He has a long, skinny body, so his pants tend to fall down and his tops and sleepers outfits tend to be too short. He may be like some of his sisters who have to wear one size in their tops and the size smaller in their pants.

He’s a happy baby overall; eliminating dairy and any caffeine from Mom’s diet has really made quite a difference for him. He loves to smile and talk to people and just lights up when someone comes to pay attention to him and play with him. He and Mommy often go outside in the evening and have talking time, where they have little conversations and Martin coos. He loves it for half an hour or so and then he’s ready for bed. He has also started laughing, which is so fun! He gave his first really good laughs and chuckles on his three month birthday and so far we have gotten him to laugh by kissing his neck, tickling his sides, and playing patty-cake. Evelyn in particular has been waiting and waiting for him to laugh and is pretty excited to hear him when she’s around to listen.

At two months he weighed 11 lb. 4 oz. and was 23.5 inches. He’s bigger now, but I don’t know by how much. He’s a good sleeper at night, but less so during the day. He goes to bed really consistently at about 10:00 and usually sleeps until between 3:00 and 4:00. Then he sleeps another 3 hours before wanting to eat again. During the day he takes naps, but often wakes up unless I hold him through the nap. Sometimes the swing will keep him asleep for a couple hours.

If there’s anything Martin doesn’t like, it’s tummy time. He cries through the whole thing almost every time. He’s getting strong, though. He can lift up his head and his legs and do an airplane-like move and he can hold himself sitting and standing if someone holds his hands for balance.

He’s a really mellow little guy and we all adore him. Avery says we adore him too much :) His sisters want to play with him always and he’s pretty good natured about it. He even did really well on our trip to Montana to visit Nona and Papa this month.

Also, Martin is really good at getting his hands in his mouth. He likes to gnaw on his fists a lot. Sometimes so much it’s hard to get him to take the fist out of his mouth so he can eat, and other times so much that he gags himself on his own fingers. He’s a silly boy :)

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Christmas Letter 2014

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Ivan and Rachel Andrus family finds itself back in Utah this year, and it’s been an exciting year. About this time last year, after much painful deliberation, Ivan took a job with Adobe. He started just in time to do orientation and then get a week and a half off for Christmas. He has impeccable timing, no? He had been contracting for Adobe from February of 2013, but now he works there “for real.”

The new job necessitated a move (Rachel was not amused), and since we were tired of moving (really not amused…) we decided to do a super fast house hunt. We searched and bought a house in about 6 weeks. It’s a newer house in Saratoga Springs, Utah, which is just west of Lehi. So far we like it. The kids are thrilled to have a yard and basement to play in. And neighborhood kids to play with in the yard and basement.

The former occupants of the house weren’t excited about moving out that quickly so we spent the first two weeks of March in a hotel. The kids loved the hotel and still ask to go back, because they got to watch cable TV all the time. Ivan and Rachel were much less enthused after the two weeks. We moved into our house March 18th, and began the frantic unpacking, arranging, buying of furniture and yard tools, etc., that comes with being first time home owners and going from a 2 bedroom apartment to a real house.

Avery was sad to leave her friends and school in Colorado, but adjusted quickly here. Evelyn had her fourth Birthday not too long after we moved in and (luckily) before Hazel was born. She was very excited because we made cupcake ice cream cones. They weren’t nearly as pretty as the picture online, but she was happy with them, so we’re not complaining.

Backtracking to Hazel… Hazel Ann Andrus was born April 27th. She was a big baby (8 lb. 13 oz), and while her weight is a little more normal range now, she’s still very long and so little arms and ankles are always sticking out of her clothes. She’s been a really happy baby, for which we’re grateful. She smiles all the time, and already crawls and pulls herself up on things. She also likes to try to eat EVERYTHING, so she keeps us pretty busy pulling things out of her mouth. We think she’s pretty great.

This Summer we went down to LA to visit Rachel’s grandpa and sister for the fourth of July. We went to the beach, and Avery was in heaven. She splashed and played in the sand and collected shells. We also got to see some of Rachel’s family that we don’t see too often and meet an aunt that we had never met before. That was a fun experience, and we’re happy to have Mei Linh as part of our family.

Avery started 1st grade this Fall, which put her in school all day again. (In Colorado she had all-day Kindergarten, but here Kindergarten is half-day.) Her class is ocean themed and she loves her teacher. They have a pet hermit crab that the class named Hermy. Avery gets to read sea life books and tells us all sorts of things about sea animals. She loves to play with her friends and is starting to get very good at reading. She’s even beginning to read for fun.

Evelyn started pre-school again this year. It’s a home-based pre-school, but we’re not using the joy school curriculum this year. There are usually 6 kids or so and she looks forward to it every week. She’s pretty good at her letters and numbers and excited to start Kindergarten next year. Evelyn is our little firecracker. She makes up all sorts of pretend games with her toys and is very, very friendly. She gives everyone hugs and her primary teachers tell us that she loves to give answers in class. Apparently most of her class is pretty shy.

This Fall we got to go camping a couple times, which was fun. The kids hadn’t ever been camping before and they loved it. We went to Arches National Park for Fall Break and camped and hiked around a bit. It was a beautiful place, even if the kids didn’t like the hiking.

We spent Thanksgiving with Ivan’s family up in Montana. It was a fun trip and a nice, quiet few days. Ivan’s whole family was there, so it was nice to spend time together. While we were there Ivan finished up a big project. He participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year and finished the required 50,000 words in the month of November. He is now officially a NaNoWriMo winner and we’re all pretty darn proud of him. It was a lot of work, and he stuck with it all month (despite negative effects on his sleep). His book is called The Implausible Adventures of Jacqueline and Lonnie, and is based on characters in the stories he tells the kids at bedtime. Unfortunately, none of us has read much of it, because he claims he has too much editing to do on it still it’s really bad.

That’s about it for our year. We feel very lucky to have been able to see family so much this year. We wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a blessed 2015.

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Hazel – 4 Months

Our little Hazel is growing fast! She’s still a really happy, content baby. At her checkup she weighed 14 lb. 14.5 oz., and was 26.5 inches long. She’s 99th percentile for length and she shows it. We’ve started moving her into 6-9 month size clothes the last week or so because she’s so long. Luckily it’s getting cooler here because all our 6-9 month clothes are warmer.

She’s a happy baby and she’s learned to hold her head up, smile at us, hold on to toys and get them to her mouth and roll from her tummy to her back. We got her a play gym with dangling toys a month or so ago and she loves that. She swings at the toys and tries to pull them off the arches they hang from so she can stick them in her mouth. Her eyes are definitely blue now and she loves it when people talk to her. Her sisters are great for this and Avery in particular likes to sit next to her and talk to her and give her kisses.

Lately, it seems, she’s discovered her tongue. Especially after she’s eaten sometimes she sits and sucks on her tongue, her lips, her mouth, whatever she can suck on. It makes that funniest slurping noises and her tongue and lips stick out and the suck back into her mouth. Sometimes she gets her tongue folded on itself while she’s sucking it back into her mouth. It’s pretty hilarious to watch.

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June

Our lives have been a little hectic lately. In June we decided to go visit Grandma and Grandpa in Texas. It ended up being about a month trip when everything was worked out and the working out seemed to happen through the whole trip.  So here it is.

First we headed out to Idaho to visit cousins. We were so excited because we were really close with Ivan’s Aunt and Uncle before we left Utah and we’ve wanted to visit them since we got back to the US in February. The best part is they have two kids kind of the same ages as our kids so the kids had a blast too.

Playing with cousins

Relaxing with cousins

While in Idaho we got to see the Snake River and Shoshone Falls. It was a beautiful area. We even saw some base jumpers jumping off a bridge over the river!

After a fun stay in Idaho we headed down to the Salt Lake area. Because Ivan works remotely, he has to head down to Salt Lake every 3 or 4 months to check in and go to meetings so everyone down there is on the same page and everything. So we stuck that into our trip and that way we were able to expense some of the gas!

We went to This is the Place Park with my aunt while we were in Salt Lake. The story goes that when Brigham Young first came over the mountains, he looked down into the Salt Lake Valley and said “This is the right place.” and so they settled in Salt Lake. Now there’s a park there where you can see old buildings and replicas of buildings and old trades. There was a blacksmith shop and a petting zoo. It’s a great place for kids.

Petting a horse

There was a Native American area with teepees and hogans. We got to see some Native American dancers too!

We had an awesome visit with some friends from when we still lived in Utah. We had some BBQ and tried to go swimming in their pool, but the wind was so cold we all froze in about 10 minutes and had to all go inside in the end. It was a fun evening anyway.

Then we headed down to Texas via Arizona where we visited another of my aunts, and got sick. Avery threw up first in the middle of the night and Evelyn followed the next night. So we stayed an extra day with Barbara and Barry, which we didn’t mind at all, and I hope we didn’t put them out too much.

More cousins!

Finally we made it to Texas. In Texas we went through all our stuff we’d left at Grandma and Grandpa’s over the last 3 1/2 years of being back and forth between Europe and the US, swam a bunch, cooked tasty food and mostly just hung out. It was really nice to see family again.

Color coordinating with Grandma

Water balloon fight!

Relaxing in the pool

We went to see a museum about the history of Dallas while we were there and ate lots of ice cream. Then it was time to come home. We did the whole 21 hour trip home in one go. It was a long day, and after we’d stopped twice and played a little bit it actually took nearly 24 hours to get back, but we had a fun dinner and even found an 1880s era town in South Dakota to visit. Hopefully I’ll get to blogging about that another day.

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The Great Tree Take-Down!

The house we live in was Ivan’s Grandma’s and Grandpa’s and before he died, Ivan’s Grandpa asked that the two black walnut trees in the backyard be cut down and sawn into usable wood to be distributed to any family members that want to use it. Black walnut is fairly valuable wood and he felt that the next owners of the house wouldn’t really appreciate the wood anyway, so he’d rather his family have it. So last week we began the process of cutting down two 50 year old black walnut trees.

Monday morning:

First we (by we I mean mostly Ivan’s mom, who did all the organizing) had someone come in with a chainsaw and truck with a people lifter (?) to cut the trees down in ways that wouldn’t require our neighbors to build a new home. We asked him to leave the limbs and pieces as big as possible to be sawn into boards later.

By Monday afternoon we were left with two 10 foot (or so) stumps

Then we rented a trailer and rolled, hauled, jacked up, levered, come-alonged and I swear at one point we pretty much just levitated the stinking 4-12 foot limb pieces that came from the tree onto it to be taken to the saw mill. We took two trailers of logs to the mill and had them cut to various widths. When they came back they looked like this:

At this point you may be asking yourselves why we left the stumps so tall. Well, I’ll tell you. Apparently some of the prettiest wood in a tree is in the stump and roots of the tree. When a tree removal company removes a stump they cut it down close to the ground and then bring in a stump grinder to grind out all the wood and roots. Ivan’s grandpa and family wanted the pretty stump and root wood un-mulched, so we left the stumps about 10 ft so that we would have something to grab onto with… drum roll please…

The backhoe! This is actually the second backhoe. We rented one on Tuesday afternoon and dug big moats around the trees and poked the stumps a bit before realizing it was not anywhere near powerful enough to pull those suckers out. So Wednesday morning we called in a bigger backhoe. At this point I would like to say thanks to the two guys from church that came and drove the backhoe. They’re not exactly intuitive to drive. Thanks Jack and Preston!

At this point we were really beginning to question our sanity in thinking we could get these stumps out of the ground. They were NOT coming out. Finally Wednesday night, after pushing and pulling the bigger stump this way and that all day we chained the stump to the backhoe, the backhoe to a pick-up truck and that pick-up truck to a second pick up truck.

Unfortunately I was inside cooking when this happened, so I quickly took a less than awesome picture through the window, but I don’t think I could have gotten the whole chain of three vehicles plus tree in one picture anyway, so you’ll have to use your imagination a little bit. Those trucks revved and spun and finally got that stump out of the ground it clung to so tightly.

With the big one out they called it a day and got up early the next morning to pull the second stump out. It came a lot easier.

Then we called the chain saw man back to come saw the ten feet off the stump, which left us with just the root ball at the bottom. The above picture is the smaller stump. Below is the bigger one.

After hauling the stumps and a few leftover logs to the sawyer, we’re now left with two piles of drying boards in the garage, a really torn up yard, and two huge root balls sitting in our backyard. The job is now to pull all the dirt and clay out of the root balls to get them cleaned up to go to the saw mill.

So there you go. If you ever wanted to know how to chop down a tree properly, now you know. We had some fun along the way:

Jumping off stumps…

Sitting on stumps

Watching stumps fall down…

Climbing on dirt…

Helping to dig in the dirt…

Helping to brush dirt off stumps…

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