Peri feat. Santa, Volume 2: The Claus

I grabbed the rest of the pictures the elves took of Peri with Santa, and of the ten or so, I thought this one was absolutely the best. I think it fully illustrates Peri's favorite activity at this age (putting things in her mouth) along with the complete benevolence of the world's most famous delivery man.

Got to pack for our trip this weekend.

Out.

Peri feat. Santa

Here's Peri with Santa when he came to visit the Decagon Christmas party. It turns out Santa used to deliver my mail when I lived on Gaines Rd. She's looking great in her Christmas dress (thing about little girls is that they get Christmas dresses, which is awesome). Anyways, I'm at work, so...


Gary, out.

Peri can roll over!

Peri rolled over all by herself today! We're so excited, but realize that now it's going to be extra hard to get her to do tummy time. And it's going to be hard to convince her that it's a fun time to roll over from back to tummy too.

We'll worry about that later though, right now we're just really jazzed that Peri has learned another new thing!

She's also really interested in her feet of late, and it's really fun to watch her try to grab her feet with her hands. She ends up putting herself in the funniest situations since she still has yet to learn how to keep herself upright.

I'll just have to take lots of pictures because she's growing so fast!

bis Aufwiedersehen

Our greatest friends, Adam and Bridget, are moving to Wichita, KS very soon; the movers come for their stuff on Monday. We drove up yesterday with Alex to celebrate with them. I must say, we had a very lovely time. I must also say the Peri was very good the entire trip as well. She hardly screamed or squalled at all, and slept most of the way there and all the way home. When we got home at 8:00, she promptly dropped out into sleep again.

Furthermore, Peri is a big hit with Adam's sister and cousins. She also had a lot of fun with Bridget.

I will miss Adam and Bridget very much. They have been a big part of my life for almost six years now, and while it's not as though they're gone gone, they're not just eighty miles up the road anymore. That's all right though.

Peri likes Paper

So Peri has been extra cute this week. Most notably, she's decided that her new favorite toy is paper, or anything like paper. Here a few pictures of her cuteness:

Oh? What is this?

Don't mind if I do.

NOM NOM NOM

I'm almost positive that I'm not supposed to give Peri newspaper because of the ink or something, but despite photographic evidence, it doesn't make it into her mouth all that often, so as long as it's not an all-the-time thing, I don't see the harm. It makes her happy.

Actually the best illustration of exactly how much Peri likes paper is this: She was propped up in the corner of the couch as I was going through some old sheet music I had in the Christmas box for some reason. She leaned forward so far that she fell on her face, and then wiggled about until she was as close to the paper as she could get, then proceeded to put individual papers in her mouth before throwing them off the couch one by one. Basically she had tummy time all by herself. For those of you who don't know this, Peri HATES HATES HATES tummy time. Apparently the paper thing overrides this intense dislike, at least for a little while.

Almost there...

Gotcha!

Next, Gary and I were eating generic Nilla Wafers in the living room, and when we were done, we put it on the floor above Peri's head. She went nuts trying to get this box. Eventually I took pity on her and put the box within arm's reach.

ooooo, a box!

Action shot!

 Success!

I am literally going to eat this entire box!

So that is our cute paper-eating Peri. The End.

Peri's Four-month Checkup

Peri just went to the doctor for her 4-month well child checkup, and I like to brag about how big she's getting!

She weighed in at 15lbs 13oz which is in the 86th percentile, and she's 26 1/2 inches tall, which is in the 97th percentile! She's so big and can do so many things now!

Probably the cutest and simultaneously not cute thing she does is pitch a fit every time I do something she doesn't particularly care for. Putting her clothes on, for example, gets me some very funny "not cool mom" shrieks. I think it's funny for now, but it can only bode a very big temper later on. We'll see how we deal with that when the time comes.

Gary is very excited that she is vocal and can tell us what she wants and doesn't want by her reactions. He enjoys the communication and the random babbling. We love our beautiful baby!

Peri's Baby Blessing

First of all, Thanksgiving family picture:

 This isn't everyone who was there, but it is my immediate family. Top row from left: Lawrence (brother Sam's current partner), my oldest brother Samuel, my older brother Peter, niece Jeilyn, younger brother Benjamin, nephew Kinton, Gary, Myself, Peri, my mother Kathleen, my older sister Sarah, and my oldest sister Katrina. It's a pretty okay family. Kinton and Jeilyn, despite looking like they could be Gary and my offspring, are actually Sarah's children.

So, Peri was blessed over Thanksgiving weekend! It was the most convenient time, and it was almost spur-of-the-moment. My brother Ben blessed her. He just got his Melchezidek Priesthood a couple weeks before, and he was very excited and glad to do it for us. It was his very first blessing, and he got all teary-eyed. It was a good feeling all around.

Ben is Peri's favorite Uncle. He can make her laugh more than anyone.

Anyone reading this probably doesn't care who these people are, but this is everyone who came to Peri's blessing: From left to right: Katrina, Benjamin, Jeilyn, Sarah, Kathleen, Peri, Me, Gary, Kinton, my aunt Karyl, my aunt Barbara, Karyl's husband David (I also have an uncle David... it gets confusing sometimes) and my cousin Acea.

 

My niece and nephew Jeilyn and Kinton. They are so cute.

Desert Bus and Other Holiday Activities

Once a year, our favorite Canadian comedy troupe holds a fundraiser for Child's Play charity. (If you are unfamiliar with Child's Play, their page can be found here.) The troupe: Loading Ready Run. The fundraiser: Desert Bus for Hope. It boils down to a week-long telethon where the crew and friends auction off fun stuff (including fan-submitted art and craft projects), sing songs and dance, take phone calls from "internet people" and other geek celebrities, and just have a good time. This year, they raised nearly $400,000 over six days, which is really impressive considering five years ago when they started they were hoping to come out with a few thousand dollars.

We caught a fair amount of it this year. It's one of those things one can turn on and leave running in the background. Our attention did perk up whenever they had a live auction or did a song-and-dance number. We were amazed to see some of the craft items sold for three or four thousand dollars. It was great to see the good will of so many people. Which brings me to my thesis: The best part of Desert Bus is the community they build. Naomi and I felt like we could crawl through the screen, find some space on the couch, and hang out with these people. It's hard to say that about a lot of folks.

Anyways, I think Naomi pretty well covered Thanksgiving weekend. All I have to say is I didn't think there would be many folks at Jo-Ann Fabric on Friday morning. The siren call of inexpensive fabric and cheap picture frames drew in quite the crowd though.

We went to the Decagon Family Christmas party on Thursday. There were nearly three hundred people in attendance, with one hundred employees and their families. Understand that most parties at Decagon are just a pretense for dessert contests. Yes, the prime rib, tenderloin, and ham were great, but the real party is in the selection of over a hundred kinds of pie, cake, cookie, torte, trifle, and brownie. A perennial favorite are Uncle Russ's jalapeño brownies.

Baby Peri certainly had a good time. She got to see all the great people at work who ask me about her two or three times a day. She got to wear her sparkly Christmas dress (which I guess is a thing little girls get to do) and she got to sit with Santa (who used to deliver my mail when I lived on Gaines Rd.) Santa's photography elves haven't gotten their shots back to us, but Peri sure did look cute.

We bought her a Bumbo chair and a jungle play set so as to better facilitate her "hanging out" with us. Now Peri can sit at the table with us when we do crafts, like making ornaments as a family.

Thanksgiving Madness!!!

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Spokane with my family. It was rather larger than normal, with 13 people all crammed into my Aunt Barbara's living room. It was a tight squeeze but we managed, and we had a nice time!

Gary was introduced to our family's favorite Thanksgiving pastime: looking at Black Friday ads. This is a big deal in my family, as most of our Christmas gifts are bought on Black Friday. We also get Christmas money from our Uncle David to spend during the sales if we want. Now that I'm married, I get more money, but I have to share it with my family. *Sigh* :D

 Anyways, we all spend time looking at the ads, and then we write down what we want, where it is, how much, and when the sale starts, and Barbara goes through them all and hands out assignments and money to whoever is going shopping in  the morning.  My sister Sarah and I woke up at 2:30am to go shopping at JC Penny's, which was pretty laid back as far as Black Friday goes,because most people think it opens at 4am instead of 3am. So lucky us. Poor Aunt Barb started shopping at midnight and didn't get done until 9am! She didn't have as much help as she usually does because people are either getting old and boring (or they just like their sleep or something) or they had to work.

Later in the day after we went back to collect Gary and Peri, we went to Jo Ann's at 6am. we waited in line for 2 hours to get fabric cut. It was pretty horrible, but we found ways to  make  the time go. I'm sure the other people in line wished we would be quiet  though! Anyway, it was a lot of fun, we got most everything we wanted to get, and we had a lot of quality shopping/bonding time.

Peri also got to spend a lot of time with her Oma, many aunts and uncles, and also her cousins, who are very jazzed now that Peri is awake and happy to be played with. Jeilyn, who is 6 years older than Peri, is especially doting; she loves to coo at Peri and entertain her with toys.  Jeilyn's brother, who is 3 years older than Peri, loves to stroke her hair and steal her toys. Most of the time Peri doesn't mind.

I would have pictures of the whole fandango, but we forgot our camera. We did take family pictures though, since Thanksgiving is the only time everyone in my family is present. This year Peri and Gary got to be in it! So I'll post that as soon as I get it from my aunt.

We had a lovely time, and we're looking forward to going to see Grandma for Christmas this year!