Rachel the Pianist

Climbing onto the bench for a 15½ month old is no small task.

Hanging in there.
In place, and nearly ready to go.

A good example of reading the music, and not relying on looking at your fingers. (Some of my students could learn from this picture.)

Practicing with a good attitude! (But not such good technique.)

Putting it all together

My sweet, innocent little angel

When will I learn?

Rachel is pretty good most of the time about entertaining herself. The problem is that said entertainment generally involves property destruction.

Have I ever mentioned her affinity for climbing?

Those two traits don't give me much peace.

So I was doing something, and Rachel was entertaining herself. I heard a noise that forced me to check up on her.

She had climbed up on to the table and was pouring out an entire bag of Honey Bunches of Oats, scattering them with her feet, and eating them.

Scout was enthusiastically cleaning up everything on the floor.


Somebody, please hurry and tell me that two is easier than one.

Ultrasound Appointment

I have an appointment for my ultrasound. It is February 5. If you haven't done so already, please feel free to vote (see the poll on the side) if our little baby is a boy or a girl.

A couple of pictures of Rachel

Rachel hanging out with Daddy.

Rachel practicing the piano.

Another doctor's appointment

I went to my doctor today for another appointment. Everything was fine. I heard the heartbeat again. Next month I will have an ultrasound and find out if it is a boy or a girl. My doctor wants me to have a Level 2 ultrasound, which is more informative than a regular ultrasound. That means that I have to go to a different office, and I am waiting for them to call me to schedule the appointment. It will probably be the last week of January or the first week of February. I will post a poll for you to vote if it is a boy or a girl.

Baby got some brand new shoes

It's been a while since I've written anything interesting, meaning stuff about Rachel. Well, Rachel got two new pairs of shoes. I bought them at Wal-mart. I bought her some new dress shoes, and some new sneakers. Wanna see them?

Sneakers - from the top

Sneakers - from the side

Sneakers - from the other side

Dress shoes - from the top

Dress shoes - from the side

So I was kind of disappointed in the selection at Wal-mart for sneakers. The girl's sneakers were all white and pink with little sparkly jewels and stuff on them. I didn't want that for sneakers, they were more dressy and fancy than the dress shoes. So the sneakers I ended up buying were actually boy sneakers, although in my opinion they are very gender neutral. Now before you go giving me a hard time about pink and sparkly for a little girl, bear in mind that these are sneakers, also known as play shoes. You know, they get muddy and yucky. Besides, there is pink on the dress shoes. Anyway, I though they were cute.

Of course new shoes for Rachel was not enough for her. She would rather wear my sneakers, or at least my sneaker.

Check out that belly!

I guess she figured my shoe was big enough for both of her feet.

I took this personality test today.

Your result for The Brutally Honest Personality Test...

Pushover - ISFJ

27% Extraversion, 20% Intuition, 37% Thinking, 60% Judging

Hah. Nice one. How does it feel to know that you're barely unique? Of all the personality types you could have had, you ended up with the most common in all of America. In a group of 100 Americans, 12.8 of them will be just like you.


I bet you feel sorry for that one person missing 20% of his body. I bet you want to help him out, don't you? Cause that's what you like to do, isn't it? Help people. You don't want to save the world. You just want to help people out.

Sound pretty good so far? Sorry, but you're just plain pathetic. You let people walk all over you all the time, because everyone knows that you just can't say "no." When you get time, email me your contact details. It's always good to know where I can find another helping hand.

What the heck is your problem? GET A LIFE! Stop cleaning other people's houses and go out and have a bit of fun every now and then. Sure, you feel responsible for doing what needs to be done, but sometimes it's just not you who needs to do it.

You're dependable, predictable and practicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

Whoops, that was me falling asleep on the keyboard. You're just not the most fun person. I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can go hang out with your other 12.8 mates, helping out at the soup kitchen together. Woohoo!

Take The Brutally Honest Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

Pictures from the Ward Christmas Party

Jeff created a website that has the pictures of the little kids (or big kids) with Santa. Here is the link to his site: http://www.machtyn.com/Church/2008_Ward_Christmas_Party-01.htm

For instructions on how to get your picture, go to his blog. http://machtyn.blogspot.com/

Please share this information with people who may not read my blog (although why not I can't imagine!) or Jeff's blog. He is also going to try to get this information onto the ward bulletin.

Enjoy, and happy New Year!

It's not funny (or at least I'm not supposed to laugh)

When Jeff and I got married, I told him that I was kind of tired of eating pizza. It's not that I don't like it, but I certainly don't want it as often as I used to. Well, now I am more tired of thinking of different dinners to prepare than I am of pizza, so I'm okay with eating pizza more often now.

So I bought a pizza at Walmart yesterday (Saturday) to fix for dinner (it's not delivery, it's digiorno). I cut up a piece for Rachel in really small pieces for her to feed herself, and at first I put them on a little plate for her, but then I decided that to avoid having a plate full of pizza end up on the floor, I should put the pieces directly on the tray of her high chair, which I did, but I left the little plate there. The plate is kind of half plate, half bowl. Rachel picked it up and put it on her head. It was (not) funny. Jeff laughed. (Shame on him!)

Tonight we had beef stew with mashed potatoes. I put that in the same kind of plate. She ate it pretty well (and had it all over her hands and face). As she was finishing it up she decided to swing the plate all around. I had to wrestle it out of her hands to avoid a really big mess. Scout (the dog) is pretty good at cleaning up Rachel's dinner droppings (and breakfast dropping and lunch droppings), but I suspect that beef stew with mashed potatoes was more of a challenge than even Scout could handle.

New Subject

I got a phone call on Christmas Eve (a.k.a. my birthday) from my nephew Cortney. After effusively wishing me a happy birthday he told me that he and his family are being relocated by his company from Utah to South Carolina, and that they were leaving the day after Christmas. Since they were passing by so close, they decided to drop in. So tonight I had the pleasure of passing a few hours with Cortney and his wife Misty, and their kids Cashton, Parker and Quinley. We played Guitar Hero World Tour. Cortney is a triple threat. He played the drums, did the vocals, and played the fake guitar much better than I can. We made a great band all together. I'm sure that we will be on tour any time now.

(I'm mad that I forgot to take pictures when they were here!)

Busy Week

Merry Christmas
I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. We sure did. We probably don't have many more Christmases ahead of us when we can sleep so late. Rachel didn't wake up until 8:45. We opened our presents and had some breakfast. Then we went to Jeff's parents' house where we ate some more and opened more presents. We were able to talk to Jeff's sister Michelle who is currently serving a full-time mission in Argentina, and we also were able to video chat with some of Jeff's other siblings. We played games, we watched a movie, and we more or less sat around and did nothing. It was great!

I made pajama bottoms as Christmas gifts for Jeff, Rachel and myself. This was my first experiment with sewing with no supervision, although Jeff's mom helped me get started with the first pair. Here are the final results. Please hold your applause until all of the models have been presented.


My favorite present was actually a gift from Jeff's sister Michelle to Rachel, an Argentine national team fútbol (soccer) jersey. AWESOME!!!!!!! She is going to wear it every day, even to church, until she outgrows it, and by then, maybe her little brother or sister will be able to wear it.


Rachel's Vital Statistics
Today I took Rachel to the doctor for her 15 month shots. After I arrived I learned that it was just one shot. (Good!) I was prepared with a lollipop to give her immediately afterward to minimize the crying. It worked like a charm. They also weighed and measured her.

weight: 23 lbs. 3.5 oz. (65-70 percentile)
height: 31 ¼ inches (75 percentile)

The weight thing surprised me, because a week and a half ago I took her to the doctor because of her ear infection, and she weighed a little over 24 lbs. That means she lost nearly a pound. What's up with that? She eats like a horse! Maybe it's all that time she spends on the Wii Fit.