Teething Bites

Warning: this post is one part ranting, two parts venting.

I loathe teething! Logan didn't get his first tooth until early January and since then they are popping up left and right. He now has three teeth with his fourth painfully working its way through his upper gum. This has consequently left me with a very clingy, very unhappy baby for over a month. The combination of clingy and sad has made it near impossible for me to accomplish anything. These last few weeks escalated to the point where I didn't think things could get worse, but I was wrong. On top of teething, both Logan and I are now sick. Fevers, coughs, runny noses, it's wonderful. I thought Logan was clingy before, but now that he wants constantly held and I now have even less energy to do so, my perspective is changing. Luckily, Eric was sweet and stayed home from school yesterday to take care of us, and I think it helped because we may be starting to come out of it. It's amazing what a little bit of rest can do. Logan's coughing has caused his naps to be much shorter than usual, which hasn't lead to a speedy recovery, but today was better. We both enjoyed a beautiful 2 hour nap so we're living in a temporary oasis of happiness and content and faring quite a bit better. Maybe the end of this sickness is in sight and then I can be grateful for only battling teething. Talk about a paradigm shift... :)

Our Luxury Vehicle... ;)

Great news! We just found out that we own a luxury car! Surprised? So were we. The biggest surprise is that we've owned it for years and never realized it. Take a look, what do you think...?
That's right, according to a real life example from one of Eric's fraud text books, our Jeep Cherokee is considered a luxury car. This couple that embezzled $3 million dollars went out on a shopping spree, including buying "five luxury cars- a Maserati, a Rolls-Royce, a Jeep Cherokee, and two Audis". Right up there with a Rolls-Royce and Maserati. Pretty sweet. ;)

Baby steps...

Step one for Logan, he's finally cut his first tooth! The tooth broke through right before we headed home from holiday break, and observant parents that we are, we hadn't even realized he was teething until he refused to eat a biter biscuit (which is abnormal) and I happened to feel the little jagged tooth sticking through his lower gum. He'd had a runny nose and an occasional low grade fever, but a crazy 24 hr. sickness had been running its rounds through the Channer household in Boise so we just assumed he'd caught something there. Lucky for us it was the tooth and not the sickness.

Second step, Logan can now climb up stairs. Emphasis on UP the stairs, not DOWN sadly. He's managed to fall down a handful of times already and I can't seem to interest him in learning to go down. Every time I try he screams and cries leaving me with the impression that he hates my guts. The stairs are too wide for a baby gate, so in order to get anything done without fear of him falling, I have to continually invent new ways to block them off. Without fail he's discovered ways to overcome the obstacles I've placed in front of the stairs within a couple of days.

Step number three is Logan learning to walk. Over the break he learned to stand on his own, and just recently he's started literally taking baby steps, but only a few at a time and generally never when Eric is home. He's gotten up to four consecutive steps before I catch him, but he always seems to get stage fright when I try and show Eric. He'll just stand there forever, grinning and clapping for himself, but if Eric's watching he won't move one step. I'm pretty sure he'll have to outgrow that one... ;)

Logan's last baby step is learning to fall asleep on his own. He's nearly 11 months old and every day of his life we've wrapped him up burrito style, put a binky in his mouth and rocked him to sleep. It generally doesn't take too long, but we've created a highly dependent monster. Tonight is actually the first night that we're trying to teach him to sleep on his own. Based off my cousin and my parent's advice, we prepared Logan for bed like we always do, laid him down, told him we loved him and walked away. He started screaming almost instantly, even though minutes before we had to try and keep him awake to put on his pjs. Apparently we're supposed to go in every 5 minutes to check on him/comfort him, without picking him up, and then walk away again. I've been told this can take a few days before Logan will really grasp the concept, but right now I'm just trying not to cry every time I go in to check on him. He's so worked up, and when I walk in he looks up expectantly at me, so sure I'm going to pick him up and calm him down, but I can't. I'm pretty sure that emotionally this is one of the hardest things I've done. Please pray that Logan figures it out quickly and I don't end up a complete emotional wreck in the process.

Happy Holidays!

Life has been great. Eric survived yet another semester and finals week at BYU and happily he only has one more semester to go. He also played his last intramural men's soccer season, with his team finishing third. The team he played on was amazing and in the end, the top 3 teams were so evenly matched that each game was determined in overtime. Just watching from the sidelines left me with butterflies like you wouldn't believe. Eric played very well and went out with a bang scoring 3 goals and 4 goals in the last two games. Needless to say I was very proud. :) Following finals and the soccer tournament, we braved another winter blizzard and made it safely to Boise for a few days and then on to Washington. Logan has found himself terribly spoiled with all the attention he gets as the only grandchild here thus far. I worry that when we return to Utah, Logan's going to be terribly bored when he only has me as a playmate during the day. Celebrating the holidays with family has been wonderful. For my birthday I shopped with my mom, watched BYU blow Oregon State out of the water in the Las Vegas Bowl, and ate pizza and the most amazing 3 layer birthday cake. My two youngest brothers and my dad designed and decorated the cake, leaving me amazed at their once dormant creativity. :) Christmas was wonderful as well, especially having Logan. Christmas is just more fun when there are little kids unwrapping and playing with toys. Now after a week or so of eating way too much good food and staying up late talking, playing games and watching movies, we're getting ready to head back to Boise to spend a little more time with Eric's family before Mike and Caitlin's wedding. I'm sure we're in store for plenty more good food and good company and we're excited. We need all these good family memories to keep us going through this last semester.
BYU Winter term + no more holiday breaks = Sadness.
Family + holiday breaks = Happiness

A New King of Terror

Logan has been overachieving (somewhat to my dismay) this past month. He is now capable of saying "mama" and "dada" (sporadically, and probably unintentionally), eating Cheerios, waving hello and clapping his hands (also sporadically), and most importantly, crawling, I mean destroying. Yes, our sweet little baby boy has begun his knee-high reign of terror. As he's gotten faster, and also begun climbing up lower level shelving and stairs, we've realized that things we thought we'd "baby proofed" are really far from. It's definitely a learning process, but Logan's a good teacher and we're giving it all we've got.
Here's a clip of Logan booking it across the floor in order to reach the cellphone and remote controls. He's definitely already fascinated by technology, especially the kind he's not supposed to play with, aka laptops, cameras, cellphones, DVD players...

Here's also a random clip of him playing "peekaboo" with us on the bed. He's so funny because he gets so excited and worked up whenever his face is covered, especially by blankets. It's like he's always just waiting for us to pull the blanket back and say, "there's he is!"

My Homemaking Attempt

I'm not sure if I've caught some kind of homemaking bug, but I'm suddenly finding myself wanting to sew and paint all sorts of things. My first project, with a lot of help from my mom, was designing and making a shower curtain. As a graduation present just over a year ago, my mom said she'd help me redecorate our bathroom, but we just ended up painting and put off getting the accessories until I could find something I really liked. Well, I absolutely love black and white and I just couldn't find the perfect black and white shower curtain. After a year of on and off again searching, I found a really simple one online that had small polka dots (which I also love) but it had a number of bad quality reviews. That's where the homemaking bug kicked in. Or maybe I'm just my father's daughter and think, "I don't need to buy that, I could totally make it!" (whether or not it's really true...) Anyway, long story short, after a couple of drafts and some inspiration from my favorite black and white polka dot dress, I designed this shower curtain. I picked out all the fabric and dimensions and my wonderful mom actually put it all together. Personally I'm in love with it. My favorite part is the fact that the red ribbon can be removed and replaced with a different color in the future if I ever want to change the bathroom. I'm thinking pale pink next...
I've also been trying to create some decorations to go with Logan's black, yellow and white bee themed crib set. I had these really tiny frames that seemed ridiculous to put pictures in, so I got creative and painted some bees to frame instead. They're nothing real special but I'm pretty proud of myself. I'll post pictures later of the completely finished project, but for now, here are my bees. :)
Lastly, I've decided I really want to sew Christmas stockings for our little family. I grew up with homemade stockings and this project is going to be one of our family Christmas presents. Eric and I spent two hours at JoAnns (much to his dismay) picking out all the fabric and we're super excited. I know Halloween isn't even here yet, but as slow as I am, it could take me till Christmas to finish making them!

All in all, I've caught this bug and I'm just hoping I get better at actually making the things I dream up! :)

Bring on the Fall! :)

Danger: Super long post in attempt to catch up. May lead to potential boredom. Sorry!

I'm so ready for fall! For all intents and purposes, summer is over but the heat just won't leave. I'm sure after a couple of weeks of snow I'll be looking back fondly at this heat and sunshine, but right now I just want to wear jackets and hoodies and take nice cool midday walks. Summer was a blast though. Logan returned to full health just in time for the Stoker Reunion and luckily we haven't had any other need for the nebulizer since. We had quite a drive both to and from the reunion with our cousins Brittany and Neal, lasting nearly 15 hours one way and including a screaming baby, a toll booth "evasion" ticket (in my grandma's car... :| ) and a terrible diaper blowout in the middle of nowhere. We survived though and it was worth it to spend the time with family.

A couple of weeks later we made it to the Channer Reunion down near Zions in Southern Utah. Eric couldn't take a whole week off school so Logan and I went down early with Eric's parents and Eric followed a few days later. It was a lot of fun, but I was really happy when Eric showed up. I don't know how people survive as single parents because it was rough being one for only a few days and I had Eric's family helping out! It was good though. We sang songs, listened to uncle Lane tell bear stories, played games, celebrated Adam's birthday, made crafts, shot off tennis ball cannons, etc. Sadly Logan had another first at the reunion: his first sunburn. We bought a hat and sunscreen for him, but I left them in the tent the first day because it was overcast. Stupid me. His poor little cheeks and nose got quite the burn but luckily he didn't act like it hurt too bad. I now have him wear his hat whenever we're going to spend much time outside and he looks super adorable in it. Here's a picture of him wearing it at the reunion while he sat in his Grandpa Channer's truck.

On the last full day Eric and I spent hours riding a four wheeler and hiking to a beautiful point on the mountain with Logan strapped to our backs in a baby backpack. The weather was beautiful and we saw quite a few deer and other wildlife. At the end of the reunion it was hard to say goodbye to Eric's family not knowing if it'd be a year before we saw them again. Luckily we'll see them in December because Mike recently got engaged and he'll be getting married on December 31st. The girl he's engaged to seems really great so we're super excited for him. :)

In an attempt to relax after the reunions, we took Logan to the Creamery on 9th for his first time. I love that place, but I felt so bad because Logan couldn't eat any solids yet and he was seriously eying our food.

A week or so later my mom brought Garrett to EFY at BYU and was a total life saver as she helped us finish moving out of our apartment (Thank you Brittany and Neal for helping us move out the big stuff!) and also cleaned. Moving is so hard with a baby but mom's make it so much easier! :) To let Eric focus on finals and finish his research paper for a professor, Logan and I went back to Washington with Mom and Garrett and Eric came up a week later. Another long car trip and one more massive diaper blowout in the middle of nowhere later, we made it to Washington. Here's Garrett holding Logan while we cleaned up...
We got to pretty much spend the month of August in Washington with my family and it was wonderful. I even got to play volleyball there once or twice! While in Washington, Logan started eating solids. We thought we'd be able to feed him solids at four months and even bought a high chair, but the pediatrician recommended we wait till six months, and boy was Logan ready by then. He started with rice cereal and veggies, and recently tried some fruit and he's doing so well. I thought I'd be chewed by his doctor for not feeding him MORE solids, but it looks like he's right on track. When he first ate solids, he managed to remain pretty clean actually, but not any more. Here's the difference between the first and second time.
We took Logan swimming for the first time at the Channer reunion, but he fell asleep pretty quick in a floaty tube so I'm not sure if it counts. We decided to try again in Washington at the same kiddie pool I played in as a little kid and he did a bit better. It was pretty funny actually because the pool's not real big and only a foot or so deep and people looked at us a little funny when Eric, my two youngest (but much bigger) brothers and I walked in to the pool with only one little kid. I don't think Logan really knew what to think of the cold water, but the other little kids at the pool were pretty excited to be around a baby. Afterwards we drove to a different park by the river to go swimming. I'm pretty terrible at swimming, and it'd been a really long time since I'd actually swam in the river, but Eric and my brothers pressured me into it and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It felt SO good and I discovered that there are actually tiny clams all over the floor of the river. I spent most of my life living near the Columbia River and I never even knew they were there. Here are some pictures of our outing. :)
During our month in Washington we also took a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon with our family and it was great. We stopped at the Bonneville fish hatchery on the way and looked at some massive sturgeon, salmon, and trout. Here's Grandpa Stoker looking at the trout with Logan.
While my Mom was in Utah I introduced her to her first Ikea store and consequently we had to take my dad and my brothers to one in Portland to share the love and show them how amazing they are. Here's Logan cuddling with Grandma Stoker and a soft blanket at the store.
We've now moved to Highland, Utah where we're living in the basement of my cousins Trevor and Tori's house. We've only been here for a few weeks but it's been such a blessing. With graduate tuition this year and diapers to buy, they've really helped us out and we're having a blast living with them. They've got four kids, ages 8, 6, nearly 2 and 10 months and it's Logan's chance to experience having older siblings for a while. He's going to have to get tough and learn to hold his own but he seems to really like the company.

Logan's getting to be a pretty big kid. At his doctor’s appointment yesterday, he was in the 92nd percentile for height and the 70th percentile for weight. He's also sitting up real well but hasn't started crawling yet. Now that he can roll over whenever he wants, he won't stay on his stomach and wants to be sitting or standing up instead. I hope he starts crawling soon so he can then work on walking, because snow will be that much more bearable if Logan can play in it.

Fall, please come soon! Besides the fabulous weather, fall brings the holiday seasons and we're super excited for them all. We actually listened to Christmas music the other night and we've already had Logan try on his Halloween costume. Does that make us a little anxious? ;)

Getting ready to pounce on his prey...

So there's 3+ months of our lives. I'll try to never have that long of a break between posts again, so hopefully you'll hear more about our Channer adventures soon!