Throwback

Oh how I love these pictures! The first one was when James was less than a week old. He was a bigger baby weighing in at around 9 pounds.

 But THIS picture, oh boy oh boy! He was three months old in this picture and weighing in at a whopping 20 pounds! But I don't think he minded being in the 99.9th percentile for weight, he was quite a content baby boy. Amazing what a few weeks of good nursing can give you.

The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back

Flashback: Almost two years while living in Wymount (BYU married housing) we had an interesting day. It was Brian’s 23^rd birthday and to celebrate we both took the day off. Without going into too much detail you could say we were “enjoying one another's company.” Inconveniently, this same day was the day that Wymount desired to change all the carpeting in the apartments. Having already made arrangements for our apartment to be skipped over, we “casually” enjoyed a riveting episode of Law & Order. To our surprise, we heard a knock at the door. I jumped up and went to the back room. Without pause after knocking, someone was putting a key in the door. Brian yelled to the person to NOT COME IN, but, nonetheless, the man opened the door and waltzed right in. We of course complained to management about their lack of communication with each other and disrespect for privacy. They then put a large sign on our door saying "do not change the carpets in this apartment." But that didn’t stop them from entering our apartment unannounced AGAIN later that night. We called several people and wrote a couple complaint letters trying to remedy the situation, but we were pushed around and never taken seriously. They offered a coupon for 1 half gallon of ice cream for our troubles.  Though Brian wrestled with the ethical implications of redeeming the coupon, we got our half gallon and moved out of Wymount (and out of Provo) a couple weeks later.

We have recently moved back to Provo, and due to this incident we are wary of the contracts we sign trying to ensure our privacy. Earlier this week --  and to my dismay --  a maintenance man entered illegally into our apartment. I was home with James while Brian was at work and I had just gotten out of the shower and was of course indecent. Thinking it was Brian coming home for lunch, I headed out of the bathroom to greet him. Realizing it was not my husband I yelled at the stranger to leave and reluctantly he did. Luckily he did not come far enough into the apartment to see me. (Although if he had seen me it may have helped our case against these people even stronger---but I wasn’t about to be the sacrificial lamb!). The worker and his colleague tried to make all these excuses for why they entered the apartment trying to justify their actions---none of which did since they blatantly breached the contract. The management has been very disrespectful saying that they did nothing wrong and lying about what actually occurred. One of the workers even said that next time they wouldn’t enter the apartment without express permission from us. To which Brian retorted, “Funny, we signed a contract saying that exact thing!”

All of this to say, these people messed with the wrong tenants. Having had similar problems at Wymount and having not been taken seriously, we are not about to be walked all over again. We are forcing them to do arbitration, and potentially to court. We usually don’t make big deal about things, but I am just so sick of Provo apartment management companies taking advantage and doing whatever they want without respect for the rights of the renters.

Even if we get nothing in the end, I just want to give them a big headache and make them understand this won’t be tolerated. And Brian is really enjoying putting some of his first year law school knowledge to good use (note taking, fact checking, documenting statements, studying the contract, etc.) and he thinks the idea of arbitration sounds thrilling!

Has anyone else had problems with apartment management before? In Provo?

More Orange Adventures

One fun perk of staying with the in-laws is their pool (and the fact that they live in Orange County), which James and I love! But I guess what’s not to love, right?! We are going to miss it when we move back to Utah for the summer. But James and I are excited to be with Brian again!

Also James and my father-in-law have this daily ritual. When grandpa gets home from work, they go out and feed the horse and pigeons and they get an orange from the orange tree. And James loves to eat the peel! I don’t think babies are supposed to have oranges at ten months, but I let it slide because it’s their cute tradition (and because James gets furious when I take it away from him!) What a silly boy he is!

 (And his legs are so funny! These pictures were taken sequentially, but they are different in every one! He just can't sit still.)

Standard Deviations, ŷ, and Derivatives

After finishing Biology 100 through BYU’s Independent Study a few weeks ago, I’ve been plugging away on my last class Statistics 121 so I can finally graduate. I put it off and off while I was still at the Y because it never fit in my schedule with work and because honestly I was a little scared to take it. But it’s actually not that bad and I seem to be doing quite well in it. I only need to get a passing grade to graduate, but of course I’m aiming a little higher than that. I am learning a bunch and getting a lot out of it. I guess it never hurts to brush up on finding standard deviations, ŷ, and derivatives. And in no time James will be in high school asking me for help in pre-calculus, so I better get prepared!

While I was pregnant I was trying to finish school as fast as I could so I would be done before James was born but it didn’t quite work out. I just had Biology and Statistics left that I had not finished. (And as one of my high school teachers put it to me, if I hadn’t slacked off in high school I could have done more AP classes and would already be done!) But I didn’t know then that I would be married and have a baby so soon and need to hurry through school. Well, maybe I did...

But the day that I delivered James was the same day that summer classes started at BYU and I was signed up to take my last two classes. James wasn’t even three minutes old when I my asked my OB if I could leave in a couple hours because my biology class was at noon. He of course laughed (I’m sure used to young Utah moms with similar requests) and suggested that I not go. I decided to take his medical advice, though I was kind of asking in jest and I was better able to focus on my new bundle of joy!

Beach!

Today James and I spent the afternoon at the beach with my mother-in-law, Peggy. And boy does James love his grandma!

Here is James eating sand. But these days he eats EVERYTHING! I can’t turn my back for even second! (But at least the kitchen floor has been especially clean.)

 Besides having sand everywhere (which drives me crazy!) it was a great afternoon!

A reflecting experience

This past week I was at Target looking at some clothes. As a mom, you obviously have your baby with you most of the time in your daily life—and this of course includes things like the dressing room. Understandably, it can be hard to juggle everything while you’re shopping—your purse, the cart, the baby, the clothes, the fountain drink I got when I arrived, etc. And this time it was as difficult as it sounds! 

So after picking out some clothes I made my way over to the fitting rooms and at this particular Target there are two family fitting rooms and about 15 more regular stalls. So I get the tag from the Target worker and lo and behold, both of the family fitting rooms are being used and basically all the rest are empty. I was trying my best to wait patiently and after a few minutes one of the stalls became available, and it was a woman that was all by herself using it! I was a little perturbed by this but just let it go (obviously my mentioning it isn't evidence of any lingering resentment...).

But like usual, the sizes I got were wrong, so I had to exchange and return back to the fitting rooms. Once again, both stalls were being used and all the rest were empty. So this time I waited, but not so patiently. Once one became available I started moving my big load of baby and cart toward the fitting room, but as I was making my way—I thought, obviously toward the family stall, this teenage girl passed me and went right into the family stall and locked the door.

Luckily and to my relief, the Target worker saw this happen and went to my defense and knocked on the door and demanded that the girl move to a different stall (vindicated—Yes!!).

I was so grateful that this worker could see my dismay and stood up for me. And then I was irritated by these girls that were so egocentric that I was invisible to them. I couldn’t believe that they were so self-absorbed that they didn't even notice me, and had no thought of someone else’s needs.

But then I reflected on myself. I know that prior to having kids and while shopping alone, I have used these very such stalls. I am mortified to think that a mother and child could have been waiting to use the stall that I so selfishly was using. And I pray that this never happened—but I fear that it has and that I caused grief to another. And I am only thinking about this one area of fitting rooms. Upon further introspection I wonder in how many other arenas have I selfishly ignored others and went about my business?

I hope that I can be more courteous of others and that I will take a look around me at other people’s needs. I hope that not only can I avoid being a burden, but that I can even be a helping hand to another.

James and his new car seat

James has outgrown his infant carrier, so we just bought a big boy car seat. Pretty fancy I know! And my oh my does time fly! I was trying to get him to sit in it to test it out and see how he liked it, but he refused!

But being pretty cute!

And for anyone who wants to see a whiny, tired baby here is a little clip!

In these pictures and that video he reminds me of Dwight Schrute from The Office when he is testing out Jan’s stroller. James is just as skeptical as Dwight was about his travel systems! Such a funny episode! Here is the clip of  Dwight vs Stroller