A Lengthy Update, i.e. Boring Lunch Hour

Check out the new pictures of Taya over here, including one of Taya and her aunt Robyn! She’s a little doll, I tell you.

I made it back from St. Louis, and I found all three of my boys in good shape. Keith managed to keep them fed and clean, and that’s saying a lot. So he gets the Gold Star for Daddy Achievement. He mentioned that Ari slept through the night the second night I was gone. This is questionable, since Keith tends to not hear the monitor. I assumed he slept through Ari’s pitiful cries for nighttime nourishment. But apparently it was true, because Ari’s slept through the night several times since I’ve been back. He’s almost 7 months old, for crying out loud; he should definitely be sleeping through the night. It’s such a nice change, getting several straight hours of sleep! Except for that one moment when I first wake up, jerking out of a dream, thinking, "I haven’t heard Ari all night! Something’s wrong!" Panic, and then adrenaline rush, and then dashing to his room, and then seeing him breathing quietly, and then relief. And then he rolls over and looks at me like, "You woke me up! Feed me since I’m up! WAH WAH WAH!" Another Ari-milestone occurred while we were grocery shopping on Sunday. He was fussing in the back of the cart, and being the great parents we are, we were ignoring him as long as possible. Then he started saying, "Da da da da [blow raspberry, spit] da da da ooo ooooh ah-ooo." And repeat. I was like, "Hey! He said da-da!" but Keith missed it, so we left him in the cart to fuss a little more, to see if he’d say it again, and he did. Then yesterday morning over the monitor we heard him in his bed talking to Keith again. "Da da! Da da da! Da da!" Just like Owen, the first word is da-da! Owen followed up da-da with ba-ba and then ‘dow’ (dog), and then finally ma-ma. So Ari, he’s getting big! No longer the silent monster.

Last night I put Owen in his highchair and set his food down. He took a couple of bites, looked up at me and said, "I really love you, Mom" [melting, puddling, pooling in cracks in laminate wood flooring that we didn’t seal with putty]. Must have been some awfully good food to strike such a response. But I will always take that, especially from my 2-year old who is almost too cool for Mom. Also, if you ask Owen what kind of hair he has, he responds, "Rock star hair!" It’s true, I’m letting it grow, so it’s all crazy and long, a little rock star-ish. If you ask him what type of hair D. has (girl at his sitter’s), he says, "Mullet hair!" Maybe we shouldn’t have taught him that one, not that it’s not true.

We’ve recently discovered that we’re unable to adopt from Korea, due to the youthful age of my not-yet-25 year old husband. Thanks, adoption agency, would’ve liked that nugget of info before you cashed our check! But it’s all going to work out. We’re progressing, happily, and Owen is learning about the word ‘sister.’ We’d like to get a girl, a princess, you know. We were looking at clothes the other day at Sear’s, and Keith said, "You’ve really been deprived, haven’t you, not being able to shop for a girl?" And isn’t that the truth! Now that I’ve amassed a wealth of baby boy clothes, we’re going to bring home a girl! She is so wearing pink all the time! More news of all of this shortly.

On Sunday we set up the tripod and took a few family pictures of the four of us. I will try to post these tonight, as we are all very cute.

We received our phone bill this month, and apparently our long distance carrier was changed to GLOBAL CROSSING. I’ve never heard of GLOBAL CROSSING. I have no contact information for them. We were charged to change long distance carriers to GLOBAL CROSSING. I called our phone company, and they said that they received an electronic request from GLOBAL CROSSING to change us. Completely unauthorized by us, but our phone company has to honor the change request from GLOBAL CROSSING. Because GLOBAL CROSSING ripped us off with their sneaky switch, our phone company waived the charge. However, now we have to sign back up with our original long distance carrier, and we do have to pay the charges for that. So I wanted to make sure, in case you found this page by Googling GLOBAL CROSSING, that you knew they were sneaky snakes, and please refrain from patronizing their long distance program, as they will probably try to rip you off, too. A friendly service announcement.

Finally, a very happy birthday yesterday to my mom. Owen would not sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ but he still meant it in his heart. We will celebrate properly next week. We love you!