Is anyone still out there?

Sorry everyone.  It has been a long time since I have added anything to my blog and I fear that I may have lost all of my loyal followers.  But maybe all the added pictures will entice my friends to come back and read about our baby.  I actually started this post twice over the last month, but I was always to negative and since this is serving as part of our family history I thought that I should wait until I was feeling more positive.  Which is not to say that I want to keep an inaccurate history or make everyone think our life is peachy keen with lots of sunshine and daisies, but I don't want to dwell on the negative.    It does me no good and I doubt any of you want to read about all of my woes, though they be minor.  So since it has been such a long time I am just going to post a whole bunch of pictures and give a bit of narration to accompany them and then hopefully my next post will be more organized.

First, some nudity....

I don't know if I have mentioned this recently, but Avram hates tummy time now a days.  This hurts me because he spends so much time on his back I get bored and want him to do something different for a change.  You would think he would be board of this also, but apparently not bored enough to suffer through tummy time.  So then I read online about how babies like to be naked, because they feel less encumbered.  So we tried it and it was a success...for about 5 minutes.  Which is better than nothing right?  But we did get a good shot before he started screaming.

Quality Time

This month Mike is on inpatient again, which means we don't see him.  He usually gets home at around 7:30 or so.  I always hate inpatient months because I like to have Mike around.  But it is especially bad now because 7:30 is Avram's bedtime, so Mike gets home just in time to rock him to sleep, maybe.  Now I know what you're thinking, why don't I just wait an hour and then put him to bed?  Maybe you should come to our house around 5:30 most nights and try keeping him up an extra hour. Or at least try wanting him to stay up an extra hour.  Trust me, I am doing Mike a favor by putting him to bed.

I feel bad for Mike because when he gets home I have to act like a elementary school librarian and ruin all his fun.  No laughing, no running, no turning on the lights, no talking to the baby, no tickling or playing with the baby.   By the time Mike gets home Avram has been bathed, changed into pajamas and fed and is quietly looking around the room seemingly happy and at peace.  So I can see how it is tempting for Mike to want to hold him and tell him jokes and get him all riled up.  But that is something I simply cannot allow, especially after the previous 2 to 3 hours of fussing and screaming I have been dealing with.

 
      Last night I half heartedly suggested that Mike could wake up half an hour earlier in order to feed Avram and maybe have some quality time with him.  Mike just stared at me.  Yes, what an awful woman I am to put my husband in such a position.  I think Mike wakes up at 5:00 or so, I wouldn't know,  I am absolutely dead to the world at that time.  Anytime before 3 am I can be woken up by the baby and face any feeding or diapering with gusto and a positive outlook.  But after that time,  any waking of the mommy must be done with the utmost care and also an air horn.  Anyway, Mike waking up earlier would put him at about a 4:30 wake up time.  Thus Mike would have to choose between time with his son and his sanity.

Pictures from the Blessing (part deux)

So last post, I put up all the pictures that we had taken with our camera and also the pictures that Mike had the presence of mind enough to upload to our computer from my mom's camera.  So there were not many pictures of the Gravett's.  So after an impassioned plea on my part and much apologizing, these pictures were sent to me from Mike's parents via an email from Mark, complete with captions.  Unfortunately, the captions fell victim to one of many computer crashes or the upgrade to Mountain Lion, so they are no longer with us.  For this I apologize, whole heartedly, to Mark.

By the looks of the above picture I was still in my pajamas when Mike's parents arrived.  I don't exactly know why this was.  Maybe I just wanted to show off the amazing zit I had on my chest.  Nevertheless, Avram looks as cute as a button and seems to be enjoying being held by his Grandma.

These two pictures kill me.  It's like you can actually see his little baby brain working, trying to figure out how exactly to get his little mits on those chain links and how wonderfully coincidental it is that they match his outfit perfectly.

Mark claims that the above picture is Avram's reaction to first meeting him.  I disagree.  This looks more like his reaction to being hit by lightning.

 This picture pretty much sums up the visit from the family.  Slightly blurry and Avram screaming.  By the way, Avram has developed a new crying style.  It starts with him looking happy and serene.  Then his eyes get kind of watery and he makes the sweetest little frowny face, immediately followed by the most pitiful cry you have ever heard.  It sounds like someone just took away his ice cream cone.  It is incredibly heart breaking and he deploys it to great effect.

One of the nicest things about having family visit is actually being able to get dressed and get out of the house before two o'clock in the afternoon.  Look at me in the below picture!  Make up and earrings!  Even better about this photo is the fact that the stroller is in front of my belly!  Hoorah for Israel, to coin a term from church history, which is fitting, seeing as we were visiting the Winter Quarters Visitor Center at the time.  P. S.  I made the blog again!  Hoorah for Israel!

The Downside

Since Mike and I moved out of Utah, I have never felt a strong inclination to move back.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I have had a strong inclination to never live within 100 miles of the state line.  It's not that I don't like Utah, I do.  I think it must be the feeling that I have accomplished something by moving outside of my home state and if I move back I will feel as though I have regressed in some way.  It's like I secretly fear that if I move back to Utah I will somehow become unmarried and have to move in with my parents and be a teenager again.

I love living "abroad".  I love meeting different kinds of people (something that doesn't happen as much now that we moved to NE, but happened often in MD).  I love seeing things in different ways because of the different kinds of people.  I love my house.  I love the closeness I feel in my ward.  They are like family to us.

But here is the downside.  They are LIKE family, not actually family.  I never realized how much I cared about that until everyone came out for Avram's blessing.  I felt terrible when Mike's mom had to say good bye to Avram.  I even apologized, although I am not exactly sure how that would have comforted her.  Since Avram's birth, felt an added closeness to our families and a greater desire to stay in touch.  Which is why I started this blog.

This picture reminds me of the film "Weekend at Bernie's" , which I have never seen, but I think is about some guys trying to trick everyone into thinking their boss is still alive by putting sunglasses on his corpse carrying him around.

I love these pictures of Avram with two of this three and a half cousins, Amber and Deon, and his uncle Mark.  I was looking at them and I wished that we lived closer to family so that he could know them.  That they could grow up together and have shared memories.  Granted, Amber is 12 years older than Avram, Deon is 8 and Kaiya 4, but there are other cousins to come that we will be separated from.

I have some cousins that live in Chicago area.  I remember seeing them once, when my grandfather died, and then not again until they moved to Utah for college.  I don't know them, and I don't want that for my son.  He has great cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and I want him to be close to them.  So what do I do?  Move back to Utah which is absolutely repellant to me?  Live with the fact that he just won't have a close relationship with his extended family?

I decided something.  Well, several things.  I decided I can't worry about things I cannot control. That sounds like one of those mantras that people with anxiety disorders say to themselves in the mirror every morning, but it's true.  Where you are going to live, when you are in the military, is one of those things.  But I have faith in the Lord.  He knows me and He knows my families needs.  He knows Avram's personality and gifts better than I do.  So from this I can be assured that A) if I have a righteous desire, the Lord is going to make things happen so that my desire can be fulfilled and B) family is important to the Lord he will provide ways for us to stay close to our family.  Whether that means that we will be moving back to Utah or that we will always live far away, but the time we do get to spend with our families will be more meaningful.

This is Kaiya's birthday cake.  We had a picnic lunch and some cake while we were at the zoo in order to celebrate her birthday.  This is the best cake ever and I am constantly trying to think of a reason why I would need to get another one.  Oh look, the summer is over, better get a cake.  Oh, Junior had to get some shots, better get a cake.

3 Months and Growing!!!

Avram turned 3 months on Monday.  According to my good friend Dr. Karp, around three months is when the babies are supposed to be use to being out of the womb and so they stop crying as much.  This so far has not been the case for us.  There is still a lot of crying going on, however there is also some real legitamate smiling going on as well.  This smiling is hard to catch on camera, and I have come to the conclusion that the task is a two person venture.  Every time I get the camera out when Avram is being especially smiley, he gets incredibly distracted by the camera and he makes this kind of a face:

Don't get me wrong, this face is adorable, but not the desired gummy grin I so long to have record of.  Anyway, I put Avram in these pajamas the other night and realized he has really grown out of them.  These pajamas were, I think, the second outfit we ever put on him when he arrived home, and he was swimming in them.  I actually have a picture of him in them at 2 days old, but I can't find it.  

My brother sent us these pajamas which he bought in Brazil.  When they arrived, I looked at them and thought there was no way my baby was going to fit into something so small. Well, it took three months, but I am right.  I would like to point out that the diaper he is wearing is a diaper we have used from the beginning and it fits him pretty much the same.  So, he is gaining weight and getting longer in the torso, but his legs are still the same length.  This is displayed in the belly revealing top and the pants that are still too long.  When I was in high school, there was this kid with an abnormally long torso and comparatively short legs.  I always thought he looked a bit freakish.  But he was an excellent basketball player, so maybe that will be Avram's destiny also (ha ha ha).

Toys!

See that green thing on Avram's chest?  I MADE it!  I am so proud of myself because I sewed it all by

 myself.  It is a frog if you can't tell.  It's filled with split peas.  I got the pattern of this really cute website called purlbee.  They sell fancy fabrics and felts and stuff and provide free patterns for different projects  so that people will want to buy their stuff in order to make them.  Well, I got this fabric from Walmart, which actually makes me shudder, but I was there getting something else and fell into the classic trap of "Since I am here, I'll just grab some motor oil, eggs and some fabric."  

It took me a while because well, I have this thing at my house that doesn't like it when I make it lay on the floor by itself for extended periods of time.  He just doesn't understand that I am making him a toy and that he should just let me get down to business so he can have something new to play with.  Every time he fell asleep I would rush over to my sewing table and work feverishly to get the next step done, all the while thinking that I was putting a lot of hard work into something he wouldn't even like.  But much to my surprise, he does like it!  Look at him chewing away on that thing! 

When I was a kid, remember my brothers putting lots of things in their mouths.  They weren't even babies, they were like ten years old and seeing if they could put the whole seatbelt in their mouths.  Anyways, I remember how much stuff stunk because of the build up of saliva on everything, so I lined the inside of the frog with some waterproof material in the hopes of preventing that smell and also hopefully extending the longevity of the peas.

On the same Walmart trip I mentioned above, I found this locker mirror (the white thing in the middle of the above picture).  I had read that babies like to look at themselves in mirrors and had been on the look out for a mirro for him to play with.  But I have a real problem with a lot of the baby stuff out on the market today.  Does everything have to be so gaudy?  Lights and sounds and characters all over the place.  So I was looking for something that didn't have baby garbage all over it and I found this locker mirror.  I don't know if you can see the rig up that Mike did with some twine to hand it from the baby gym I made.  We were sitting watching tv and I said, "I think I would like to tie some string around this and hang it up."  Then Mike started doing all these fancy scouting knots and twenty minutes later we have a mirror that Avram can spend at least 15 minutes under entertaining himself.

If you made it this far, you deserve this . . .

During the course time it took me to finish this post, we finally got a good smiling picture.  Look at his cute dimples!  See you soon.

Two week hiatus is over!!!

Hello everybody, I have finished recovering from Avram's blessing and am now able to function again and do things like clean my house and work on my blog.  Seriously, for the first week after everyone left, I just wandered around the house, kind of in a waking dream.  I am the type of person who plans everything.  I mean everything.  I have a schedule for when I change the sheets, when I change the hand towels in the bathrooms, when I brush the dog, and if those things don't happen on the scheduled date, they don't happen.  Wednesday is trim Junior's nails day.  He didn't get his nails trimmed yesterday and even though I might have had time to do it today, I did not because it is Thursday.  I kind of feel like Rain Man, except I don't have a breakdown when miss something,  I just live my own filth for another week.  So anyways, my house is a wreck and my dog has long claws and we were out of food until I went to the grocery store today.

All kinds of wonderful things have happened since the last time I wrote.  Avram is two months old!!!  We went to the doctor yesterday and he now weighs 11 pounds 11 ounces and was 22 inches long!!!  Hooray! He is getting so fat!  I love it!  Look at this fatty:

Isn't he gorgeous?  He is getting to be much more fun too.  He is still having the screaming fits every once and a while, but he is not nearly as bad.  In fact he sat in his bouncy chair for 15 minutes while I put away the groceries today!  It was a miracle.  Also, he is very happy in the morning.  It's like he wakes up with that Mr. Roger's song in his head : 

It's such good feeling,

 to know your alive. 

It's such a happy feeling,

you're growing inside.

And when you wake up ready to say

I think I'll make a snappy new day,

It's such a good feeling

A very good feeling...

And then he puts on a cardigan and sneakers.  He must get this from Mike, because I am not a morning person whatsoever.  We wake up in the morning and I roll over because Mike has put him next to me in bed because otherwise I wouldn't hear him cry because I am heavy sleeper, and he just starts smiling at me as if to say "Good morning!  I missed you!  It's been ages since I've seen you!"  and then I go change his diaper and he laughs and smiles and tells me things and it is so cute.  I wish he had been a bit more personable when the family was in town.  The first thing he did when he met Mike's parents was scream in their face.  It was not very polite.  

                                            

I finally finished the play gym that I have been working on for Avram.  Here it is:

Yeah this picture is blurry.

He seemingly enjoys it.  I don't think he really quite gets the point of it yet, but he will lay under it and look at the toy on the right side of the picture.  We call it "Bobee".  It is half bee, half Spirited Away character.  Strangely enough he is not looking at him in any of the above photos, but I assure you that Bobee is his toy of preference.  I got the instructions for making this thing from a blog called Seedpod Craft.  I have to put that in there because she asks people to on her blog.  Mine is a little fancier than hers because I painted the ends red.  It was a fun addition until Junior stepped in the paint and then directly onto the carpet.  It is like he is drawn to anywhere where he absolutely shouldn't be.  I think he is acting out due to some jealousy issues that he is dealing with.  

Here Junior is in the tub getting his paws cleaned off.  By the way, guess what color my tub is now?   Don't worry, tub scrubbing day is Monday.

Anyway, my crafty appetite has now been whetted and I have become inspired to make all kinds of toys and tricks to hang from the gym.  I will post picture of said toys as they are finished, so be on the lookout for them in about 7 months.  

Family Visit and Blessing Recap

So most of you were here and got to be apart of the blessing and the family togetherness in real life, but for those of you who weren't here are some pictures from the week.