I like...

"I like _____" is now one of Nathan's favorite things to say. Usually he's talking about food. He likes to make sure we know what he likes so while he's eating it he will tell us he likes it. This most often refers to yogurt (yoyo) or tomatoes (ma-moes). But the "I like" is very clear. This may not be that exciting to some of you, but it is to me because I get endless amusement from hearing him talk. :)

Belly Laugh

Jimmy and I just laughed harder than we have in quite a while (and we laugh a lot). It's about 10:00 on a Saturday night and I'm proofreading and he's grading (exciting lives we lead). I'm proofreading a teacher's guide for this book on Chinese history and one of the lessons is about the abacus. One of the questions (that the teacher is supposed to ask the students) in the guide (with suggested answers) is: Can you think of any situations in which you would rather have an abacus than an electronic calculator? (if batteries die or during a solar eclipse) So I get Jimmy to read it because I can't figure out for the life of me why you'd prefer to have an abacus during a solar eclipse. We assume it must be in case your solar-powered calculator dies because of the eclipse. The thought of it just made me laugh so hard. "Well, it's completely dark out here thanks to the solar eclipse and my calculator isn't working. Where the heck is my abacus when I need it?" A number of things popped into my head. Solar eclipses don't make it completely dark. If it is completely dark in the middle of the day, can't you go inside and let the artificial light power your calculator? Wouldn't you be so weirded out by it that you would forget about your calculator and think about the fact that it's dark in the middle of the day? If it's dark enough so the calculator can't be seen, can you really see the abacus anyway?

Maybe Jimmy and I will go out and get an abacus, just so we can be prepared during the next solar eclipse.

St. Louis (Part II)

Well, there weren't very many good photo-ops while we were in St. Louis, so this is mostly going to be our trip to the zoo. The first picture is from the snow on Easter morning. It was Nathan's first experience with snow. He liked it, but on the way to the car (this picture) he started saying "Cold. Cold," I assume because he was cold. It wasn't really all that cold, which was nice because none of us took winter jackets. :)

On Tuesday Jimmy was interviewing all day for a full tuition scholarship to Covenant. Nathan and I decided to go to the zoo. Let me tell you, walking around a hilly zoo with a 20-month-old who wants to get out of the stroller when you're 34 weeks pregnant is not the easiest thing in the world. It was fun to go, though. I don't have any great shots of us with the animals because (1) it's hard to take a picture of us when there's not a third person to do the shooting and (2) I didn't want to take Nathan out of his stroller very often because getting him to go back in can be a struggle (and I wasn't about to walk around with him running along beside me--or just running away--while I pushed an empty stroller!). Here was the highlight: the Asian elephants. When we first got to the exhibit (which I'd been telling him about all morning), we didn't see them and I was about to be very disappointed. They were just on the other side, though, so we found them eventually.

Nathan looking at the elephants. We had to stay at the exhibit for about 15 minutes, until the elephants walked away to where we couldn't see them.

Nathan looking at the peacock strolling by.

Nathan and the giraffes, probably his second favorite exhibit.

Pointing to the giraffes.

Yes, that camel is foaming at the mouth.

Nathan pointing to the zebras.

We also rode the train around the zoo. Nathan REALLY enjoyed riding the train, and he did a great job of sitting beside me the whole time! The day was so exciting that he fell asleep before we left the zoo and slept all the way back. Of course that meant no nap in his crib, but it was worth it. :)

Bakersfield and St. Louis Part I

Part I of this post is just going to be pictures from Bakersfield. We went up on March 17 (hence the green that a number of us are wearing) because it was the first day of Jimmy's spring break. We didn't know it when we decided, but Jimmy's cousin Michelle and her daughter, Madi, were visiting on their way home from spring break back to Arizona. If you're not acquainted with the Brock family this means there should be a party. So, Michelle's parents came down as well as Uncle Neil and Aunt Fran so we had a big group for lunch Monday. Madi is a year younger than Nathan (about 8 months old) and they got along quite well. :)

Nathan kissing Madi.
Aunt/Grandma Betty reading to Nathan and Madi.

Mommy holding Nathan holding Madi.

These pictures were taken on Tuesday, when it was just us and Jimmy's grandparents. Nathan has, in the past couple of months, taken an EXTREME liking to his stuffed animals, including wanting them to do everything he does. He feeds them (we have to look in Elmo's mouth sometimes to see what food he's hidden in there), gives them his paci, and on this day announced they all had poopy diapers so we had to change their diapers.

Finished product: clean diapers for all (don't worry--we resued the diapers on Nathan!).

On this particular trip, since it was so close to our last trip (less than a month previous), Nathan was so excited to see his "Greats." When we drove into the parking lot of their retirement home he literally started screaming "Great! Great! Ride! Great!" because he likes them and knows he gets to ride on Great-Grandma's walker when we go down to meals. As soon as he saw them he was hugging them and was giving them kisses. Both days, when one of them was out of his eyesight he was asking for them. Tuesday morning he woke up at 5:00 and after a little while started asking for them. We told him that he had to go back to sleep to see them, so he did (for a little while). It was very cute. They obviously all get along quite well, so we will be very sad to leave CA and the chance we have to see them so frequently! In this picture, Nathan has piled all of his stuffed animals into Great-Grandpa's lap and then climbed up. That was OK with Great. :)

St. Louis

We're in St. Louis right now visiting Covenant Seminary because Jimmy will likely be starting there in August. He's got an interview tomorrow (multiple interviews, actually) for a full tuition scholarship, for which he's one of 11 or 12 finalists for 6 or 7 scholarships. We think he's got a good chance of getting it (at least we hope he does!). We all really like it here, which is good. It snowed yesterday morning (Easter morning)--Nathan's first snow! (Pictures coming after we're back in Long Beach.) We visited New City Fellowship church on Sunday morning. Granted, we've only been there once, but that place seems unreal. When we asked where we should go to church Sunday morning, we expected Jimmy's admissions representative to say "Well, I go here, so just come with me." Instead he asked us what we were looking for. We told him we would like to go to a multicultural church that embraces diversity and then he suggested we go to New City. We didn't really expect to find one like that, especially in the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) and in St. Louis. It was really cool. They had about 7 different people say "He is risen!" in their native tongues, a sizeable portion of the church was not white (with the majority of non-white people being African American), and the pastor worked racial reconcilliation into a sermon on the resurrection of Jesus. Amazing. We feel very strongly about racial reconcilliation within the body of Christ and also with ministry in the inner city and to the poor, and we are TOTALLY PSYCHED that there's a church, not far from the seminary, that is really focused on those two things (and is PCA!!!). The service was a little long (2 hours, 15 minutes), but I'm about ready to move to St. Louis just for the church. :)

Today we saw some housing, which was great. There is on-campus housing, off-campus housing owned by the seminary, and off-campus housing that is separate. We saw the on-campus apartments and the off-campus apartments owned by the seminary. We thought the off-campus ones would be our last choice but of course now we like them the best. We'd looked at the floor plans and the 2 bedroom apartments are only 880 square feet. A little small. Until you take into account the full basement which then makes the useable space in the apartment 1760 square feet! For less than $700/month. And all but two of the apartments are seminary students so the community there will be really good for us (and Nathan!). Unfortunately, the kitchens are small and no dishwasher, but there are hardwood floors and washer/dryer hookups which about make up for it.

Anyway, that's my St. Louis update. Nathan and I are going to the zoo (free! except for parking...) tomorrow while Jimmy is interviewing so hopefully I'll get some good pictures. He's really gotten into animals since our last zoo trip (especially ELEPHANTS) so I think he will really enjoy it!

the post below this and a story

I hope that the post below this one (random pictures) comes out clearly on your computer. On mine, when I look at it on the blog page it doesn't look much like it did on the formatting page, and in the past I've tried editing it but I can't seem to make it do what I want. So, hopefully your computer is more cooperative than mine.

And here's a cute story from today. I told Nathan I was going to take a short nap before we went to the park (don't worry--Jimmy was home!) He looked at me and said "Elmo," and I asked him if I should sleep with Elmo. He then took Elmo and put him on our bed, put his blanket on our bed and and the whole time was saying "Night night." Since Nathan knows that his paci is only for nap and bedtime ("night night time") he looked at me and said "Paci, night night," which I took as a suggestion that I might want to borrow his paci. I thought it was all very cute. :)

More pictures from March

Here are some random pictures from March. Nathan likes hot mitts and the Swiffer. Who knew you should use a hot mitt when Swiffering?



He also likes our weekly Thursday playdates with two of his friends. Normally they don't just sit and play in the sand but with the help of the older little boy (between Nathan and the little guy in the green), they played for a long time!




Nathan really likes Elmo (he now watches Sesame Street almost every day...of course this scandalizes his mother who said none of her children would ever watch TV!). He likes to do everything with Elmo, including taking him to the grocery store the other day. Apparently it's also nice to sleep with your head under Elmo. I don't know that I'll try that--at this point in my pregnancy I'm having a hard enough time finding a comfortable sleeping position as it is!




And he likes his Pooh hat....makes him look so old! Guess we're ready for another baby in the house. :)



Nathan is a good helper. I guess he's trying to help make dinner here by cooking and stirring an apple.







Nathan is showing off for our friends. I think this particular cuteness is when we say "Why?" and he responds with "I don't know," shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. Of course it doesn't sound as clear as "I don't know," but that makes it that much cuter because the intonation is definitely there.



Not only does he like us to read to him, but he also likes to read to himself! Jimmy and I were doing something in the living room and we hadn't heard from him for a little while and when I went back to his room he was actually reading to himself. He was flipping through the books on the desk saying some of the words that are actually in the books--very cute!

Firsts

In the past couple of days Nathan has had two firsts: his first Easter egg hunt and his first haircut! In going through the pictures on my camera since I last posted I realized that there are many...but for now I'm only going to post pictures from these two momentous events and then this week (since Jimmy is on spring break for SEVENTEEN DAYS!!! he can entertain Nathan while I post) I will post more with some random events from the past few weeks. And a few pictures just because Nathan is so dang cute. Remember: to enlarge the pictures, just click on them and they'll come up in another window.




Before the haircut,

during,

and after! What a cutie!

Stay tuned for more pictures, including some from our latest trip to Bakersfield!