A Lord of the Rings Halloween

The biggest spit up of Tate's lifetime.  10 oz worth of milk all over the bed.

Tate's girl twin, Tatum.

Baby Gollum

Wow, so many things have happened since I last wrote I don't even know where to begin.  Unfortunately, I don't really remember anything from two weeks ago (which probably means nothing super amazing happened).  So I guess I will just reminisce about this past week.  This week felt so crazy, but I am not sure why.  I think it's because Tate was so cranky this past week.  And most of the time he was cranky, I was pretty cranky myself.  That is not a good combination.  His naps were a lot shorter than usual (which means not a lot of time for me to get stuff done) and he would wake us just as upset as when he went to sleep.  And the night time has been crazy too.  Yesterday at Church, our neighbors asked, "was Tate really upset this morning?"  And by this morning they meant "at 5:30 am when he was screaming."  We said "yes."  We were using the nose sucker to clear out his nose and he did not like that at all.  He has been sick with a stuffy nose and yesterday Josh and I think we saw incoming front teeth.  But we are not sure.

Saturday we had our ward Halloween party.  Last year Josh and I were in a bit of a last-minute scramble for our costumes.  I love love love making Halloween costumes, but I did not enjoy the stress last year, so we started early this time.  We were characters from "The Lord of the Rings."  I was Frodo, Josh was the eye of Sauron, Tate was Gollum, and Nathan was the Ring (Sarah is out of town on a trip, so we adopted Nathan into our family for the day).  We paper-mached a hat that looked like the tower and then the eye went in between the two spires.  I made the skeleton of the hat with a cardboard box and paper.  The eye was a balloon.  Josh wanted to be the Eye last year, but it didn't happen.  This year, my sister and her fiance were the Ring and the Eye.  So we saw how they did it and kind of did it the same way, but not quite.  We won first place in the costume competition at the ward party.  Tate stole the show.  He was in a loin cloth with a few scraggly strands of hair attached to the top of his head with corn syrup.  He crawled around the cultural hall and he looked like gollum.  Everyone got to see him crawling around and people started calling him baby Gollum.  I was so proud. Tate didn't win his cute baby competition (but thanks for everyone who voted!!), but at least he won a prize because he makes a good Gollum.

This past week was also Sharon's birthday and for her party Josh and I made a whole lot of bread.  I actually really like making bread.  I made pretzel rolls, which I usually love, but I used a different recipe than usual and I did not like it as much.  We made bread sticks and some loves of bread with honey butter.  The next day we had a lot left over and I had bread and honey butter for breakfast, lunch, and mid-afternoon snacks.  I seriously had almost 10 pieces of bread.  And these weren't baby-sized.  They were thick pieces covered in honey butter.  It was funny, because that day Josh only had fruits and vegetables to eat.  So our eating habits were kind of switched for the day.

This week I also reached an all time low in my life.  I did laundry this past week, and I really struggle with laundry.  Well, I have a love/hate relationship with the laundromat.  I don't like that we have to take our laundry there and pay for it, but I love that we get to do it all at once.  But something about loading Tate and all the laundry in the car and then strategically unloading it into the laundromat really annoys me.  I can't carry everything at the same time, so I usually put the laundry in the car, then get Tate out of the house and put him in the car.  Then once I get to the laundromat I get Tate out of the car and use him (in his carseat) to prop the door to the laundromat open.  Then I get the laundry and drag it into the laundromat.  Then I get Tate and push everything to the washer.  It's not a bad system, but for some reason I always get upset doing it.  I think it's because Tate feels like he weighs 100 lbs in his carseat and carrying him and our laundry (which is also surprisingly heavy) gets me frustrated.  I usually mutter to myself "how are you so heavy!"  It's a silly reason to get annoyed, but the emotions I feel are real.  So, this time I decided I was not going to put myself in a situation that I knew would make me annoyed.  Instead, I went to Smith's and got a shopping cart.  I put Tate in the cart along with all of our laundry and pushed Tate and our clothes to the laundromat, which is only a block or two away.  I looked like a homeless person.  I was in sweats and my hair was out of control.  Tate was also in sweats and had food and grossness all over himself and his clothes.  So Tate and I went back and forth from the laundromat and our house throughout the day with our shopping cart.  My mom told me I was lucky someone didn't offer me money, and I said hey if someone had offered me money I would've gladly accepted.  I went with Tate to pick up our clothes and a little boy said "why does she have a cart?"  And when I went to get one of our loads out of the dryer, the clothes were really wet.  So I went home to get more quarters and came back.  When I went to put my quarters in I realized I hadn't pressed start when I first put them in.  So I pushed start and Tate and I walked home.  Despite that minor setback, it was a rather smooth experience, which I credit to the shopping cart.  I just might use it next time.

Friday I knew I wasn't going to have time to jog, so I decided to cross train and do some jump roping.  I didn't want to do it in my apartment, because it would be loud for everyone else.  When Tate went down for his nap, I went out on our front porch and jump roped there.  I also set up my computer on a chair and had netflix playing.  I couldn't see anything and I could only hear it everyone few minutes, but it still made the time go by faster.  I am sure I looked really strange to everyone who drove by.  The next day my calves were so tight.  My left calf is still really tight.

So last week I did a lot of things that were kind of socially awkward...I am excited for what this week will bring.

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A tooth, a cold, a few restless nights

It's hard to believe Tate was this small.

Tate is sprouting another tooth!  It is right next to his first tooth and is almost out.  On Sunday he was chewing on my necklace and he must have gotten his lip in between his tooth and my necklace, because he started crying and we looked and his lip was bleeding.  Not too badly, but it looked like it hurt.  So he is learning how to manage his teeth.

This morning he woke up with a stuffy/runny nose.  I'm not really sure if its from the incoming tooth or if he is sick.  I think he's sick, because he has been really tired and has been sneezing a lot.  The past few nights he has been crying a lot and waking up multiple times for a long time.  So we are all a little tired.

I decided I really needed to vacuum this morning.  So I got out the vacuum and Tate immediately got nervous.  I held him while I vacuumed and he rested his head on my shoulder.  Then I turned it off and he kept his head on my shoulder.  So I sat down and he kept it there for a while.  He must've fallen asleep because he doesn't ever sit still like that.  He eventually started wiggling, trying to get into a comfortable position (when he sleeps, he looks like he fell asleep praying- curled up on his knees with his bum in the air).  He woke up and looked a little confused.

Today he said "dada" a few times and "mama" too.  He doesn't know what those words mean of course, but he's saying it!

General Conference was awesome!  I felt so uplifted.  Our friends Ryan and Julie Hunter and their daughter Charlotte came down for the Saturday afternoon session.  She is 6 months old.  She is so tall!  Which makes her look skinny.  They said she is in the 97% for height.  Tate looked huge next to her.  And his head looked extremely large.  It was fun to see them.

We went to my grandparents' house on Sunday and my aunt Cortnie and uncle Matt gave us their old baby boy clothes.  It is so much!  I  am so grateful, because I was starting to think about things we needed to buy for winter.  But now I think we are set for a while!  And my coach Aleisha continues to bring by things.  We are so blessed.  One thing she brought over is a leather jacket and I have a jacket that is similar, so Tate and I are going to be matchy matchy one of these days.

Last night we had FHE with our friends the Heaps and the Davis's from our ward.  We played this game called coo.  It's a card game and you have a partner and everyone is trying to get four of the same card and when they do they signal to their partner and their partner says "coo" and you get a point.  But if someone sees you trying to signal to your partner they can say "coo on you" and they get a point.  So Josh and I decided our signal would be yelling "I got four" really loud (Josh has used this tactic before).  Most of the time people use really subtle things as their signal.  The first round I got four really fast, in under a minute, and I said "I got four" and Josh said "coo."  Everyone was kind of surprised at our signal, because it is so obvious.  After that, we had to change our tactic to saying a certain number when we got four.  But the whole time we would say other numbers, so people wouldn't know which number it was.  That one worked too.  It was a fun game.

Last week, Josh and I made chinese food and it was so awesome!!  Seriously, it was so so good.  The whole time I was eating it, I felt like Bill Murray on "What about Bob" when he's eating at Dr. Marvin's house and the whole time he says "mmm" "mmmm."  That was me.  I got the recipe from a blog and it was great.  It was also good because usually when we try something newish, it ends up being a semi-disaster.

Here's a video of Tate being pulled in a wagon at Grandma and Grandpa Clark's house.

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A Good Week

I think I start my posts saying this, but it's true...time is going by so fast!  It has already been a week!  And Tate is almost 8 months old, which is so crazy.  Now that we are in October I can be excited about Halloween.  A few weeks ago I asked Josh if he was excited for Halloween.  He hadn't even thought about Halloween.  But now I can be excited and think of costumes we can wear.

Tate has a tooth!  It popped out Saturday/Sunday.  He is eating better and isn't so touchy, so that's good.  One of the days when the tooth was making it's way out, I kissed him on the cheek and he started crying.  But now he is back to normal.  His tooth isn't very big yet, but it is visible.  I will miss the toothless, all gums smile.  But I am excited for a toothy grin.

Last week Tate and I went for a jog.  We ran to the riverwoods and on our way back Tate got hungry and a little restless.  So we stopped under a tree and I fed him and we sat there for a while.  Tate liked it.  Every time a semi-truck or a motorcycle went by he would turn and watch it.  Then look back to me and go "uh uh uh," like "that was awesome!"

We made a stop at DI last week too.  We got a few toys.  One is a toy that has buttons and when you push them something pops up.  Tate likes that one.  We also got some wooden puzzles and a little train Tate loves and a football and a ring thing.  And I bought myself a jump rope.  We spent 8 dollars.  I like them, because they are a little more interactive than the toys we have.  Gotta love DI.

Sunday we went to Josh's family's house for dinner.  We gave Tate some squash and he loved it.  It makes sense, because Tate likes squash baby food.  But this was kind of a big deal because he usually doesn't like normal food.  So that is a step in the right direction.  While we were there we looked at some of Josh's baby pictures.  Some of them don't look like Tate, but there were some that looked exactly like Tate!  Even the mannerisms in the pictures were the same.

Yesterday we went to the park.  Not our usual park by our house.   It's a really small park on the other side of University.  It has baby swings, which is why we went.  Tate liked the swings again.  He would swing and then I would grab his legs and hold them so he was kind of hanging and then let him go.  He liked that a lot.  This video makes me feel sick because of the motion, just a warning.

Then we sat under a tree and Tate played with the leaves and the stroller.  It was one of my favorite times at the park.  Tate was being so funny and he seemed so old.

This morning Tate pooped out of his diaper and it was all over.  Josh woke me up and said he needed my help.  I went into the bathroom and Tate was in the bathtub and had poop all over his back.  I guess Josh went to change him when he woke up and when he unzipped his pjs it was just poop all over.  So Tate got a mini shower this morning.

Tate is starting to pull himself up and let go and stay standing for a few seconds.  It's funny to watch him standing without holding on to anything.  He is also sitting a playing with one toy for longer periods of time.

I love this video.  Tate did this for a while.  And today while I was folding the laundry he went to his pile of clothes and did the same thing.  He fell back onto the clothes and laid there.  Then he looked over at me and gave me a big cheesy smile!

And here's Tate looking out the window this morning.

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Happy Birthay

Another (almost) week has come and gone.  We had a lot of good adventures together.  A few awesome events from this week are... Tate slept 8 hours straight in the night.  He started crying and Josh and I just immediately started getting his bottle ready and deciding who would pick him up.  Then I looked at the time, expecting it to be 2, 3, or 4 am and it was 6!  So we fed him and he went back to sleep.  It was great.  It hasn't happened again, but it was still great.  And Tate is getting a tooth!  It is a bitter sweet experience.  It's great he's moving up in life and getting some teeth, but it is a painful process.

Wednesday we had a stake leadership dinner.  It was just a get-to-know-you dinner.  But the Stake President, President Neiger asked everyone to email him an interesting fact about yourselves.  Josh and I had a really hard time coming up with something interesting about the both of us.  In the end, this was our fact: We like eating salsa plain and peanut butter plain and we both have a bowl of cereal before we go to bed.  At the dinner, President Neiger read an interesting fact and then called out three couples' names and had them stand up and everyone had to guess which couple they thought it was.  It was a fun game.  Except that everyone's interesting facts were actually interesting.  A few were "this person hunts sharks," or "this couple went hiking in Israel and excavated a painting that was later used in a museum," or "this person is a professional jump roper and his wife goes swimming during hurricanes." Seriously, those were the facts.  And ours was about what food we ate.  Luckily, we left before they read ours, because Tate's diaper leaked all over his clothes and we didn't have anything else for him to wear.  I'm hoping President Neiger saw us leave and decided to not read our not-so-interesting fact.

Thursday was my birthday.  And it was a great day.  My friend Stacy dropped off a little goodie box when she left for work (which is really early), so I saw it a few hours later when I was up.  It was so nice and full of things I love, like her homemade bread, fruit, and frosted flakes.  Does it get any better?

 The birthday sign on the front of the box said "Happy Birthay" so that was funny too.  Josh wasn't feeling well in the morning, so he went to work a few hours late, which was a great birthday surprise for me.  When Josh was about to leave he said, "wow, you and Tate play a lot."  That's about all we do...play.  Tate and I spent the day together when Josh was at work.  We went for a jog, that was a birthday present to myself from myself.  I love jogging in the fall.  Tate wasn't really excited to do it, but it worked out.  Tate and I went to my friend Brooke's house.  She has a 1 year old named Charlie.  Tate loved all of their toys.  He was in baby heaven.  Charlie and Tate like to see each other.  At one point, they would look at each other and smile and laugh.  When Josh got home we went to the park and Tate tried out the swings for the first time.  I think he liked it.  Sharon and Kenzie met us there and Tate loved that.  He loves loves Kenzie.  And he loves Sharon.  But he loves seeing and looking at Kenzie.  So Tate watched Kenzie wherever she went at the park.  He had a hard time following her when she was swinging, because the sun was in his eyes and she would go super high and he would try to keep watching her, but it was almost like he would forget what he was doing and look at something else.

Then we went back home and Stacy made us dinner too.  She makes awesome corn bread (which I love), but it is more like corn bread cake and it is delicious.  After that, we went to the BYU v OU soccer game.  We got there at the end of the first half.  We had great seats, because Stacy let us use some of her parents' season tickets.  And actually, we had another pair of free tickets, because my old assistant coach Aleisha called to sing me a happy birthday and she said she could get us some tickets.  So we got to the ticket booth and we had two pairs of tickets.  We gave one pair to this couple who was behind us.  They were pumped and it made me happy!  The game was crazy!  When we got there BYU was losing 2-0.  In the last 7 minutes of the game BYU came back and scored 3 goals to win it!  Josh and I were jumping up and down and screaming and going crazy.  It was a great birthday gift.  We got home and when I got into bed, an envelope was on my pillow.  Inside was a letter from Josh,  It was the nicest letter I've ever gotten.  It was the best birthday present.  So it was a super great day!

Tate and I have created a hide-and-seek game.  I crawl and hide behind something and he comes and finds me.  Then I crawl and hide somewhere else and he comes and finds me.  He likes it and I like it too.  This video kind of shows the game, but we had been playing it for a while, so Tate was losing interest...

Josh and I watched the BYU v UofU game on Saturday.  I say this a lot, but I am a pessimistic BYU football fan.  Someone said it perfectly, it's like being in a bad relationship.  They just play with my emotions.  But I was uncharacteristically optimistic about the game.  But, by the third quarter I told Josh that I was going to go to sleep (on purpose) because I didn't want to watch anymore.  I feel bad for the team.

My little brother Cameron is on a mission (if you want to see his letters, you can read them at elderernst.blogspot.com-I love reading them).  For Christmas, my mom is making a book for him.  It is the "'Twas the Night before Christmas" poem with pictures of everyone in my family acting out the different stanzas.  Josh and I had to get creative, because Tate doesn't understand the concept of acting out a stanza.  Here are the pictures we came up with...

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.


When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,


When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.



He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!



He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.


Here are some pictures and videos of Tate.  A lot of them are similar, but I love them all!

It's hard to tell, but Tate is wearing a tool belt. 

This is how Tate sleeps.  His little bum is up in the air. 

This is Josh showing off his skills...

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Puppies and More

Time has been going by so fast lately.  The weeks fly by.  We have had more developments since I last wrote.  First, my sister Whitney is engaged!  His name is Warren and he's great.  He proposed to Whitney at a Harry Potter themed party.  The decorations look great.  And all of their close friends got to be there.  When I heard the plan, I wondered how it would go.  But it was awesome!

Also Josh got a new job.  So that is good.  He is going to work at a place called Security Metrics.  Our friend Stacy works there, her Dad is one of the founders or something, and Doug did consulting there.  We are excited because it will pay more and has better/more flexible hours.

We had a big Super Saturday Stake Relief Society event.  It was great! We set up for 3.5 hours on Friday night and we were there bright and early at 8am on Saturday and got everything cleaned up and packed away at 2:30.  So it was a long day.  But it was seriously so awesome!  We had every ward teach a class and the girls in the stake could choose which class to go to and then we served lunch.  The classes were on visiting teaching.  The only downside of the day was I wore these new wedge heels and after standing and walking for over 6 hours I had blisters and abrasions and sores all over my feet.  One of my blisters on my pinky toe was pretty bad and was really hurting one night, so Josh was looking at it and he kept saying it was so swollen.  After a while he said he couldn't believe how swollen it was and then he compared it to my other toe and said "it's not swollen, you just have weird pinky toes." I guess my pinky toes just naturally look like they're swollen. 

Sunday we went to my grandparents' house for dinner.  Tate was being so funny.  We eat outside on a picnic bench during the summer and fall, and Tate was loving it.  He was crawling and playing with these little bouncy balls they had.  A majority of the time he played under the table.  He would just go under the table for a while and then crawl out and then go back under.  Then he hit his head on a bar and we held him.  Tate was being so funny and was talking a lot.  We were all listening attentively.  Then he stopped and my grandma started saying something to me and Tate started yelling and was looking at my grandma.  He was trying to get her attention.  She stopped talking and looked at him, and he started talking normally again.  It was so funny!  I have never seen him do that before.

We have been using this chair to feed Tate that attaches to the table.  Tate is getting too big for it, so Josh's aunt Heather let us borrow her high chair.  It is so awesome!  I think Tate enjoys it too.  There is this little toy that is attached to the tray that he likes to play with and it has a nice cover.  I really like it too.  Heather has been so great and has let us borrow so many things!  She let us borrow her swing and I don't think we would've survived the first 3 months of Tate's life without it.

Friday night our neighbors rented a puppy.  You can rent a puppy for $15/hour from this place called Rent a Puppy.  So they brought this incredibly cute puppy to our house.  We got Tate and showed him the puppy.  He was so cute!  He would smile when he saw the puppy and would touch it.  Unfortunately he doesn't know how to be gentle yet, so a few times he grabbed the puppy really hard, but the puppy was great.

Tate has gained a new and exciting skill set!  He can now pull himself up onto things.  Before, he could only push himself up onto something if it was short enough.  Now, he can pull himself up .  He was with Sharon on Saturday and he pulled himself up on the couch (into a standing position).  I had never seen him do it, but the next day he did it on our couch.  And today I caught it on video. 

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Pears on the Run

We had an alumni game before the BYU v UTAH soccer game Friday.  It was fun!

Yesterday Tate was cracking me up all day long.  He was being so funny.  We did laundry and grocery shopping yesterday.  As our clothes were in the wash, Tate and I went to Smiths.  Tate is so funny in the cart.  I am not quite sure what it is, but he looks so funny sitting in the seat and is so amazed at everything we pass.  As I was checking out, some of the pears fell out of the bag and started rolling away.  The bagging dude, he's an older guy, was helping me unload the cart and he grabbed them.  I said "oh no, we have pears on the run."  He thought that was really funny.  Then, as he was putting the bags in my cart, he said "Pears on the Run" would be a great song.  And then we both sang "Pears on the Run" to the tune of "Band on the Run."  It was a weird moment.  And for the rest of the day I had "Pears on the Run" stuck in my head.

Tate woke up from his nap yesterday and I heard him cry a little and then for a while I didn't hear him.  It had been a good nap, so I went in to see if he had fallen back asleep.  I opened the door and Tate was just sitting up in his crib, holding his blanket in both hands and looking down at it.  He looked so funny.  When I said something, he looked up at me and smiled so big.  Then I got him out and we usually look at ourselves in the mirror as we leave the room.  He loves it.  He smiles at himself and touches it.  Yesterday he kept putting his forehead on the mirror and would slowly drag it down the mirror (so his forehead would go "thud thud thud thud" against it).  I tried to video it, but he didn't do it as well.  It's still funny...

Throughout the summer I've been doing work at home for a guy named Steve, who does consulting conventions for businesses.  I know his daughter Anne, and Steve funded and managed a summer soccer team I play on.  He is a really really nice person.  And he has done really well in life.  A funny story about them is they decided they wanted to rebuild their home, so they donated their house to the fire department so they could burn it down and then the Shallenbergers would just rebuild their house on their property.  The fire department uses those times to train and practice.  My friend Dana, who also knows the Shallenbergers drove by their house and saw it completely on fire.  She freaked out and called Anne and told her that her house was on fire!  Anne calmly told Dana she knew that already.  Anyways, I went by their house to pick up more things to work on.  As I walked into their office, Steve stood up and put his hands in the air and said, "Georgia how are you doing!"  Tate was startled by his enthusiasm and started to cry pretty hard.  It was so funny.

So Anne gave me these papers from the conventions her dad did.  They were rating slips and people could leave comments about the presentation.  I was supposed to copy the comments into an excel spreadsheet.  They were organized into groups according to the convention site and the company that attended.  There were nine groups of these papers.  Anne put them in my laundry basket and we were on our way.  When I got home I opened the door and the laundry basket fell and the papers fell all over the ground.  I just had to laugh because it was so lame.  I called Anne and told her and she told me to come back up and they would try to organize them again.  Unfortunately they were all grouped from when they originally collected them, so it would be hard to know which paper went with which group. I felt terrible.  When I got there, Steve was so nice.  And everything ended up working out okay.  I was so grateful.  I learned a lot actually.  Sometimes I can get so frustrated with people.  Steve totally could've gotten upset because I messed things up for him.  But he just rolled with the punches and everything worked out fine.

Tate is starting to pull himself up onto things.  It is actually pretty exciting and crazy!  He is better at pushing himself up than he is pulling.  Here's a video...

Last night Tate didn't wake up to eat!  Well, usually we put him down around 7 or 7:30 and he wakes up around 10 or 11 and then again around 3 or 4.  The first feeding is that big of a deal because we are up anyway.  But the second one is killing me.  I think the past 7 months of not getting a good night's rest is wearing on me.  So last night he didn't wake up until 11:30 and then he woke up at 6:30, but stayed in his crib until 7.  I was so confused when I woke up, because I thought it was the middle of the night.  So way to go Tate!!

And here's another video of us letting Tate taste a lime.

And saturday we had a crazy storm and a large majority of our front lawn was flooded.  Here's a video and a few pictures.

And here's a long video of Tate playing with his toys (yes an empty container of oats is one of his toys)

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