Pushing the limits

Jenna: what are you eating?
Mom: fish.
Jenna: is it from the river?
Mom: no it’s from the ocean.
Jenna: oh. Why it's not moving anymore?

 The 3 musketeers at the aquarium

Jenna has been pretty funny lately. She is going to school for a few hours a day three days a week and seems to always have new and interesting questions and observations. We’re not really sure where they all come from. The other day she mentioned something to Jarom and Lix about marching bands, and when asked what she knows about them she said “they blow the whistle and then they start playing.” Maybe she’s secretly watching halftime shows on the TV upstairs when nobody is around. Alixa’s favorite thing that Jenna says now is "brownie face" instead of frownie face. It is hilarious because she says it so seriously. It often comes up as the result of a nursery lesson or when someone is having a bad day. In the past few weeks Jenna has had a few firsts. She had her first trip to the dentist, which went quite well. Everyone was very impressed with how well she sat still while they worked in her mouth. She also had her first trip to the nail salon, where she had a great time and everyone was very impressed with how well she sat still while they worked on her feet. So yes, Jenna is well above average for a 3-year old in the sitting still category. But there is a time for sitting still and at all other times it is not only important to be moving but also to be winning. Jenna has decided that anytime she is going to a destination it should be a race with whoever else is going there. The Winns are always happy to support a competitive atmosphere, but it turns out that Jenna is not a very good loser. So anytime someone beats her up the stairs, even if that person didn’t know it was a race, she starts to cry. It’s a problem that we’re working on at the moment. Sometimes her hypersensitivity is pretty cute. Last week in the bathtub Jenna had put a few things in a cup and told Lix that it was for her. Jarom then foolishly dumped the stuff out of the cup so that he could use it to wash Jenna off. She began to cry because she had made spaghetti with meatballs for mom and was sad that she didn’t get to eat it. It was cute, even if it is a little bit much sometimes.

 Sitting still at the salon

 Sitting still at the dentist

 Laughing at the sun

Bo has become the most adorable troublemaker that you’ve ever seen. He has found his inner “Jenna-voice”, which is just another way of saying “Lixi-voice”, which I believe is German for megaphone. Why is that the only trait that seems to have made it through from the Hegewald genes? If you walk past the house you may wonder why we are keeping a pterodactyl around, but it’s just the 16-month old. On Sundays Lix hangs out with him in the halls instead of going to class because he is a little too rambunctious and can’t go to nursery for another 6 weeks. He enjoys racing Jenna (he never wins) and wrestling with her (he sometimes wins) and destroying the towers that she loves to build (he always wins.) He knows what things he should and should not be doing, and will look to a parent with a devilish grin whenever he is doing the latter. He will still do it, but he knows that he may have to run for his life and hide right afterwards. It sure makes it hard to be mad at him because he is so stinkin’ cute. He loves animals and can make a handful of animal noises. His favorites right now are birds, and you’d think that each time he saw one it was the coolest thing in history, even though he sees hundreds each day. Oh to be a little kid again. His climbing has kicked up a notch, and he will often be found on the top of the couch or up on the kitchen table or other places that he probably shouldn’t be getting to. He falls a lot, but it never seems to faze him.

 We're thinking of getting a couch like this so Bo has more surface area to climb on

 

 

Lix is knee deep in morning sickness, but still refuses to throw up. There was a close call last weekend, though. After a chef salad dinner she said that she wasn’t feeling good and went upstairs to go to bed after throwing up. At first Jarom was a little incredulous when she said that it wasn’t the pregnancy that caused it, but about an hour later when he was hurling as well he was a believer. Poisoning dinner was just Alixa’s way of dropping a few pounds the night before her big run. A group of women from the ward did a 5k mud run and a few days before the event a spot opened up and Lix took advantage of it. It was a filthy, disgusting mess and she had a great time doing it and had a blast with the other gals. The next day in church Jarom was repeatedly complimented on his rock-star wife and how she was leading the pack. To reward her Jarom is going to take her to Las Vegas without the kids for a few days in November. This will be only her second kidless trip since Jenna was born. Jarom got recruited to run one of the legs in a 12 man, 200 mile relay race there. I can’t imagine how they trouble filling those spots. So while he is running Lix can hang out with one of her best friends from college and then they’ll stick around a few more days to spend time with Grandpa Winn and enjoy the neon lights and illicit activities without worrying about naps and baths and bedtimes. And who will be watching the kids? Why Alixa’s parents, of course! They are coming to live at the house for an undetermined amount of time starting the first week of October, which excites Jarom more than he could possibly express in words. But it will be good to have grandparents around, and we are counting on PJ to cook up some mean dinners and Mars to do some solid gardening and be available when Jarom needs a golf partner. And I didn’t want to send this out to the interwebs without including the name of the new baby, courtesy of Jenna. It will be a girl, and her name shall be everzoomius. So there’s that. Happy birthday, Nancy.

 Before. Nice lipstick, ladies.

 During. Nice form, Aimee.

After. Nice shades, Lix.

You do the math

Nobody likes a buried lead, so we’ll start with the biggest news. Baby #3 is on the way. This latest pregnancy started with a bit of controversy. Sometime in June Lix decided that she was ready for a third kid. Maybe Bo and Jenna were behaving themselves particularly well or she just had a bout of temporary insanity, no one can say for sure. But she made the decision. And once she makes that decision she becomes very technical about days and times and body temperatures and all sorts of other weird things that you can read about on the internet if you are so inclined. The first week of July came around, and Alixa was not pregnant. And the next window for her to become pregnant fell in the middle of July, which you may recall lands smack in the middle of her Utah vacation. And yet somehow, Lix gets back and Jarom starts seeing literally dozens of pregnancy tests all over the bathroom, and they are positive. Lix had her first doctor’s visit today and everything was good and she was given a due date of April 17. In a last ditch effort to sell this pregnancy as a miracle and not the result of an ill-timed summer fling Alixa has dubbed all of her fantasy football teams “Immaculate Reception.”

But a new person isn’t all that is going on around here. Jarom turned 31 and celebrated by heading off to work. He has now climbed the hill to 30 and is on the way down. Nate and Kenz had their baby girl early and Nancy decided to come out to visit and help out a little bit, so she was in town to help him celebrate. He did take a day off of work to go with the kids and Grandma to the zoo, which was a wonderful day. It was the first week of school, so the zoo was pretty much empty. They got to watch the lion trainers run the lions through their tricks, got to feed some giraffes, watched a bird show, played in the creek, and perhaps the highlight of the day: The three little ones and Nancy rode Tiffany, a very chill camel. Nancy seemed to be the most uncomfortable one in the group, and dismounted after a few laps. But there weren’t any other people and Tiffany was already up, so the nice man let the kids ride a little while longer by themselves. After they were done Bo decided that he hadn’t gotten enough and climbed back aboard for a solo trip. All in all, a pretty great day.

The rest of grandma’s stay was filled with trips to various stores and purchases of more toys than any self-respecting kids need. But if grandmas aren’t good for that, what are they good for? The stay wasn’t very long, but we were glad to have her and hopefully she enjoyed her time in Texas. She did get to see Jenna’s new room, which Jarom and Alixa painted mint green and highlighted with purple curtains and some other decorations that remain to be added. They also moved her bed and moved her back up to the top bunk again. And fixes aren’t just on the inside. The fallout from the busted pipe is being fixed by a friend who is generally handy. As these things always do, it turned out to be a little more complicated than they initially expected. It turns out that the trees near the sprinkler pipes have done a masterful job of entwining their roots amongst the PVC and wires and made it a small nightmare to get in there and make the repairs that were needed. But Rob pushed through, despite the oppressive heat and the miniscule pay. He’s a trooper. And hopefully his work lasts a long time, because I don’t think it comes with a warranty.

Jenna has now started her two preschools. One is a group that Lix is part of where she teaches 5 kids twice a week. The moms rotate being the teacher, but Lix got week 1. It was a blast. The kids did some letters and numbers and made crafts and had activities and even got to make a volcano. They were supposed to meet me (I was told I could be the class pet) but Lix did such a good job planning that she never ran out stuff to do. So I guess I’ll be on the agenda next time around. Jenna is also enrolled in an every Friday class with a bunch of other kids in the ward, and that starts tomorrow. She is very excited and seems to really enjoy school, which is good. While we are on the subject of learning, Bo has recently become quite the reader, much like Jenna was. He won’t go to bed until you read him at least one story, and he is always excited to sit on your lap and listen to you as you read. In fact, Lix recently went back through Jenna’s pictures and videos from when she was his age, and she commented that she is amazed at how similar they are, in appearance and behavior. I wonder if this next one will be just like them or something different. It’ll probably be a redhead. Great.