Mitch's Corner

Growing up

2012-01-08T21:18:00.004-05:00

It is the first few weeks of the New Year, which means that there are lots of new toys to be played with and huge crowds at the gym and not a lot on the big Winn’s agenda. So I will tell you a little about what the small ones are up to. Jenna seems to be getting older at an alarming rate. She spends most of her time these days singing. She knows a lot of songs, but most of it is more like a musical- she simply sings about whatever she is doing at the moment. And she sings very loudly. There are only a few things that can get her to quiet down, and they include watching a show and listening to music. So those things probably happen more than they should.

This is what Jenna wants for her birthday

Jenna has also quickly become an iPhone pro. It is amazing to watch how quickly and easily little children can understand technology while their grandparents who have attended a few years of college (but didn’t graduate) can’t seem to figure out the most basic email functions. Some of Jenna’s favorite things to do with Lixi’s phone are an Easy bake Oven app, Barbie I Can Be, and Angry Birds. And she is getting very good with the more traditional uses of the phone. Her new kitchen set came with a cordless phone and she can often be found wandering around the house with it held up to her ear, having half a conversation with Opa or Kristi or Grandma or others. Her imagination has really started to blossom, and it is quite entertaining to watch. Last week she rescued an imaginary kitten from the play area at Chick-Fil-A and came running over to Lix with her hands outstretched to show it to her. She named it Furry Furry, and brought it home and has shown it to several momentarily confused visitors. This behavior baffles Alixa because she has no imagination and is unable to pretend anything.

Jenna has also started to interact more with Bo. They take baths together and she not only tolerates his presence but also shares toys with him and doesn’t freak out nearly as much when he happens to touch her. She talks to him more and more, includes him in her prayers, and generally treats him more like a brother and less like a piece of furniture, which is how she used to see him.

But the biggest sign that Jenna is growing up is that Lix straightened her hair for the first time. She’s been wanting to do it for a while, so she threw an episode of the Backyardigans on her phone and had Jenna sit through it. It went very well. Jenna loves it, and people seem to agree that she is pretty cute. Jarom thinks that it makes her look much more like Alixa’s daughter, although he still thinks they are both cuter with the curls.

Bo seems to have turned into a real person overnight. He has always been cute and fat and cuddly, but his personality is really starting to show up now. He is very curious and works quite hard to move himself around the room to get whatever it is that interests him. He is not a great crawler, and will only move backwards if he manages to find himself on the hardwood floor, but he is rarely in the same place that you left him when you come back into the room.

He also won't stay where you put him in the crib, refusing to be comfortable

He has also started to be more active in the tub. He loves his new bath toys and has learned that if he lays on his back and kicks his legs as hard as he can he will soak his mother and make her shriek for him to stop, which he thinks is hilarious and encourages him to continue. Lix is working on a few tricks that he is getting better at, like waving goodbye to people and raising his arms when she says “Bo is soooo big!” He has also begun to enjoy reading books, especially before bed. His favorite right now is Brown Bear Brown Bear and he will give you dirty looks and holler if you don’t let him turn the pages. And he is growing a few teeth as well. This, combined with a cold he has been fighting, has rendered him slightly more troublesome during the evenings, a development that neither Jarom nor Lix is thrilled about. But they and Jenna love him more than ever and are very happy with the kind of kid he is turning into.

There was also a surprise visitor who stopped by this week. Alixa’s dad is trying to land a contract with a company here in Dallas and had to fly in for 24 hours for some meetings. So he stayed the night in the guest room and got to the house in time to read Jenna her stories and help put her to bed. The plan was to meet him for dinner before his flight took off the next day, but there was a malfunctioning GPS that kept them from finding each other and the Winns just shared an appetizer at the Cheesecake Factory before sadly packing up the kids and heading home. It sounds like he might be coming back somewhat regularly, especially if he’s a good salesman, so we are looking forward to more of these surprise visits in the future.

Jenna fell asleep on the way to meet Opa for dinner

This is what happens when Jenna hides in Alixa's new blanket

A few funny Jenna-isms

Jenna: Flamingo is sitting on his eggs to keep them nice and warm
Jarom: How many eggs does Flamingo have?
Jenna: He has three.
Alixa: Is he going to be a mommy?
Jenna: No, he’s a daddy so he’s just waiting for a mommy.
Alixa: So where did he get the eggs?
Jenna: He got them from Target.

Alixa(as Jarom is lying in bed coughing): Tell daddy " I'm sorry your throat hurts."
Jenna: Daddy, I'm sorry your throw up hurts.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, it's the...

2012-01-01T19:13:00.006-05:00

The first Winn Christmas was a wonderful success. It turns out that we don’t need any parents or siblings to have a great time. Lix decided to start the celebration by throwing a gift exchange party with a bunch of her new friends. This required that the house be put together, which meant that Lix and Jarom had to spend an evening repainting the dining room and its 12 foot walls. The room used to be a mustard yellow and is now drizzle, which is a sort of sea foamy blue-green. The painting was followed by the putting of stuff on the walls, which is one of Jarom’s favorite things to do. But things were all done by the time the party started, and it was a big success. About a dozen women came and had appetizers and shared presents and generally enjoyed the fact that they had left their kids at home with their husbands.

A few shots of the new room and wall decorations

For her gift, Alixa had purchased a wonderfully soft blanket from Marshalls, but they had forgotten to remove the security tag. So Jarom was sent back to the store to have it removed. While he was there, he purchased another wonderfully soft blanket because he thought it would be a nice present for Lix. He brought it home and hid it away, and didn’t really think about it again for a few days. Then he got a call from Lix while he was at work. She was going through the credit card charges and noticed that Marshalls had charged her twice for the one blanket. This was not something that Jarom had considered, because until recently Alixa would not have even been able to log into the accounts to see the charges, that’s how little she cared about the finances. But now that she is on a budget she apparently watches them like a hawk. So she quickly caught the double charge and rummaged through the garbage until she found the receipt that Jarom had thrown in the trash and then called Jarom to see what should be done. He did his best to calm her down and convinced her to wait until after the weekend to see if the second charge dropped off. She didn’t seem thrilled about this solution, but accepted it anyway. On Christmas morning when she saw the other blanket she was quite relieved. I’m not sure which she was happier about, getting the blanket as a gift or the finding out that Marshalls wasn’t overcharging her.

Jenna working the train table, some cute hats from Amanda, and the kitchen set

Christmas Eve was spent over at the Nate Winn house, having dinner and playing games with a few friends. The food was great and there were lots of leftovers. Lix made a wonderful chocolate cheesecake and none of it fell on the floor. After the party they came back home and watched some football games while Jarom assembled a new kitchen set for Jenna and celebrated his third consecutive championship in the Winn family fantasy football league. Christmas morning Jenna woke up and came downstairs to find her kitchen set, which immediately made her go to the bathroom. After that, she wanted to know where the food was, so some of that had to be ordered. She has been cooking all sorts of goodies for everyone in the house ever since. Jarom also put together a train table that is supposed to be for Bo, but he can’t use it yet so Jenna has been putting it through its paces. Jarom and Lix mostly just enjoyed watching the kids play with their new toys. The got to call some grandparents and cousins and had a nice brunch with Nate, Kenz, and Kenna, but mostly they just lounged around and enjoyed a day with the family.

On the 26th Jarom took advantage of his day off by getting up and heading out to play a round of golf with a friend from BYU who was visiting Dallas for the holidays. It was a little chilly, but very fun. Afterwards the Quigleys drove up to Frisco to eat lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and come over to the house to hang out a little. It was fun to see them with a little kid. The rest of the week came with wonderful weather, above 60 degrees each day. So Jarom left a little early from work a few days and took Jenna down to the park to swing and play and enjoy the sun. Those are the days that Jarom will remember in July when it is 110. On Saturday it was almost 70, so Jarom and Lix decided to get a real babysitter (the kind you have to actually pay) and go play a few holes of golf. Lix played out of her mind, making two pars and shooting a 50 over nine holes. She even beat Jarom on one hole, which prompted an immediate Facebook post. She was a little upset about a scrabble loss earlier that day so she took great pleasure in rubbing Jarom’s face in it. He was very happy for her. And the kids seemed to enjoy the babysitter, so they might start doing this more often.

For New Year’s Eve the whole crew headed over to the Bishop’s to play. Bo brought his pack and play and went down pretty quickly, while Jenna managed to fight off sleep until after 10:30, when they took her home to her bed. It was a good end to a good year. There have been a lot of changes and stress, but we are all quite happy with where we have ended up and very optimistic about our future here in Texas. We have already made lots of friends and feel very much at home. Hopefully your year was just as good and that the coming one is even better.

This is a current favorite pose of Jenna. She has to go potty.

Only one quote from Jenna this time, but it’s a good one. While shopping in Target a few days before Christmas Jarom was headed up to the checkout with Jenna when she looked over and saw the little girls section.
Jenna: Can we go over to the clothes?
Jarom: Do you need any clothes?
Jenna: I don’t need any clothes, I just want to look at clothes. C’mon, it will be fun.
This girl is going to be big trouble.

Navidades

2011-12-17T01:21:00.004-05:00

For the first time, it is the Christmas season around the Winn house. You see, this will be the first Christmas that Jarom and Alixa have spent at their own home. Since their marriage they have always travelled to one of their parent’s houses for the holidays. And because they were never around, Jarom prevented Alixa from getting too many decorations. But this year that has all changed. Last week Jarom kept his long standing promise to buy a nice Christmas tree as soon as he would be around on Christmas to see it. Alixa comes from a tradition of getting real trees, but Jarom had to draw the line somewhere, so they got a 7-foot pre lit beauty instead. Jenna helped Lix put the ornaments on, and plugging the lights in has become one of her favorite pastimes. The Winns have also spent a lot of time visiting Santa lately, pretty much everywhere he shows up. And Jenna thinks it’s great. Every time she talks to him she tells him that she wants a green ball.

Some pictures of Bodiddly. We think he is very cute.

Speaking of Christmas presents, Alixa got the best one ever from her mom – a new iPhone 4S. Since it arrived about a week ago it has scarcely left her side. She loves that she can get to her email and the internet on her phone instead of having to sit at the computer, and she says that it has made her a better mother because now she can hang out where the kids are and ignore them while she plays on her phone, instead of the old way where she had to ignore them in a different room.

Jenna and her Christmas tree, with white and blue lights

But it isn’t all great news in Dallas. There has been a recent cold snap where on some mornings the temperature actually dropped below freezing. I didn’t sign up for this. But as Jarom would leave to go to work in the morning and see the frost on the windshields of the cars that were parked outside he remembered all those awful mornings scraping ice off the car in Richmond and is so glad that we have a garage now. And that’s not all the bad news. The Winns also had to give talks in church this past Sunday, one of Jarom’s least favorite things about being a Mormon. But I guess they did a good job, because Nate and Kenz kept getting compliments about the good talks they gave.

Fun with iPhones

Other than enjoying lots of Christmas music and drinking lots of hot chocolate, most of the time around here is filled with children growing up. Jenna attended her first birthday party over the weekend. It was a 5-year old party, and Jenna was the only 2-year old there, but she handled herself pretty well, got to eat a cupcake, and when they played some games that scared her a little she just went into the other room and played with some toys by herself. She has also corrected the pronunciation of two of her cutest words: Yellow is no longer E-O, and necklace is no longer nesick. Tear. And while Bo still doesn’t seem to be any closer to crawling than he was on the day he was born, he has started to use sippy cups, which is equal parts adorable, hilarious, and sopping wet.

And we haven’t forgotten the real reason for Christmas, either. Of course I’m referring to shopping. When we first moved here to Texas Jarom and Lix talked about setting her up with a fixed budget for discretionary expenses. A limit was set, and on top of that Jarom said she could keep one-third of any money that she makes from babysitting Kenna. Now before I get a slew of angry letters from wives all over the country whining about how Jarom has no right to take 56 percent of Alixa’s earnings, please remember that Jarom only gets to keep about 2 percent of his salary. So feel free to write, but he won’t feel bad. So Lix has her budget, and has done a fine job of staying within it. She even had some extra money left over from November so she decided to treat herself to a new pair of jeans. And the beauty of it is that she can spend as much as she wants and Jarom isn’t allowed to yell at her as long as she stays under her budget. And while they do seem like lovely jeans that make her look beautiful, they might have been a hair overpriced. I won’t say how much they cost, but $90 is a lot of money.

Some funny things that were said.

Alixa (to Jenna, standing at the top of the stairs at 9:45pm, long after she had been put to bed): Hey! What are you doing?
Jenna: Ummmm, I’m good.
Alixa: Where are you supposed to be?
Jenna: In bed. But I was just tellin daddy I got out of bed and I need some chocolate.

Jarom (to Jenna): Isn’t mommy fast?
Jenna: Yeah, mommy’s fast and I’m slow. Just like you’re slow daddy!

Paternity Test

2011-12-07T21:45:00.003-05:00

Whenever people see Jenna, and they also know Jarom, the first thing they tell me is that she looks exactly like him. Some people in the Winn family call her a little Jarom. Their look-alike-ness was also made abundantly clear when the first thing the doctor said when he delivered her was that she had Dad’s hairline. Not exactly the first thing a mom wants to hear but it proves my point. I like to think that Jenna has some of my characteristics. My eyes, my curly hair. But those are all far less prominent than the fact that she is just a girl version of Jarom. You wouldn’t think that a girl version of Jarom would be very cute, but let me tell you people, she is. She is really stinkin’ cute.
Recently I have been noticing that not only does she look like Jarom, she has SO many of his personality traits. It is bizarro. For instance…

Jarom has this weird habit of rubbing his feet together. I don’t know anyone else that does this. If he is sitting down, he is rubbing his feet on something. The carpet, a pair of socks, the person he is sitting next to (usually me), or just plain rubbing them together. It is kind of cat-like. Well, Jenna does this too. She actually started doing it when she was a baby which makes me think that somehow it is genetic. She rubs her feet together just like Jarom does. She usually does it when she is watching TV. Her little feet are always moving.
Jarom also is the absolute worst person to wake up in the mornings. He knows this, and so sets his alarm for way earlier than he wants to wake up so that he can hit the snooze button a million times. He does it this way because he likes to sleep. And even after he is awake, he prefers to just lie in bed for several minutes. This drives me crazy, because I am a one alarm kind of gal, and every time his alarm goes off, it wakes me up. And then I have to try and go back to sleep, only to be woken again up by the next alarm. Most of the time he never even hears his alarm, and I have to hit him and yell his name so he will turn it off. This is my morning every morning. I remember a story where Jarom’s mom had to throw water on him to get him out of bed. That is how bad he is. Jenna has also recently begun to be incredibly hard to wake up. Sometimes she sleeps in til 8:30, and I have to wake her up to get to my class at the gym. So I go in and turn her fan off, open her shade, and gently rub her back while I whisper her name. She will open her eyes, look at me, and roll over and close them again. So I do something and come back and do it again. She wakes up a little more, but still goes back to sleep. When I finally do get her to stay awake, she tells me she just wants to lie on Pete (her pillow pet) for a few more minutes. So the whole process takes entirely way too long. And it is just like her dad. So now I get to do it twice a day. Hooray for me!
Jenna is also just like her dad in her eating habits. Jarom’s mom has told me several times when I call her to complain about how Jenna is a lousy eater that Jarom survived several years of his life only eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches. That is not even and exaggeration. He literally ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches three meals a day for a really long time. Well, Jenna would eat cereal three meals a day if I let her. Sometimes I can only negotiate a different entrée once a day. So it is cereal twice a day, chicken nuggets the other meal. Seriously. I do make her eat some fruit purees and a vitamin just to make sure she isn’t totally malnourished. Some would say that she is just a picky two year old, and I would agree with you if I didn’t know her dad. I’m pretty sure this is genetic, too and I will never be able to get her to eat normally.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all of Jarom’s bad characteristics that Jenna has inherited. She is also incredibly smart. She can do all of our 24 piece puzzles by herself, she can memorize any song you sing her after hearing it a few times, and she is learning Spanish. She can say lots of things in Spanish. She knows all of her numbers, and letters, and colors, and can count things on a page (not just recite numbers in order). She also loves books. She loves when you read them to her, and she loves to read them to herself. She memorizes stories and recites them as she sees the pictures on the page. She has an incredibly long attention span and will sit and do something until it is completed. No matter how long it takes. And because Jarom is her dad, I would expect nothing less. It is just a little crazy, how much she is like him. And even if sometimes they both drive me absolutely crazy with their little quirks, I love them both very much.

Thanks indeed

2011-12-04T19:22:00.006-05:00

We celebrated Turkey Day this year by having our first visitors here in the new house. Since Jarom’s parents don’t love him we invited Alixa’s folks to come instead. They accepted the invitation since they have no kids at home and who wants to be in Cleveland during November anyway? They flew in the day before Thanksgiving and Mario and Jarom quickly took advantage of the nice weather to play a few holes of golf. Then after dinner, Lix and her mom went out shopping. So everyone got what they wanted on day one.

Thanksgiving started with Jarom waking up early and heading out to play football. He had messed up his knee a little while playing basketball a few days before, and probably should have sat it out, but Thanksgiving is the only day all year that he gets to play football so he played anyway. Like most ward football games it was a diverse mixture of old and young, talented and not. Jarom got to play quarterback and tried to make sure everyone felt included and had a good time, especially the little kids. And now he can put the football away for another 12 months. The afternoon was spent hanging out with the grandparents. Jenna wanted to take a walk and show them the neighborhood and the park and play on the playground. Since there are only a few of us, we decided not to cook Thanksgiving dinner at home this year, and instead made reservations at a fancy-pants steakhouse nearby. Upon arrival, Jarom and Lix realized that it was a little fancier-pants than they had thought, and questioned their presence in the restaurant with two little kids. But they gave the valet their cars and headed into the posh dining room and plopped Jenna down with her bag of cut up chicken nuggets and gave Bo some toys to chew on and they were awesome. Outside of some singing that Jenna did using her NOT-library voice, there wasn’t anything to complain about, and they actually got several compliments on the stellar behavior of their children, which will make any parent proud. The dinner was superb, even though Jarom hates eating in snooty establishments. He doesn’t think turkey is all that great, so he got a ribeye and swears that it was the greatest piece of meat he has ever eaten. The rest of the party was equally pleased with their meals. Jarom and Lix might even go back there someday, although they definitely won’t try and bring any kids with them.

This is as nice as Jarom dresses up. It wasn't good enough for Lawry's.

PJ and Mario have a little more experience with fine dining than the Winns do

Friday morning was spent doing some yardwork. Mostly Mario and PJ doing yardwork. You see, Jarom is not really a landscaping kind of guy, much to Alixa’s dismay. But those Hegewalds take their yardwork very seriously, and they saw some things that needed tending to and Jarom wasn’t about to stand in their way. So some bushes got trimmed/removed, some weeding got done, and some leaves were raked. They wanted to go out and buy a leaf blower and an axe to do some heavy duty remodeling, so Jarom had to reign in the enthusiasm just a tad. After the yardwork Lix, Jarom and Mario took off to play a round of golf while the kids played with PJ.

Mimi decided to give Jenna's bed a test run while she was here

Saturday was zoo day, which is always Jenna’s favorite. The Dallas zoo is a pretty good one, and there were lots of highlights. There is a kid’s zoo area with lots of farm animals that can be petted and a pony named Tank that Jenna got to ride. There is a bird cage that you can walk into and feed the birds as they land on your arms, which Jenna thought was hilarious. There were monkeys and a tiger and camels and otters and penguins. They also got to watch a rhino play with his trainer, which was neat because he jumped around and frolicked like a little puppy, something that Jarom didn’t imagine a 1.5-ton animal could do. Alixa’s favorite was the giant South American anteater, and Jarom’s was watching a girl lion try to catch sparrows. Mimi and Opa and Jenna got to take a tram ride that circled the zoo and gave them an aerial view into most all the cages, which they thought was fabulous. After the zoo Lix took her parents to Lewisville so they could see the house that they almost moved into 10 years ago, and Jarom took the little ones home for naps.

Deep thoughts with the gorilla

Tank

Happy grandkids, happy grandparents

The rest of the grandparent’s time was spent hanging out, playing games, and enjoying the grandkids. Mars left Sunday evening, and PJ stuck around until Wednesday. I don’t know how much Bo cares about people that aren’t his parents at this stage of the game, but Jenna loved having her grandparents around. She had a great time playing with Mimi and doing puzzles and reading books with Opa. Lix started getting her books from the library a few weeks ago and she has had a great time hearing new stories each week. While the Hegewalds were here her favorite story was Horton Hears a Who, or as she calls it, the elephant book. She loves the story and gets very animated as she looks at the pictures and tells you about what is happening to the elephant and his speck of dust. She now asks to read it at least once a day and enjoys filling in some of the lines, as you can see in this video.

And now that the guests have taken off, the remodeling of the home has begun. A few nights ago the whole crew went off to Sherwin Williams to get some paint. It was a terrible experience because Blake threw up all over Alixa and Jenna had a particularly messy accident in her pants while in the store, but they got some paint and have begun to redo the family room, with other rooms on the horizon. Soon enough, Alixa will be happy with the place, except for the kitchen counters, which will then need to be replaced. I guess it never really ends.

Tis the Season?

2011-11-19T12:04:00.004-05:00

The winter season is coming, and we are starting to notice it here in Dallas, even though the temperature is still usually above 65, and occasionally still up in the 80’s. But there are lots of other signs that we are starting to notice that tell us that Christmas is just around the corner. This week Lix took the kids to the mall with Kenz and Kenna to run around and ride on the carousel. And guess who happened to be hanging out at the mall at the same time- Santa! Some of you may remember that Jenna and Santa did not really get off on the right foot last year. First there was the ward Christmas party, where Jenna was forced to sit on Santa’s lap and screamed uncontrollably until someone took her out of the gym. After she had calmed down, Jarom tried to bring her back in, but the mere sight of the man in red set her off again. A few weeks later in Utah, Santa visited again and once again Jarom had to take Jenna out of the room until the intruder had left. But things have changed. This year Jenna sat happily on Santa’s lap and chatted with him about the things that she would like for Christmas (a ball) and whether she had been naughty or nice (nice, because her panties were dry and going peepee in our panties is naughty).

We didn't get a picture with Jenna on Santa's lap, but she was about this happy.

For Christmas, Jarom wants Bo to quit drooling so much so he doesn't have to always wear a bib

The Winns also took advantage of the slightly cooler evenings to have a little get together with some families from the ward that had also recently moved in. Since this house has a wonderful little fire pit in the back yard, Lix had the idea of grilling hot dogs and making smores. So Jenna and Jarom cut down a tree that Lix wanted to get rid of to use as firewood. The evening wasn’t cold enough that you wanted to stand near the fire, but the treats were wonderfully tasty and everyone seemed to have a good time. Alixa’s mom was very proud of her for having people over, at least until she found out that the people only stayed until 7:30. Then she was appalled. I guess old people forget what it was like to have little kids that don’t stay up very late.

We have broken out the jumpjump, and Bo seems to have taken to it just as quickly as Jenna did. This can perhaps be attributed to the top-notch instruction he has received from his teacher.

Another fall tradition that the Winns are continuing is Alixa beating Jarom in fantasy football. This is a particularly sore subject for Jarom this year, because his team is significantly better than hers. In fact, if you look at the scores from the first 10 weeks of the season, there are exactly 2 weeks that Alixa has had a higher score than Jarom. And of course, those two weeks were the two times they were matched up. Inspired by her dominance in the fantasy world, Lix has also recently started going to kickboxing classes at the gym, presumably to extend her dominance into the real world. Jarom is a little concerned.

While Lix is kickboxing Jenna must be learning Yoga in the daycare

This is what Alixa and Jenna look like from space. Has anyone else found themselves on Google Maps?

The slightly chillier weather has also brought some of the more tropical residents around here into the house. Recently Jarom wandered into the office and found a little gecko curled up in the corner. These geckos can be seen regularly on the windows around here, and have become one of Jenna’s favorite things. So Jarom corralled the little guy and kept him in a dish until Jenna woke up and had a chance to play with him. She enjoyed holding him and thought it was hilarious that he crawled up her arm. After they finished playing with him, Jarom let him go in the office, and has spotted him a few times since. Jenna continues to look for “Mr Friend Gecko”, who is always “out looking for buggies to eat.” On a less cheerful note, a few days ago Jenna was in the garage by herself and tried to climb up the ladder that was leaning against the wall and managed to pull it backwards on top of herself. She was crying and Lix ran out to find her head sticking up through the rungs. After getting over the initial fear and shock, she had only a couple little bumps, which was very lucky, because it could have been a whole lot worse. Now we are getting ready for Thanksgiving visitors. Mars and PJ will be here for a week, so we have to clean out the stray boxes from the guest room so they have a place to sleep. It should be fun.

This song is one of Alixa's ringtones, and Jenna loves it. Can you guess what it is?

Settling In

2011-11-13T00:11:00.007-05:00

After a full week of sickness at Winn Manor everyone seems to be feeling better and food is following its normal route through everyone’s system. This is great news to Alixa, who is able to get more uninterrupted sleep. This is really great news to Jenna, who is able to not wander around looking and feeling like a zombie. And this is fabulous news to Jenna’s animals, who no longer have to live in a perpetual state of fear that they will be covered with vomit and shoved into the washer for a “bath” every other day.

Since he can't talk yet, Bo rates his pictures by chewing on the appropriate letter

Life in Texas is becoming pretty routine. Which means that Alixa is about to start messing with that routine. She has already received her first early Christmas present, a 22-foot ladder that can be used to paint the house. Her first two projects are actually going to be Jenna’s bedroom and the family room, and will probably be done in the next few weeks. Her painting project got a big assist when we heard that her parents are going to come visit for Thanksgiving, which means that there are more hands to help and more hands to babysit. But life at home has been filled with many of the things that it was filled with in Richmond. There are weekly trips to the library for story time and to get some new books for Jenna to read. She also gets a new Disney movie to watch each week. She has now seen The Little Mermaid and Cinderella. There are also regular trips to the gym. Originally the family had signed up at 24 Hour Fitness, where Jarom still had a frozen account from their Utah days. But the very first time Lix dropped the kids off at the daycare she realized that she wasn’t happy with the level of care they provided. So they canceled their account and switched over to the Frisco Athletic Club, which is every bit as awesome as it sounds, and is actually less expensive than 24. The facility has basketball and racquetball courts, a weight room and lots of cardio machines, and a waterpark, both indoor and out. Needless to say, Jenna is very excited to try it out.

Jenna loves bubbles

A big part of the routine has been the newly developing mobility of Blake. He can’t crawl yet, and whenever he tries he only manages to wave his arms and legs around in a pretty good Tom Cruise impression from Mission: Impossible. But he can roll over very well and will steamroller across the room if there is something that he is interested in over there. He is also a big fan of his feet, and will tug at and chew on his own toes (or yours, if you let him) for long stretches of time. This is a new behavior in the Winn home, as Jenna was never really flexible enough to get her toes up to her face.

Jarom’s routine involves getting up earlier than he would like to avoid the traffic that accompanies living in a bigger city. But it’s okay because he is usually home before 5 and gets to hang out with his kids. They seem to miss him while he is at work, and Jenna loves to call him, usually when she first wakes up to tell him what is for dinner and one or two more times throughout the day. Jarom enjoys these calls even though it is often difficult to understand what she is saying (it’s hard enough to follow her person) and despite her insistence on trying to show him things through the phone (she will take the phone and hold it up to whatever she is talking about and say “see, Daddy, see?”) Her potty training is continuing very well, and there have been no cold baths recently. Jarom did have to explain to her that she did not have to take a cold bath when she threw up, even though she made a mess. She has very much internalized the cold bath punishment though, and has instituted it with her animals. Recently Jenna decided to move her rocking horse (Rocky) into her room so that he could have a quiet time. When Alixa asked her about it, Jenna told her that Rocky had pooped in his panties and had to be given a cold bath, because that’s naughty, and now he was having a quiet time. That little girl is quite the imaginary disciplinarian.

Fall has begun to arrive here in North Texas, as the temperatures have dropped into the 60’s and 70’s with occasional dips lower than that. It feels wonderful. It would be nice if it came with a changing of the leaves, but I guess that is just something that we aren’t going to have here. Jarom is looking forward to playing golf on Thanksgiving and hopefully Christmas. The only really bad news that we came across is that despite its availability Alixa will not be getting the custom license plate “WINNERS”. This is because Texas is crazy and you have to pay $800 in order to have that plate for 10 years. So I guess it’ll be TPD315 or whatever else they give us. Too bad.

Would you pay $800 for this piece of awesome?

Funny Jenna-isms

Lix: Jenna, are you all done or are you gonna eat more?
Jenna: I’m gonna eat more.
Lix: Then eat! You are the slowest eater ever!
Jenna: Relax, Mommy. Don’t cry about it. I’m gonna eat more.

Jenna: my bum hurts
Lix: Why does your bum hurt?
Jenna: Because I need daddy.

Alixa had to warm up Jenna's water and her applesauce today. Ridiculous.

Lix: Night night, Jenna, I love you.
Jenna: Night night, mommy. See you in a couple whiles.

The Plague

2011-11-04T11:59:00.004-04:00

This past week hasn’t been a very good one in the Winn house. Well, actually, that is an understatement. The past week has been terrible! It all started last Friday. I woke up bright and early super motivated to go to the gym. I got the kids dressed and we were at the gym by 9:30. I went to a super awesome class where I worked my butt off and was feeling really good. The kids had a great time playing in the fun zone (a fancy way to say day care), and it was all around a great morning. But as soon as we left the gym, I started to feel all achy and was super cold. I just thought I overdid it at the gym, and was maybe a little bit dehydrated. So we came home, I took a warm shower because I was so cold and I couldn’t warm up, and I put Bo down for a nap. I put a movie on for Jenna, because I thought if I laid down for a bit I would feel better. But it just got worse and worse. I was so, so cold, and super achy and I was getting a little nauseous. At this point, I was calling Jarom to see when he was coming home, because I couldn’t really do much but lay on the couch. I managed to survive until he got home at 5 Luckily, Bo took some stellar naps that day. Jarom came home to find me dead on the couch. I was super bummed, too because it was the ward trunk or treat that night and I was definitely not up to going. So I sent Jarom and Jenna, the green m&m, and I put Bo to bed and continued to wallow in my misery. They were gone for about 45 minutes, and came home with quite a bit of candy. Jenna had a great time, so it was still a success, even though it was not the fun family affair I had envisioned.

As soon as they got home, I went straight to bed, and left Jarom to put Jenna to bed. I slept until about 4 a.m. when I was awakened by Jenna’s crying. Anyone who knows Jarom knows he sleeps like a dead person, and it is literally easier and takes less time to sooth a crying child and get back into bed than it does to try and wake him up. So even though I was still feeling pretty miserable, I got up and told Jenna to go back to bed. It worked for a little while, but then she started crying again. I told Jarom to go handle it, so he went and slept on Jenna’s floor. At about 6 a.m. I hear a commotion, and some lights came on so I went to investigate. I found them in the bathroom with Jenna’s puke on the floor. Until this point, I thought maybe I still had overdone it at the gym but when I saw Jenna was also sick, I realized that our family had caught a stomach virus. Jenna proceeded to puke every 30 minutes until about noon on Saturday. It was miserable. She spent Saturday afternoon dead on the couch and saying she didn’t want to throw up anymore. It was pretty sad a miserable. She puked a couple more times on Saturday and Sunday and we skipped Stake Conference. Then on Sunday night, Jarom started to feel nauseous too. I knew that this meant a long night of very loud puking, and I was still a little sick, so I opted to sleep on the couch in the playroom so I could actually sleep. This did not help. Jarom has the Winn gene that makes him puke so loud I heard it from the other side of the house. So I was up with that, and Bo decided he wanted to wake up at 5 a.m. and all around it was a terrible night of sleep.

Jenna, miserable on the couch

Jarom took the day off on Monday and slept all day. I found this to be unfair as I didn’t get to take any days off and I certainly didn’t get to spend any days in bed. Thus is the life of a mother I suppose. Jenna seemed to be feeling better, which was good because I probably would have made her go trick-or-treating weather she felt like it or not since I made her costume and I wanted people to see it. But she seemed to be feeling all better, so I dressed the kids up and headed over to the other Winn’s house for some pictures. Jarom managed to roll out of bed so he could be present, though he still felt terrible and mostly sat on the floor. Trick-or-treating was a great success, and we even got some cute pictures of the kids. We went up and down Nate and McKenzie’s street with Kenna and got lots of candy. The girls were pros at knocking on doors and saying trick-or-treat even before the door was opened. Jenna really like ringing the door bells so it usually went lots of knocking, say trick or treat, and then a couple of rings on the doorbell just for good measure. I am sure we didn’t annoy anyone. But everyone was really nice and told the girls how cute they were. Bo sat nicely in the stroller and watched from a distance. Once we were done with their street, we walked over to our street and finished up there. I was very impressed with how well everyone decorates for Halloween. We passed several spooky houses and a couple of houses even banded together to have a tent with a candy line, and a line of alcoholic beverages for the over 21 crowd. Someone also turned their house into a haunted house, and there was a line down the block to get in. We skipped all of these things and just got the candy and went home.

Jenna and her haul

Bo hanging out in the stroller, and looking oh so cute!

Jenna was still in a pretty good mood, and I still thought all was well, but that night she puked again. And then again on Tuesday on the way home from the park. It went all over the stroller. And then again on Wednesday. I was starting to get worried so I took her to the doctor where I was assured it was just a stomach virus and that it would pass. So after a really long week of cleaning up a lot of puke and almost running out of carpet cleaner, we finally went 24 hours yesterday without any puking. So again, I thought we were in the clear. Wrong again. I gave Jenna a cup of chocolate milk before bed last night because she has been wanting some so badly the past week and I thought she was finally better. But at 11 last night, she puked again. Apparently dairy is not good for a sick tummy, and even one that is on the mend cant really handle it. So, I am pretty sure she is healthy now, just a little sensitive in the tummy still. I vowed to not give her any more dairy until she has not puked for at least a week and we are taking it easy again today. My illness has morphed into a terrible sore throat, and Jarom is slowly on the mend too. The miracle through all of this, is that Bo seems to have avoided all of our germs. I am so grateful for this and hope he continues to be healthy.

Bo's shirt says "Tough like Daddy" which is embarrassing for Bo, based on Jarom's behavior this weekend.

This and That

2011-10-29T14:23:00.003-04:00

The Winn family has been a little bit sick lately, so there have been a lot of sniffly noses and coughing, and today poor little Jenna has been throwing up about every half hour since 6 am. But that hasn’t kept them from enjoying the Halloween season. Lix thought long and hard about this year’s costumes and finally decided on a pair of M&Ms. Jenna is green and Bo is blue. I will go ahead and point out that the costumes are hand-made by Lix, from the dying of the clothes to the application of the Ms to the construction of Jenna’s tutu. So hats off to her. (Halloween pics to come!)

Just a shot from Jenna's photo shoot.

The other October staple is the trip to the pumpkin patch. The patch they visited was about 40 minutes away from home and was actually two patches that border one another. They realized it was two distinct operations after parking in the one that had free parking and charged for rides. Then they had to jump the fence over to the one that charged for parking and had free rides. Earlier in his life Jarom would have thought that this was a great plan. But with Jenna and Lix and Bo in his stroller, he would have rather just paid the few dollars for parking. Jenna had a pretty good time at the patch, even though it felt more like August than October. There were bounce houses to jump on, lots of pumpkins and scarecrows to look at, a tractor pulled train to go on, and a pony that wanted to be ridden. They stuck around for a few hours, Lix tried her hardest to get a picture of her children that she was satisfied with, and on the way home they stopped at the grand opening of the Costco next door to get some pizza and a hot dog.

Jenna and her pony, Poco.

We also experienced a pretty fierce Texas thunderstorm last week. The rain and hail pounding on the tin roof over the back porch woke Lix up in the middle of the night, and the frequent lightning and loud thunder kept her up for a little while. In the morning as everyone was getting ready for church Jarom noticed that one section of the backyard fence had been blown over, so he had to get Nate to stop by and help him get it back up.

Jenna posing on the steps

Jenna has continued to do pretty well with the potty training, mostly thanks to the strong encouragement she gets from her mother. On day 3 or so of the training, Alixa decided that Jenna knew what she was doing and that there needed to be some negative consequences to going to the bathroom in her panties. So the cold bath rule was instituted. Whenever Jenna fails to use the toilet, she has to take a cold bath. Lix figured that she was going to have to wash her off anyway, so she might as well make it an unpleasant experience. Depending on the face you are making right now as you read this, you may or may not believe the faces that people have made at her as she tells them about her method, but you can’t argue with the results. She has only had to take 3 cold baths, and she definitely tries her hardest to avoid them. For his part, Jarom says that cold water never hurt anyone, except those guys who had to carry people across the frozen Mississippi river. He had to take cold showers for two years in Peru and it turned out okay for him. Feel free to tell Alixa what a bad mother she is, but know that she isn’t going to change for you.

Jenna doin' her business. Like father, like daughter.

Speaking of Lix, she has started going to the gym again with the kids. We originally got a membership at 24 hour fitness, but the daycare there was pretty shabby, so we switched to the Frisco Athletic Club and are very pleased with the decision. Lix has also been pretty active on our new grill, the one that came with the house. She is excited to expand her cooking repertoire and Jarom enjoys the addition of grilled things into his menu. She also spends a lot of her time complaining about how bad her fantasy football team is this year. This is mostly because after week one Jarom tried to give her Fred Jackson and Calvin Johnson in exchange for Chris Johnson, and she declined. I apologize for that last sentence, because I know that none of you care about the Winn’s fantasy teams, but years from now when Jarom reads this he will snicker.

Jenna loves to bake things for her daddy. I think its because she likes to take licks from the bowl. We made him coffee cake. She loved the brown sugar topping!

Now that things are starting to get settled in and in a routine Lix has started asking about home improvement projects. There are several rooms that she wants to paint, and some landscaping that she wants to change. Also there is one addition to the family that Jenna keeps asking about. When we were all still in Richmond Lix told Jenna that when we moved to Texas she could get a kitty and a purple room. Well she has latched onto those ideas so strongly that I’m not sure she really believes that she is in Texas yet. She has decided that she would like a blue kitty, but that a yellow one would also be acceptable. It will be named Beartoy, and it will be sooo nice. So one of these days I guess there will be another pet in the house. I’m not thrilled about cats, but I hear they keep to themselves, so I suppose I can handle it.

For some reason, Jenna loves to lounge on our stairs. On this day, her baby needed to lounge too.

And now a story from Lix:
A couple times a week, I take the kids on a jog to the park that is close to our house. Jenna often wants to run with me, and usually ends up running about a mile. She runs the whole time, never getting tired. It is actually quite amazing. Today on our run, she fell down and skinned both of her knees. They were bleeding and she was a little sad, and so she rode in the stroller for about four seconds until she wanted to run again. When we got home, I asked if she wanted a band aid to put on her booboos. I didn’t want her bleeding on the couches. She said yes, so I brought over two band aids and started to put them on her cuts. She started crying because she thinks that band aids on her booboos will hurt them. Instead, she asked if I could put them on her arms. So, for the cuts on her knees, she has band aids on her arms, and she insists that now they feel better. Silly girl.

Quotes

Alixa falls down.
Jenna: Are you okay mommy? It’s okay that you fell. Don’t cry. Don’t cry about it mommy. Just be a big girl, and don’t cry.
(Note from Alixa – I wasn’t actually crying)

Alixa: Jenna you need to listen, you are driving me crazy!
Jenna: (crying) No! I just want to drive you crazy!

Jenna loves to try on Lix's shoes. On this day she came out and said, "Look mommy, ice cream cone shoes!"

Most of Bo's recent pics are in the last post, but here is one more just to prove that it isn't all about Jenna.

Baby Bo is Six Months Old!

2011-10-23T22:01:00.009-04:00

Baby Bo at six months old

On Friday, my baby boy turned six months old. He is about the cutest thing ever, and we love him a lot. He is a very happy baby, and really never cries. Well, he cries when he gets hurt, like when Jenna accidentally jumps on him or when I accidentally drop a hymn book on his face at church. But other than that, the happiest baby ever. He is very laid back and patient and loves me even though sometimes I get so caught up with Jenna that I ignore him a little bit.

Sitting in his highchair, waiting for some food

He loves to eat "real" food and will scarf down his oatmeal and pears in about 60 seconds flat. He eats baby food three times a day and is getting good enough that sometimes he doesn't even need a bib. He sits up really well all by himself and can grab toys and play with them. He babbles, and says mamama if he is sad. He is a very curious little baby and feeding him a bottle is getting increasingly difficult as he likes to look at everything and wiggles so much he slides off my lap. He loves his new exersaucer we bought him and will play in it for a really long time.

He is a master at standing on Dad's hands

He is a super sleeper, and sleeps 12 hours every night. He is a trooper during the day when he doesnt get as many naps as he would like because we are busy doing other things. Even if he is tired he is still a happy baby. He smiles at everyone and everything. He giggles too, and it is really cute. His favorite people to laugh at are Jenna and Kenna, because they are the best at playing peek-a-boo. He is proficient at rolling, and likes to be on his tummy. But sometimes he gets tired of being on his tummy and just lays his head down on the floor.

He insists on sleeping with a blanket on his face. It freaks me out too.

He really likes Jenna, and Jenna is getting better at liking Bo. She doesnt really pay much attention to him but gets very concerned if we go somewhere and Baby Bo isn't around. She is constantly keeping me updated on his state of alertness in the back of the car..."Mommy, Baby Bo is asleep." Or "Mommy, Baby Bo is awake!" She has recently started to want to give him hugs, which is super cute until Bo grabs hold of her hair and wont let go and she starts to cry. But while she is crying she tells me that "its ok, because he is just a little tiny baby and he doesnt know any better". She is constantly telling people that Baby Bo is her best friend, which is very sweet.

Bo giving Jenna too much love. Jenna not loving Bo's lovin'.

Bo is growing like a weed and has his six month check up tomorrow. I am guessing he is around 18 or 19 pounds, which sounds huge, but his dad weighed that much at 4 months, so I guess we are doing ok. We love this little boy so much and are so glad he came to join us! Happy half birthday, Baby Bo!

Big D

2011-10-15T16:45:00.003-04:00

They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and based on our experience thus far, they are mostly right. But the thing that seems to be the biggest these days is baby Bo, a name that might not be appropriate for much longer. I guess somewhere between the middle of August, when the move preparation really got started, and now that kid has really gotten huge. And with all that has been going on around this house I guess it has sort of flown under the radar. But he is doing all sorts of big things, like rolling over and talking and standing on Jarom’s hands. He has also gotten pretty good at eating solid foods and doesn’t ever seem to be full. He has realized that he lives in a house with two very loud females and has developed a velociraptor shriek that allows him to make himself part of the discussion, and he uses it with frightening regularity. And he continues to be a very cute, very smiley, very easygoing baby, which is good because he has been relegated once again to the back burner by his older sister.

That’s because Jenna and Lix have undertaken potty training this week. Lix read a book about how to potty train your kid in 3 days and chose Monday-Wednesday of this week to give it a shot. I must say, the results have been surprisingly good. There have been a few accidents and Lix has been pushed to her breaking point, but Jenna has generally figured out how to successfully use the potty and is very excited about the stickers that she gets when she goes and the reward that comes when she fills up her sticker chart. On Wednesday evening after a long day stuck in the house and a couple of very frustrating accidents, Lix left Jarom with the kids so she could go get a haircut. Things went smoothly for about 30 minutes and then the wheels came off. Jenna was jumping on the couch, despite Jarom’s repeated requests that she not. One of her jumps was a little more than she could handle and *boom* she was on the ground with a bloody nose. She was obviously very upset and began sobbing, so Jarom picked her up and tried to make her feel better. Some of you may be able to predict what happened next. Jenna continued to cry harder and harder, until she puked all over herself and Jarom. Luckily, Jarom was able to contain the vomit to his clothes and person, but now had to try and carry Jenna up the stairs to the bathtub without shifting her body to allow barf to fall onto the floor. Somehow he managed to do it and got Jenna washed off and sitting in the tub. He then went back downstairs to check on Blake, who was now 10 minutes overdue for a bottle. He was crying a little now, because he was hungry and doesn’t really like being left alone. So Jarom quickly made him a bottle and toted him up to the bathroom, where he sat on the ledge of the tub and made Bo hold his own bottle while he bathed Jenna. It was getting late, so after he finished the bottle Jarom put him to bed and then was able to finish taking care of Jenna and getting her ready for bed, again. They were reading some stories when Lix got back. She makes it look so easy, this taking care of two little kids and not letting them die, but it is much harder than it looks.

Potty training is really the last step that is keeping Jenna from truly becoming a big girl. It has been interesting to watch her relationship with her parents lately. More and more she is becoming like a friend of theirs. During the move in she was quite helpful. Jarom gave her a large pile of little things that she could take into the house one at a time and she carried everything in her pile inside and up the stairs. When she goes to the store with Lix to help with the shopping they chat like girlfriends. She is also becoming very imaginative. She regularly puts her animals and baby dolls to sleep and feeds them elaborate meals. She has also started playing with things as if they were another. Rocks in the back yard become buggies that need to be fed leaves and have conversations with the other buggies that she has collected. Hangers become babies that need to be put to bed at naptime. It is pretty cool to watch her little mind go and see the things that it comes up with.

One thing that is definitely NOT bigger in Texas is the distance between our house and the other Winn Residence. That has been cut in half. Which is nice at 6:20 in the morning when Jarom leaves to go pick up Nate and head to work. They have decided to work a 7-4 shift in an effort to avoid heavy traffic and get home a little earlier to see the childrens. It is certainly the right decision, but Jarom is not thrilled about having to get up almost 90 minutes earlier than he used to. He did spend his birthday money on a spiffy new pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes from the big Texas sun on his drives home.

The rest of the week has been filled with all sorts of little errands and tasks. Lix and the kids came down to Jarom’s office for lunch one day and got to meet some of Jarom’s coworkers. Jarom made a trip to the dumpster to get rid of the last of the boxes that needed to be unpacked. The family went down to the local 24-hour Fitness and unfroze Jarom’s account so that he can once again work out at weird times. Lix can’t drop Bo off at the day care until he is six months old, so she still has to wait another week. We got the carpets cleaned, after seriously considering replacing them and then realizing that it was a little too expensive for us to do right now. So instead we got a new area rug for the family room, and it looks amazing. Jenna has continued to do great with the potty training, and has received a rocking horse and a new playhouse as rewards for her good behavior. Both were finds that Lix made on craigslist, which will make Brooke so proud.

The Winns also attended their new ward. It was pretty standard Mormon stuff, except that this is a ward that is dominated by young families. So there are 3 nurseries and about 120 kids in the primary. It makes for a loud sacrament meeting, but will sure be nice when Jenna has so many friends her age at church.

Here are some funny things that Jenna has said lately.

Alixa: Let’s put on your sunshine shirt, and then we will put your sweatshirt over that.
Jenna: Oh, that will be amazing!

Alixa: Jennabear, I love you
Jenna: No, I’m just eatin right now

Alixa put Jenna down for a nap today, and she didn’t sleep. She was singing very loudly and doing bum drops which were making huge thudding noises. So Lix went to investigate and noticed Jenna had thrown all of her animals out of bed. Lix asked her why she did that, and she said Pete had said "NO!" to her so she put him in time out by throwing him out of the crib.

Jenna: Mommy, I’m sweet like a popcorn ball

The Travelling Pants

2011-10-09T16:48:00.005-04:00

When we left off last the Winn family was crashing at Winn Manor in Delaware. That went on for a wonderful two weeks. Alixa and Jenna were thrilled to have Jarom around all day long, and everybody had a great time hanging out with lots of cousins and stuff. Jarom and Lix pawned their kids off on some doting aunts and played a round of golf together, there were family dinners and trips to malls to go shopping with the girls and swimming in the hot tub and swinging on the swing set and consoling JD while watching BYU games. All the wonderful things we have come to expect from a Delaware visit. And after a few weeks of not being a productive member of society, Jarom was actually pretty excited about the prospect of getting back to work and getting into his new job. So on Friday he helped pack up Carlotta and sent Lix, Jenna, Bo, and I westward towards Ohio, while he loaded up his car for the trip southward towards Dallas. As you might imagine, Alixa’s trip of 6 hours with 2 kids did not go nearly as smoothly as Jarom’s trip of 24 hours with 0 kids. I will let Alixa share her thoughts.

When I was talking to my mom one day about our plans while we were homeless, I mentioned that we would be spending our time in Delaware. It was only a four hour drive, there was lots of space for us, and Jenna had cousins there she could play with all day every day. It was a perfect place to be for three weeks until we could get to Texas. But my mom suggested that I spend some of the time in Cleveland with her so she could see her Grandkids one more time before they move so far away. I reminded her that it was an 8 hour drive to her house, not something I was willing to drive by myself. She said she would fly in and drive with me, so I agreed that we would go to Delaware for 2 weeks, and then come see her the last week. Well, a few days later, she said since I was now driving from Delaware, a drive that can be done in 6 hours, she was not going to spend the money to fly in. I said ok, thinking I have driven 5 hours by myself before, what is one more hour? So Friday the 23rd I packed up the car and the kids and headed out to Cleveland.
It was raining, which is no fun to drive in and I was hoping it would stop before we had to stop to feed children and change diapers. But unfortunately, it didn’t stop. It got worse and as we stopped for gas and a sobbing Bo, the rain was coming down in sheets. I stopped in a parking lot to feed Bo squished in the backseat of the car, but now Jenna was crying because she was tired and hungry, and that upset Bo, so he did eat, he just cried. So we were all crying in the cramped backseat of our car as the rains came down. I finally calmed Bo down enough to get him to eat, and promised Jenna something (I don’t remember what) if she would stop crying. After feeding Bo, we drove over to a gas station, thank goodness for covered gas pumps! I filled up the car and proceeded to change Jenna’s diaper. I pulled her out of her seat, and she was soaked. She had peed through all of her clothes. I started to panic because her suitcase was buried in the back of the car and I would have had to unpack most of the car to get her some new clothes. But, as I looked down, I saw the jammies that she had worn the night before that I didn’t pack in the suitcase, but had just thrown into the front seat on my way out of the door. They were a small miracle to me, just sitting there, I almost cried for joy. So, I put her clothes on her and then tried to decide what to do about lunch. Jenna was hungry, and I had minimal food in the car, but I couldn’t get both kids out of the car and into a restaurant without all of us getting soaked. So I settled on an Arby’s, the only fast food place at the exit, and got Jenna some French fries, and me a roast beef sandwich. Not the greatest lunch, but we were back on the road.
As I was looking at the route to take to my mom’s house, I decided to go up to I80 instead of taking the Pennsylvania turnpike (I 76) so that I could avoid Pittsburg and all of the construction going on around the city. I did not realize that to get up to 80 was a small road with not very many lanes. It was slow moving for a little while but we finally made it to 80 and I was excited to be moving at freeway speeds again. We were cruising pretty well for maybe 30 minutes, and then everything stopped. Literally, stopped. We weren’t even inching along. About ten minutes of just sitting there, people started getting out of their cars to walk up and see what was going on. I asked a trucker and he said there were two major accidents, one after the other, and that was why we were stopped. So I took the opportunity to sit in the back and hold Bo and play with the kids. We were stopped for a good hour and then started inching along. I assumed we had bypassed both accidents since we were stopped for so long, but that was not the case. We drove about 2 miles down the road, and stopped again. This time we were stopped for 2 hours. Not moving, just sitting. This time I was able to feed Bo again, change diapers, and get everyone ready for bed. I also fed Jenna her “dinner” of an m&m kudos bar, and some cheezits. She asked for real food, but that was literally all I had in my bag. So all in all, we were stopped for 3 HOURS. It made our journey and 11 hour trip instead of a 7 or 8 hour trip with stops. After we started moving again, the kids fell asleep and we were able to make it with no further problems. We pulled in around midnight. It was a terrible day of traveling, but we had survived. I learned a lesson… always have extra clothes available for the kids, and lots of food, just in case!

So it wasn’t the perfect drive. But they did make it safely to see Mimi and Opa. And sitting at the top of their list of things to do that week was visit the zoo. So on Saturday they stopped by to see all the animals and Jenna could not have been happier. She loved the elephants and tigers and monkeys, but her favorite exhibit, and not by a narrow margin, was the seals and sea lions. She spent a whole lot of time just staring at them while they swam around, completely transfixed. And when the group moved on to other animals, she repeatedly asked to go back to see the seals until her request was approved. The rest of the week was filled with game playing and visiting and tea. All the wonderful things we have come to expect from an Ohio visit.

Jenna's new unicorn slippersHiding in the corner

Bo, excited as always

Eating some carrots, just like the deer in Opa's back yard

While the family was enjoying the changing leaves in northern Ohio, Jarom was wondering why it was still in the high 90’s in Dallas. The job started pretty well, despite the general discomfort and lostness that accompanies any new job. There was a lot of orientation and filling out of forms to get the right key cards and computer programs and the like. But the people that he is working with seem very friendly and he is feeling pretty good about their decision to move. But after having so much time off, you can’t just jump right into a 5-day work week. So he got a Thursday night flight out of DFW to go to Cleveland and retrieve his family, and begin another two-day car drive. This one went much smoother than Lixi’s last one. It is amazing what a difference having a spare adult makes. And the fact that we avoided any accidents or major traffic jams didn’t hurt. We left Friday morning around 10 in the morning, and were pulling into Bob and Melissa’s house in Memphis about 12 hours later. At least we thought it was Bob and Melissa’s house. Jarom had stayed there the week before, but it was late and dark and their neighbor also has a large pickup truck in the driveway. So poor Lix had to awkwardly apologize to the strange man who answered the door but was nice enough to point us in the right direction.

Getting ready for the street corner

Hanging out at the seal exhibit

We got a good night’s rest and Jenna got to play with their puppy, Max. But we were very anxious to get to our new house so we didn’t stick around very long after the French toast ran out. Another 7 hours across the super-boring states of Arkansas and East Texas and we had reached our destination. The kids actually hit their breaking point about 45 minutes before we got to the house, so the last few miles weren’t the greatest, but I was pretty impressed with how well they did throughout the trip.

We pulled in and our PODS were waiting for us, and through the miracle of packing everything so tightly that there wasn’t any room left, nothing was broken. Jarom did need to enlist Alixa’s help as he opened them to help prevent a cartoon-like explosion of furniture and boxes upon their release. It took about a day and some help from Nate to get everything out of the cubes and into the house, and then about another week to get things out of the boxes and into their new places here. But after living in the house for one week, we are now down to just a handful of boxes here and there, mostly containing wall decorations and stuff that Alixa hasn’t chosen a spot for or Jarom hasn’t had the time to put up on the wall.

The early stages of the POD packing

In addition to getting the house organized Lix has been very active socially, attending playgroup one day and going out with some friends on another day. She also got Jarom to go over to the Combs’ house on Friday evening for pizza and to meet a few couples. Brooke Combs (Alixa tries to find a Brooke to be best friends with everywhere we live) even came over to play and help unpack on Wednesday. I had the honor of meeting her and her kids, although they didn’t really seem to like me. The Winns got introduced in church today and Jarom has found a weekly basketball game that he can get in, so I would say that they are adapting to the move rather well.

Jenna's new bed, and all her animals

Jenna's new playroom, complete with her own TV

Other than the fact that the previous owners had dogs that left behind some hair in the carpet, everyone is pretty excited about the house. Jenna loves her new big girl bed and is excited about climbing up the ladder to lay down every night. The upstairs play room is great for Jenna’s toys and it is nice that we can keep the downstairs a little more orderly. Jarom and Alixa love that they have enough closet space to hang up all their clothes and Jarom likes not having to share a sink with his wife. They have been having regular family dinners at the table in the kitchen instead of on the coffee table in front of the TV, which makes Lix happy. And both cars now fit in the garage, which makes them happy. There will be little modifications and adjustments that will need to be made for a while, but right now everyone is thrilled to be together and in a home that is our own as we all try to figure out what life will be like here in the lone star state.

And a few videos of what the kids have been learning lately

Food for Thought

2011-09-19T01:23:00.000-04:00

Eating around the Winn house is always a little bit of a tricky task. Although I can’t confirm or deny this rumor, it has been said that Jarom once went 11 years without eating anything that wasn’t a peanut butter and honey sandwich. And it would seem that Jenna has inherited her father’s finicky taste buds. Which is why she is two years old and still being fed a steady stream of baby food, as in the baby food that comes in the jars for the 8-month olds. But recently we have begun to see drastic improvement on the Jenna-eating-stuff front. She has improved her eating speed, which is one of Alixa’s biggest pet peeves, so that she can finish a lunch or dinner in less than 45 minutes. She has also been surprisingly adventurous in trying new foods and being open to liking them. And she is even pretty good about it when she tries it and doesn’t like it. The overall effect of this new behavior is that the number of times per day that Lix wants to shoot herself has gone down by 3-4, depending on how many meals Jenna eats. And her imaginary food skills have been improving along with her real ones. She regularly cooks pancakes and cupcakes on Kenna’s play kitchen, which are always sold for the low low price of six dollars. And one of her favorite things to do while taking a bath is to make Diet Coke salads for her mom or dad. If you are interested in that salad, here’s the recipe: pour bath water from a small cup into a bigger cup until the bigger cup is full. Serve at room temperature, and probably charge $6.

Blake has been pretty good about eating as well, and as a result is getting pretty big pretty fast. Lix even tried to give him some rice cereal for the first time, and it was just as successful as every other kids first solid food. A whole lot of spitting and drooling, but he started to figure it out a little bit and when it was over we just threw the bumbo into the bath with the baby and washed everything down.

But the big news around here hasn’t been about food, but where that food is being eaten. And it isn’t in Richmond anymore. Jarom was originally scheduled to work at Bon Secours until September 16th, but on the 8th he got a call from the HR guy and was told that they would go ahead and pay him for the last week but that he didn’t need to bother coming in. Jarom thought about arguing, but didn’t want to end on a sour note so he took the deal and decided to head up to Delaware with the family for a two week vacation before heading down to Dallas.

But first there was the little matter of packing up the house into the two Relocubes that had been dropped off at the house. A big chunk of the work got done on Saturday, thanks in large part to Brooke (who watched Bo) and Kenz (who watched Jenna) and Nate (who helped move the few big items that we had, including and not limited to the futon mattress.) It was quite hilarious when Kenz came by to drop Jenna off in the afternoon, because both of the Ennas came in and looked at the now-empty living room and asked “where’d the toys go?” After explaining that they were in boxes that would go to Texas, Lix told Jenna that she could watch a show while she ate her dinner. This seemed to calm her down, or at least distract her from the missing toys. So she ran back into the living room only to come back again with that same confused look on her face, asking “where’d the couches go?” So she got to watch a show while sitting on the patio furniture that was set up in the living room. Please don’t judge us too harshly.

Sunday was the last day at church and a sort of farewell day to many of the wonderful people that have been so kind to us during our 2 years in Richmond. Jarom will definitely miss the organ player from this ward. And Jenna will definitely miss going to nursery with Courtney. And Lix will miss recipe clubs with Suzie and Brooke and all her other lady friends. We will miss the YMCA and the great ladies that have taken such good care of the kiddos, especially Miss Evy. I’m sure that there are far too many people and things that will be dearly missed to write them all down, but I think it is safe to say that Richmond became a happy home for this family and we will be extremely happy if Dallas can just come close to matching it.

On Monday things got a little tougher, and Jarom and Alixa’s marriage got challenged a little bit. You see Jarom is a planner, who likes to take his time and think about all the angles and possibilities and options before he starts working. Alixa is a doer. She just wants to jump in and start throwing stuff in boxes and putting those boxes in the cube. I don’t want to take sides and say which is better, but Jarom’s method is better. The Winns once again had some life saving babysitters/helpers to get the last few things into boxes, and then Lix took the kids and headed for Delaware, leaving Jarom with the last few things and the unwavering demand that Jenna’s tricycle and her water table not be left behind. After some creative packing, for which he is unreasonably proud, Jarom was able to get everything packed except for a pair of stools. It helped that they sold a bunch of stuff to the buyer of the house, which also means that there will be a new washer and dryer and television when we get to Texas, which makes Lixi very excited.

Now the crew is in Delaware, hanging out, enjoying the company, and counting down the days until they drive 24 hours to the lone star state. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I’m living in Bruce’s office and my stuff is all in boxes and I just don’t feel like rummaging to find the camera cords. So instead I will start a quotes segment, which is a blatant ripoff from my sister Annie. They are all from Jenna because she’s the only one that is funny right now.

Jenna: Mommy, I like your legs. They’re prickly.

Dad: Jenna, are you cute?
Jenna: No, I’m just trying to help this choo choo train find its mom.

Jenna(to her Mom, who was lagging behind): Let’s go Mommy, chop-chop!!

Now that Jenna is saying more and more funny things this segment will probably start showing up more often. And there will be more pictures once we get to Texas. Happy driving!

Second Honeymoon

2011-09-07T01:22:00.004-04:00

1 Corinthians 13:11 – When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Now that Jarom is over the hill he no longer does birthdays in the same way that he used to. Where once he had huge parties with tons of presents and all of his buddies and the occasional bounce house, now he has destination birthdays with his wife. And for their first destination birthday the decided to head down to Dallas and find a new home, since they have to be out of their current home by next Tuesday. So they arranged for some baby sitters, sending Jenna off to the Bleyls and Blake to stay with the Hoffmans. The original second honeymoon plan called for a Saturday afternoon departure, but Hurricane Irene canceled their flight and they had to bump it up to 6 in the morning to get out before the rain came. They felt a little bad about leaving town while the kids and I stayed here to weather the storm, but the fact that they could sleep on the plane and not have to wrangle any toddlers as they walked through the airports made them quickly forget what terrible parents they are.

Jenna and Kenna on their way to the candy store

In Dallas they met up with Nate and Kenz, who had already been there for a couple of days without Kenna, who had been staying at our house. They had already visited about 40 houses and had narrowed the search down to two areas, which made Alixa’s job much easier. The Winns instantly fell in love with Frisco, which is a relatively new suburb about 40 minutes north of Dallas. It reminds them very much of Las Vegas, in that the communities are all planned, with running trails and community pools and playgrounds, the roads are ample and well built, and the schools are spread out inside the neighborhoods. It didn’t take very long before they could see themselves spending a lot of years there. The house hunt was great. All those long hours of research that Lix has put in watching House Hunters and HGTV’d and My First Place really paid off. Their first love was a house that wasn’t actually on the market, but had been recently. It was pretty much perfect, but a little bit more than they were hoping to spend. Day one ended with a trip to the Cheesecake Factory, a Winn birthday tradition, with Nate and Kenz and a lot of thinking about the many houses that they saw. Day two started with second visits to a couple of their favorites from the first day and then a few more new houses. And it was in those new ones that the Winns found their new home. It’s a lovely 4 bedroom place with a cute backyard and close proximity to a pool and a park. And they really liked the way it was decorated, so they decided to put in an offer that day and asked for all of the furniture with the house. Sadly, the sellers didn’t go for that, but they did agree to leave some nice couches, a grill, and the coolest little girl bed you have ever seen. And now we will have a place to stay when we eventually get down to Texas in a few weeks. Happy birthday, Jardog! Enjoy paying it off for the next thirty years!

Jarom was hoping to get the sticks on the wall, but had to settle for the leather couches instead

This is the bed/playhouse that is the real reason they bought the place

After a very successful house hunt and 3 day break from the kids both Jarom and Lix were very excited to see Jenna and Blake again, and they were ready to have their parents back as well. Both babysitters were excellent and we couldn’t be more thankful to have such nice folks as our friends here in Richmond. It will really be sad to have to leave them when we go. Courtney was great and took Jenna down to the river and let her sleep in her bed with her every night. I’m sure Erik was just thrilled about that. And the Hoffmans did great with Bo, although they may have decided that they can wait a little while before they decide to have a second baby.

Now the focus is on getting out of this house. We have started to pack up, and decided that since we are picking up some furniture in Texas we can leave some here and sold a few pieces to the guy who is buying our house. It’ll save on moving expenses and keep old man Jarom from throwing out his back as he carries heavy dressers down the stairs.

The only real negative development that has happened lately is that Jenna has sort of quit taking naps. It has become quite a struggle to get that girl to lay down and go to sleep. She will scream and cry bloody murder until you open up the door to get her. After some trial and error we found that if you explain to her that she needs to stay in her room and offer to let her keep the door open a little, she does okay. Perhaps she just doesn’t like the feeling of isolation. However, now that the door is staying open she can get out and try to come downstairs, where she knows she is not supposed to be. So both Jarom and Lix have caught her quietly tiptoeing down the stairs and crouching behind corners and furniture as she tries to avoid being detected. Once she is caught she will sheepishly grin at you as you ask her where she is supposed to be, to which she will answer “in my bed” before heading back upstairs. On days when she doesn’t nap this will happen repeatedly as the parent sends her to bed and she sneaks back down. But it is pretty hard to get mad at her when she is so stinkin cute.

Here's a little clip of Bo laughing. Bonus points if you can name the song that Lix sings to him to get him to start.

Disaster Movie

2011-08-27T00:09:00.003-04:00

Summer vacation continues for Lix and the kids. After spending 10 days lounging by the pool at the Winn house in Delaware they drove back to Richmond, picked up a top-five nicest person in the world, and turned around to head north to Ohio. The car had two adults and 3 kiddos 2 or younger, so the drive was filled with stops for all sorts of reasons. All things considered, the kids did pretty well and the parents were spared the hassle of strangling them. Once in Ohio the standard Hegewaldian vacation activities ensued. Lix went golfing a couple of times with her dad, played very well, and informed Jarom that she would now like to play golf “all the time, like every day.” Sadly, there is not always a pair of willing free babysitters like PJ and Mikah to allow her to do that. There was also a trip to the tea house for some crumpets with the ladies, a required event for visitors. The highlight of the trip, aside from getting to see the family, had to be the trip to Sandusky to drive through the wild animal safari. In the interest of full disclosure and as you will see from the video below, there was not a wild hair left in any of these animals. They have been well trained by the hundreds of cars that pass through daily, and are perfectly happy to stick their giant heads into your car and drool all over your clothes and blow snot on the side of your car while you fearfully fling the last of your elk food at them in a desperate attempt to get them away from you. Jenna loved seeing all the big, big, big, big animals, and I believe that a good day was had by all. After a week Lix picked Brooke back up and moseyed on back to Virginia, where Jarom and I were anxiously awaiting their arrival. Being single again after having a family is cool for a day or two, when you get to enjoy the peace and quiet and not worry about diapers or naps or feedings, but it gets pretty lame pretty quick.

Back at home, Lix has unleashed her full attention span on house hunting, and is having the time of her life. She will be sad when the search is over. Bo continues to smile most all of the time, which is great. He is getting better at rolling over, though he still can’t figure out how to get his arm out from underneath his body, which is rather amusing. He has also begun his first lessons in standing up on dad’s hand. Sometimes he likes it and smiles, other times he gets scared and cries a little. But Jarom keeps working on it. Jenna is still running everywhere she goes, and has incorporated broad jumping into her locomotion. This is categorized as hopping like a kangaroo, which she will tell you over and over while she does it. She is usually found singing a song as well. She knows the words to a half dozen or so tunes, but she rarely sings those ones. Usually it is just an unintelligible string of sounds that sometimes seems Asian and other times seems extraterrestrial. And of course, she sings LOUD, just like her mom. She has also begun a negotiating phase where she will say “okay daddy, this is my deal,” and then proceed to explain about how she is going to watch a show and then go to the mall to see the fishies and throw money in the water, without the slightest mention of what she is going to put in to get all of her things. Oh well, she’s cute.

Who wears the Bumbo best?

Also, this may be my last post because the world is ending. On Tuesday afternoon a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit two score miles up the road. For people in Virginia, earthquakes are pretty far down the list of expected disasters, somewhere after Mothra attacks but before the possibility that the south didn’t actually win the Civil War. So even though the quake lasted for about 30 seconds and shook hard enough to knock stuff of the walls and generally scare the bejeepers out of many people (Lix included), many weren’t even sure what had happened. In fact, Nate was driving through a construction zone when it happened, and just thought that those tractors were really rumbling today until he later spoke with his wife. Jarom thought it was pretty cool, especially when he was told to take the rest of the day off to make sure his house and family were okay. There was an aftershock the next night at 1 am that was in the 4’s, but Jarom was the only one who felt it because everyone else was in bed. And now there is a hurricane bearing down on the east coast to wash away all the rubble and debris that the quake left behind. Somewhere in Georgia, Laurie Slaugh is freaking out right now.
In other earth shaking news, Jarom is turning the big 3-0 in less than 24 hours. This embarrasses Alixa greatly. Jarom isn’t sure the math has been done correctly because he doesn’t feel like he should be thirty. When he thinks of thirty year olds he thinks of the guys that taught his church classes when he was in grade school, and there is no way he is as old as they were. He can still do all the things he could do when he was twenty, or at least he thinks he can. It’s a sad day, for sure.

This is Alixa's submission to the mother of the year award

Who shot JR?

2011-08-14T20:04:00.005-04:00

This is a very bittersweet post to write. The Winn family is leaving Richmond and headed for the Lone Star state. This all began a few months ago when Nate got a call from a recruiter about some job openings in the Dallas area. One of the questions that he was asked was “what would keep you from leaving your current job?” And one of the answers to that was that he really liked living near his brother. So he decided that he would only look at jobs with Jarom, so that they could move together should an opportunity arise. So they both spoke with the recruiter and outlined their wish lists for a job and he told them that he felt very confident that he could find two positions in Dallas that would work out, although maybe not with the same company. After a few weeks they heard from Parkland Hospital that they wanted to interview them. So they flew down to Dallas on Sunday, interviewed on Monday and came back Monday night. They both left the interview feeling very good about the people and the company and the opportunity. Then it was a two-week, very anxious wait. The Thursday before they had to leave for Kentucky, Jarom and Nate had scheduled a golf match against the Bleyls. Things weren’t going well, and they were down two points after two holes. In the middle of playing the third hole, they got a phone call from the recruiter telling them about the offers they were getting from Parkland. It should be noted that they immediately turned things around in the match, winning 6 of the remaining 7 holes, including a game-changing 80-yard hole out for birdie on the 17th. When they got home they shared the good news with their wives, and then told them about the job offers.

Some holdouts from the last post. Lix finishing the deck and Bo in the jumper.

All of this happened about 60 hours before both Jarom and Alixa were planning to be out of Richmond, Jarom to Kentucky and Lix up to Delaware with the kiddos. So they called up their realtor and started cleaning and putting stuff up in the attic so that the house could be listed and people could come check it out while everyone was away, thus eliminating the need to be constantly cleaning and leaving whenever someone wanted to come see it. Given the short time frame, I think they did a great job.

We are all very excited about this new opportunity, and for some reason completely convinced that we will enjoy Dallas. But we will be very sad and miss Richmond. This has been a great job for Jarom, and he has very much enjoyed his coworkers. It is nice to be within a few hours of so many family members, whereas Dallas is not even within a few hours of the state border. And we will certainly miss the many wonderful folks who have become such good friends to us in such a short time. Without a doubt, this has been the place that has felt the most like home of all the places that Jarom and Lix have lived.

But as we learned from Seinfeld [the opposite], the Universe has a way of evening itself out. So all the excitement of the new job had to be offset somehow. Enter the Winn’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It came on Sunday, July 31. Jarom began the day on Saturday evening by driving to Kentucky after finishing most of the work to get the house ready to show. He arrived in Kentucky around 10 and headed to the hospital for his first night shift. As some of you may know, night shifts are not fun. At 7 am he finished up and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. It was around this time that Lix was getting up with the kids and preparing herself and them for church. Now Jarom would never claim that he is a big help when it comes to getting ready, but at least he is an adult that can put on some shoes or grab some diapers or put a kid in the car. But poor Alixa was all on her own, and Bo decided that he wanted to sleep in, and Jenna was a little bit grumpy. But they did make it to church, where they didn’t have the back open so Lix had to squeeze into a row with some other people and then Bo wouldn’t eat quietly. After church Lix had to make sure everything was picked up and tidy and then she was off to Norfolk to visit her uncle Kevin. It was a sad visit because Kevin has cancer and is not doing very well, but she was very glad that she got to see him. After letting Jenna run around with some of Alixa’s cousins for a while, they packed the car back up and headed north towards Delaware. But Jenna had some scrapes on her legs and wouldn’t stop crying and Bo was fussier than usual, so she decided to stop at Friendly’s to feed the kids and have a break. Poor choice. Jenna fell down again and proceeded to cry for the duration of their stay. Both children pooped particularly messy diapers and had to be changed together on the changing table, which is quite a balancing act. Finally it was back on the road. Around this time in Kentucky, Jarom was waking up and headed out to the car to grab a few things that he had left in the trunk. As he walked past the windows, he noticed a few spots on the back seat, and opened the door to investigate further. It was a fairly hot day in Kentucky, apparently hot enough to blow the top off of the unopened can of soda that had been sitting in the cup holder. There were sticky bits of soda everywhere. The dashboard and windshield were covered, the seats, both front and back, and the ceiling. Jarom headed up to Walmart where he bought some wipes and spent an hour or so scrubbing down pretty much every inch of the car’s interior. He had gotten nearly all of it cleaned when Lix called him to commiserate about her day. They chatted for a bit, sharing war stories and some tears. But it wasn’t over. Shortly after that call Lix was driving through a little hamlet in southern Delaware where the speed limit drops from 65 to 35 and got caught in a speed trap. She was sobbing uncontrollably now, but the officer had no soul and gave her the $130 ticket anyway. Hooray for stupid cops.

But the day did eventually end, and luckily for Lix it ended with her at Nancy’s house, where she could take advantage of Jamie’s wonderful hospitality and spend many hours lounging by the pool. Which is exactly what she did for a week. That house is Jenna’s favorite place in the world. Each morning would begin with Jenna waking up and asking to go play with Hailey’s toys, of which there are many. After playing with Hailey and her toys for a while, she would then ask to go swimming. So it was into the swimsuit and out to the pool, where she would immediately head for the diving board and begin jumping off and swimming around all by herself. And you’d better not try to help her. She was very brave and got very good at maneuvering in the water. There was also a day trip to the Brandywine Zoo and a drive up to Lancaster to see our favorite Amish friends, the Boyds. Jarom even came out for a few days and had a great time swimming with the kids.

And while they were up north they got some more good news in the form of an offer to buy their house. So it only ended up only being on the market for about a week, which was fantastic. There are still the standard inspection and closing hoops to jump through, but they should be out on the street by the middle of September. So now Lix has to really get into her house hunter mode, and nothing makes her happier. As an added bonus our Delaware state trooper friend Officer Dear managed to get Lixi’s ticket taken care of, so we won’t have to deal with that mess. Hooray for knowing cops!

Jenna was very afraid of the goats, but was eventually brave enough to graze its tail

And now Jarom is back in Richmond while Lix and the kids are off to Ohio to visit her parents. Jenna will surely spend her time jumping off of their diving board while Bo perfects his rolling over techniques works on standing up. Jarom will stay busy missing his family and taking care of the myriad things that have to get done in the next month so that this move can go as smoothly as possible. It has been a hectic few weeks, and the next month will be very busy and very stressful I’m sure, but we are all excited about this move.

From one Commonwealth to another

2011-08-01T00:05:00.001-04:00

The past few weeks have been highlighted by several wonderful trips to Ashland, Kentucky, where Bon Secours has a hospital. Whatever it is that Jarom does at work needs to be done at that hospital, so he had to travel out there for a week to do some stuff. He doesn’t mind the 6 hour drive, the staying in a hotel and the eating out all the time, but he definitely hates leaving Lix and the kids. While he was there Jenna learned that daddy was in Kentucky, and decided that she does not like Kentucky because it takes her daddy away. But it was only for a few days, and then he was back and performing his favorite parenting task, putting Jenna to bed.

If it is humanly possible, Jenna has increased the amount of time she spends talking. She pretty much doesn’t ever stop, and her vocabulary is growing every day. Recently they have started to work on her Spanish, and Jenna has grown quite fond of it. She enjoys learning new words and practicing the ones that she already knows, and will often ask how to say new things in Spanish. Most of what she knows comes from a book that she reads. It consists mainly of animals, colors, numbers, and a few household items. She also knows please and thank you. Her bilingualism has proven to be quite a crowd pleaser at parties and other adult gatherings. The other thing that she started to do the past few weeks is sing the hymns in church. She has always enjoyed the music, and has been helping to conduct for many months, but singing along is new. She does pretty well, and it’s pretty cute.

Bo has been doing stuff too. His personality is starting to show more and more, and his parents are very pleased to say that it is delightful. If you had asked either Lix or Jarom two years ago who the best baby ever was, they would have told you Jenna. And she was pretty good. She slept pretty well, didn’t cry a whole lot, and was pretty smiley. But compared to Bo, she was a menace. We can probably count on two hands the number of times that Bo has actually cried. He grunts sometimes, and will sort of yell at you if you take his bottle away to burp him, but as far as real crying goes, nothing. And he is as smiley as any kid I’ve ever seen. When you go to get him out of his crib after a nap or in the morning, he just smiles and giggles at you. Half the time you can’t get him to put a binky back in his mouth because he won’t stop smiling at you. And he loves to talk to you. He will sit and mimic the sounds you make for as long as you want. It is one of his favorite games. He is also figuring out how to play with toys, and enjoys swatting and grabbing at things, especially if those things make noise when he touches them. And the young men at church can’t get enough of him. Part of that is because he is a pleasant baby, but most of that is due to the fact that the Gayton ward has the most maternal, loving, baby-hungry group of 14-18 year olds in the world. It is quite strange and very amusing.

This past week Lix crossed off another thing from her home improvement list when she stained the deck. Her original plan called for one can of Thompson’s Water Seal (Honey Gold tinted) and 1-2 hours in the early morning before it got too hot. At about 10 Jarom was sent back to Home Depot for another can, with a third can being purchased a few hours after that. So the budget and the time frame both tripled. But she finished it, and now the deck looks like it has been rain-xed. And anyone within a 50 yard radius of the house got to listen to her singing along with her music at 100 decibels. She sings beautifully.

And now Jarom is back in Kentucky, where he will be for the next 3 weeks. Nobody in the family is overly thrilled about that, but I guess these are the sorts of things you have to do if you want to keep the really nice job that you have.

Child abuse?

2011-07-15T18:14:00.005-04:00

The Winn family returned from their wonderful two-week vacation to Utah and promptly had to jump to the other extreme of the spectrum by taking both kids into the doctor to get a total of six shots. Jarom decided that he would be a supportive husband and father by taking the day off to help Lix with all the consoling that would need to be done. Lix took advantage of Jarom’s aroundness by heading to the gym without the ninos. Jarom then did his best to make sure he is never given that responsibility again. He and Jenna were sitting on chairs looking out the front window at some cicadas flying around the front yard when Jenna decided she wanted to get down. Unfortunately, the chair was more slippery than she thought, and she fell forward, smashing her right eye square against the windowsill. There was some initial bleeding and it quickly started to swell and get very sensitive, but it was an injury that looked worse than it actually was. Lix predictably yelled at Jarom when she got home from the gym. I think the worst part of the whole ordeal was when the doctor had to rip off the Band-Aid to take a look at the injury later that day. Poor Jenna, a bunch of shots and a black eye all in a few hours. Welcome back from vacation, eh?

The day of

A few days later

On the plus side, Jenna aced her doctor’s tests, which consisted of questions like “does she sing to herself?” and “does her vocab consist of at least 14 words?” Either those questions are designed for the dumbest of 2-year olds or Jenna is a genius. Bo is also doing well, and continues to be tall for his age. Jarom feels like 2 months is enough of a sample size and has begun to make preparations for a comfortable retirement based on Bo’s projected NBA salary. The hardest part of the appointment was the doctor’s insistence that Jenna be cut off entirely from her pacifier. She only used it when she went to bed, but after 2 years of everyday use, she had become a little reliant on it. But like any good Americans, we always do everything doctors say to us (except for eating right and exercise), so we scheduled a trip to Build-A-Bear. Apparently this is a fairly common tactic, albeit one that Jarom hadn’t heard of, as he pays little attention to the trends and techniques among mothers. You go to the store, let the kid pick out one of the animals and have them put their binky inside it as it gets stuffed. So Jenna is now the proud owner of a new animal named Binky Bunny. The first few nights were a little tough, although it was easier than Jarom thought it would be. There were some tears, and Jarom ended up laying by Jenna for much longer than usual, and there were a large number of requests to tear Binky Bunny open in search of what was hidden inside, but now Jenna goes to sleep happily without them and her teeth will be less ruined, although given her heritage she doesn’t have much to look forward to in that department anyway.

One morning she woke up and kept asking to wear her tutu, so there you go

Happy 4th

She's a little too big for her pool, but when it's 100 degrees out you do whatever you can to stay cool

Speaking of putting Jenna to bed, it has become one of Jarom’s favorite things to do. Jenna’s bedtime routine consists of brushing her teeth, a bath (depending on how dirty she is), changing into her pajamas, and two stories read to her by the parent putting her in bed. She is allowed to choose which stories she reads. Choice A rotates between 5 or 6 of her favorite books, but choice B is always Sleeping Beauty. And because she hears it every night, she has the entire book memorized. We’re not sure how long she has had it memorized, because this was only discovered recently when she began finishing Jarom’s sentences as he read. But it is pretty impressive, and almost painfully cute to listen to her say things like “burst into the party and cast a cruel spell on the little princess” using the same intonation as her father but unable to pronounce any of her l’s.

Another piece of good news that came was a reimbursement check from Mullins Marking for $350. Those of you with uncommonly good memories may recall that in early November last year Alixa ran over a puddle of paint and marked up our then brand new car, which cost us the mentioned amount to have cleaned up. Immediately afterwards we took many pictures and wrote up the details of the incident and contacted the Virginia Department of Transportation to find out about getting some money back. After a few months we heard back and were told that that particular road project was being handled by the county and we would need to get in touch with them. So we did, and after another month or two they called Alixa back and informed her that they had contracted that out to someone, but that they didn’t know who the contractor was, so they would neither reimburse us nor tell us who else to call. Alixa said okay and hung up, and then called Jarom to tell him what she had been told, which was an obvious and ridiculous lie. So he called them back and harassed the moronlady who answered the phone until she told him the name and contact information for the contractor who had done the work. He then called that contractor and was referred to the subcontractor who was in charge of the road paint, Mullins Marking. He then called them, sent them the pictures and information from many months ago, and was told that he would be receiving a check in the mail for the full amount. From that point, it only required 2 more months and several reminder emails and phone calls before last week, a full 8 months after the original incident, he got a check in the mail. Even by your typical slow government response times this was something special. To celebrate this unexpected windfall (and also their 7th anniversary) Jarom is going to take Lix to the cheesecake factory. He is honestly not sure which one he is more proud of. The refund definitely took more work than the marriage has.

Here are two videos of Lix practicing her baby talk. If you are only going to watch one of them, watch the second.

Last week Jarom had to go on a high adventure with the youth from the church, leaving Lix to fend for herself with the two kids. One evening Jenna was being particularly troublesome while she was preparing for bed. She was refusing to hold still while Lix put her pajamas on and combed her hair, instead jumping around her bed and generally acting like a happy two-year old should. But as mothers sometimes do, Lix reached the end of her rope and had had enough (or it up to here, you may choose.) So she reached over, forcefully grabbed Jenna’s arm and pulled her close and spanked her square on the bum. Jenna looked at her and began to laugh hysterically. I guess you can look at this and say that Lix needs to spend more time in the gym, or that it is probably a good thing that the kid is not afraid of her parents in any way, shape, or form. Also pretty funny, Jarom got a text message from Lix that I will share verbatim:

Jenna just yelled at me "please mommy get in the shower. Your icky mommy! Get in the shower!" it was hilarious

It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now

2011-06-30T01:00:00.013-04:00

The Winn family just got back from Utah, and it was a wonderful week or two by all accounts. Lix spent the first week out there with just the kids while Jarom stayed behind to work. She loves to visit Utah because there are so many wonderful people that she loves and doesn’t get to see very often. She had a roommate dinner, and all the former inhabitants of their apartment in the E. Richards building were there, and they all (except Alixa) had their spouses and any children as well. The word on the street is that they had a fun time. Since she was spending all of her time with Nancy, Jolene, and Kristi, she also got to do another of her favorite things: visit the spalon. She took Jenna along and got her nails did and had a generally fun time being pampered by white chicks (that means it's more expensive.) She cut her hair pretty short, and it looks great.

So pretty

Kristi makes house calls too!

Lix continues to work hard to get rid of her baby weight, and spent many mornings out jogging with Jolie. She also participated in a few P90X sessions. Jenna saw what was going on and didn’t want to be left out, so she grabbed a few 2.5-pound weights and mimicked the girls as they lifted them up over their heads and what not. Apparently all that exercise was a success, because both Lix and Jenna weighed less today than they did when they left for Utah.

The crew also had a very unique experience that I will let Lix tell you about.

We came to Utah on Tuesday to see Grandma and Grandpa. They live in the mission home that conveniently sits behind President Monson's house. From their front door, you can see his back gate, chicken coop, and pigeon house. When we come to Utah, we know there is a chance of seeing President Monson. He frequently comes by to check on his beloved animals and he always uses the back gate to get into his property. On occasion, we have caught glimpses of him, but never got close enough to say hi. Usually when we try to get close, his bodyguards shoo us away. Well, on Tuesday, we were having dinner with a bunch of missionaries who didn’t have appointments and had come to the mission home to eat. After dinner, a companionship was leaving when President Monson pulled up to his back gate. They knew it was he and approached. Surprisingly, Pres. Monson stopped to say hello to them. One of the elders ran in and told everyone to come outside. We all ran because we expected our window to meet him to be small, as his bodyguards are grumpy and don’t let anyone near him. We actually ran out there. Jenna had great timing and had just pooped and smelled terrible, and none of us had shoes on, but it was so worth it. When we got outside, he was chatting with the missionaries and shaking hands and asking where everyone was from. Jenna and I were the last ones out and as we came out he said hello to us, shook my hand, and asked where I was from. I tried to get Jenna to say hi to him, but stranger danger set in and she got all shy. President Monson was great, though, and started wiggling his ears. Not by using his hands, just wiggling by themselves. Jenna thought this was pretty cool and warmed up to him. He then started to tell stories about when he was a mission president in Toronto, and about how he met and married his wife, and that it was his wife, Frances, who had picked out this plot of land for their house to be built on. He then started to sing to us some songs from when he was in scouts. Jenna really liked that too and when he was done she kept asking for "that boy to sing some more." He told stories and sang and chatted for about 20 minutes, and then invited us onto his property to see his chickens and his pigeons. We were stunned that our visit was continuing, and eagerly followed him through the gate. We saw his chickens first. He has four hens. They know his voice and he calls them his "girls". When he came to the door, they came right to him. He gave them a treat of wheat and then we moved on to the pigeons. He has three buildings to house his pigeons. At first I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to raise pigeons. I asked him what he got out of them and he simply replied, “They are beautiful.” After looking at them, I couldn’t agree more. They really were beautiful. He apparently used to show them. He breeds them differently to create different features. It was really quite fascinating. Jenna loved seeing all the birds and chickens. After we got the grand tour of his backyard, he decided that he had told enough stories, and was ready to leave. We chatted for a few more minutes and shook hands again and he was on his way. The whole visit lasted about 45 minutes. While he was talking, Jenna got really serious and just stared at him like she knew he was important. She patiently listened. The spirit was definitely present. The coolest part was realizing that he really is just a normal man who likes to talk and tell stories. I immediately felt very comfortable around him. It was a very special experience, one that I won’t quickly forget. His bodyguard mentioned that he never does this sort of thing. Always brief hellos, if he stops at all. We all felt very special and privileged to have had this opportunity with the prophet of the Lord. Jenna had so much fun that she woke up the next day asking to go see the chickens again. I invited him to come to the Richmond Virginia stake sometime and speak and he said he would look into it. :)

Jenna, terrified. This was before the ear wiggling began.

There was also a day spent at Thanksgiving Point Gardens visiting Farm Country, where Jenna got to run around with her betrothed, Wes. There were all sorts of goats and sheep and chickens to pet and play with, which she loves. There were also pony rides. Jenna has a long history of loving to look at horses but being deathly terrified of them up close, so it was a huge surprise when she happily climbed up on the first little pony, Chief. She then moved onto to a slightly larger pony, and finally rode a normal sized horse without even holding her mom’s hand. Jarom got a slew of pictures and videos of this event while he was sitting at his desk in Richmond. But he did make the trip out to see his family for the second week of the vacation, which included Jenna’s second birthday.

The full-size horse. Also a full-size Jenna.

Jenna knows what goats like

Jenna's little pony

The birthday began with a video chat with Jenna’s favorite people: Natie, Kenz, and Kenna. They had sent her a birthday present and wanted to sing to her. Next they decided to visit the Hogle Zoo. Jenna enjoyed all the animals, but seemed most impressed by the animatronic dinosaurs that are stationed throughout the zoo. The only real disappointment was that they went early and got good seats for the elephant show, only to find out that it had been cancelled due to “technical difficulties.” I’m not sure why you need anything technical to bring an elephant out and have it pick up some trees and do tricks, but whatever. After the birthday girl had seen her fill they went back to Grandma’s to open up a few presents and take a nap. In the afternoon the drove down to Pleasant Grove to have a barbeque with a group of Lix’s cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. There were about a dozen kids between the ages of 1 and 12, so Jenna was in heaven. The Gunthers have the most kid friendly backyard known to man. There is a huge swing set with a slide, lots of grass to run around in, a trampoline to jump on, a cat, a bunch of chickens, a basketball hoop and some older kids to lift her up so she could dunk, and a birthday cake with candles that she was allowed to blow out. At about 9:30 Jarom looked at the time and realized how late it was getting, but Jenna probably would have stayed and played forever if they had let her. She had so much fun that she didn’t even sleep on the way home, although part of that was her excitement about getting one more present from Grandma. She loved her new fire truck and didn’t get into bed until about 11:00. It was quite a birthday.

The next day they tried it again, this time inviting a bunch of Jarom’s relatives over for dinner. Lix made cupcakes and Jenna was a little better at blowing out the candles. Everyone wanted Jenna to take a cupcake and eat it with her hands, surely creating a huge mess and making everyone laugh. Sometimes people think that Lix and Jarom don’t let Jenna be messy because they don’t want to clean her up or because they are repressive parents or whatever else they might think, but this is not and never has been the case. Jarom told people that Jenna would probably enjoy the cupcake more if she had some utensils, but people just sneered at him and told him it would wash off her clothes. He just smiled. After two mostly force fed bites of the cupcake, Jenna had some chocolate on her face and promptly put the cupcake down and asked for a wipe. It was like her first birthday all over again. But that’s our little Jenna and we love her for it.

On Monday Jenna and Bo got to spend the whole day with Grandma while their folks went with Grandpa, Rob, Jolie, Kristi, and David to Sleepy Ridge to play a round of golf. Jarom and Lix combined to shoot an 82, and Lix got one of the worst shaped sunburns I have ever seen. Plus it was a lot of fun for them to hang out with Kristi and David, whose company they enjoy but don’t get to see very much. After the round they took Grandpa to Outback to celebrate his 56th birthday by making him pay for everyone’s food.

Jenna missed doing pushups with her dad and made David and

Jolie (the military arms of the family) fill in for him

The holes in this recap were filled by an inordinately large amount of time hanging out with Jolie and Rob while the mission pres and wife attended to their calling. Mostly they played dominoes, ate Café Rio, and let Jolie and Rob practice being parents by holding Bo. Bo spent approximately 94% of the vacation asleep; thanks to the most awesome vibrating swing you have ever seen. Unlike his sister and mother, he did not even come close to losing weight on his trip and is getting fatter by the minute. Alixa is terrified of the possibility that he will take after his father, who weighed 20 pounds at 4 months. Perhaps some family member has a photo that can be sent my way for inclusion in a subsequent post.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A few of his moments awake, and also fat

Lastly, the trip home. It became painfully obvious to Jarom that Jenna has flown WAY too much during her two years on earth (something in the neighborhood of 25-30 flights). On their first leg, a few minutes after takeoff she propped her head up and told Jarom that she was ready for her cookies now. About 10 seconds later the lady came over the intercom to announce that they would be coming down the aisle with beverages and snacks. It’s like she has an internal clock for this stuff. It got even worse on the next leg. Their 1-hour layover had been cut in half while they sat on Atlanta’s tarmac, so they had quickly purchased some Chick-Fil-A to munch on. They arrived at the gate after everyone else had gotten on the plane, Jarom carrying two carry-ons, two drinks, and a bag of food, Lix with a stroller that needed to be gate checked and a carry-on of her own. So Jenna was walking free, ahead of both of them. She strolled nonchalantly onto the plane and promptly turned left instead of right, sauntering into the cockpit, where she shimmied up into the co-pilots seat and began to look at the buttons and charts that were next to her. The pilot and flight attendants thought this was the cutest thing ever and happily indulged her for a few minutes. Thankfully she didn’t press the self-destruct button or do anything else to get herself thrown off the plane, and they made it safely back home to their overgrown lawn and a pet snake who desperately needed his cage to be cleaned. It sure is nice to have everyone back at home.

Jenna has finally allowed headphones in her ears

Bo, resting from his tiresome vacation

This is where Lix found her daughter after she had checked the stroller

Count your blessings

2011-06-19T20:17:00.004-04:00

We had some visitors down here in Richmond last weekend when Lixi’s parents decided to stop by to attend Blake’s baby blessing. PJ came in on Wednesday and was promptly put to work keeping an eye on the kiddos so that Jarom and Alixa could go to the driving range, where Alixa needed a little practice. She hadn’t played golf for about a year, and her dad’s visit was a great reason to get back out on the course. She was hitting the ball pretty well, but I guess her dainty little fingers don’t do enough hard work, because she got a blister after about 20 minutes. So she had to get a right-handed glove to protect herself. Unfortunately, Richmond is in a little bit of a heat wave right now, so they ended up golfing in 95-degree heat, with lots of humidity. In a misguided effort to save a few dollars, Jarom chose to walk. At the beginning of the day he weighed in at a near-obese 205. When he showered afterwards, the scale happily showed him a less-fat 199.6, which is the first time he’s been under 200 since BYU. Sadly, after a few Gatorades and lots of water, he’s back up to his normal weight. Mars and Lix teamed up to destroy Jarom, and contrary to her expectations, Lix hit a lot of really great shots. Jarom is excited about having his playing partner back.

Pictures from the blessing day

The Hegewalds short visit was also filled with some ward volleyball, a breakfast (appropriately enough) at Mimi’s, a trip to the children’s museum, and a barbeque with a bunch of families in the ward at the Anderson’s house. As an added bonus, the Andersons have about a dozen chickens, and Jenna and Kenna got to go into their cage and run around with them and hold them and generally enjoy themselves. Sunday was the blessing, and once again Jarom wimped out on giving his kid super powers. But he didn’t forget the name or drop the baby or anything else embarrassing, so we’ll call it a wash. And before Jenna was ready to lose two more story readers and before Lix was ready to lose two extra Bo holders, the grandparents had to go home. The consolation prize is that Lix got to take the two little ones out to Utah a few days later to spend some time with the other grandparents, leaving Jarom back in Virginia to celebrate Father’s Day using his nieces and nephews as surrogate children.

The grandparents and their temporary jobs

Jason and Annie were moving this weekend, and since Jarom had no family at home, he decided to jump in the car and drive up to lend a hand. Thanks in large part to the many favors the Winn family has done for others over the years, there was a lot of support from the locals and all of the moving activities went very quickly. The stuff from Bruce’s house and the stuff from their storage locker were all moved into the new home by about 2, which left a few hours to splash around in the pool before heading back over to Jason’s to put beds together and arrange couches and stuff. On Father’s Day morning Jamie made Jarom a great waffle breakfast, and Hailey even made him a little card. Then he drove back to Richmond to eat dinner with Nate and Kenz. It sure is nice to have so much family around even when the family isn’t around.

One of Jenna's favorite games - Wear Dad's Shoes

Here are a few funny Jenna developments. Jenna and Kenna are hilarious, and have taken to calling each other by their full names: Jenna Bear and Kenna Bug. Since all four parents call both kids by both names (Jenna Bear, Jenna Bug, Kenna Bear, Kenna Bug), nobody is quite sure how they decided who would get which name extension, but listening to them call each other those names is about the cutest thing in the world. Jarom has since tried to teach Jenna that her actual middle name is Marie, but she doesn’t seem to believe him. Jenna has also started to show her imagination in new ways recently. The past few weeks there have been frequent appearances of a lion around the house. The first few times that she “saw” this lion it was paired with a request for mom or dad to make him go away, presumably because he was a scary lion. Once Jarom got tired of going into rooms to scare the lion away he told Jenna to go and talk to the lion to find out if he is friendly. She did, and it turns out that he is. So then she would tell them that there was a lion in the shower, and go and have a conversation with the lion. Funny stuff. She is also showing signs that she might be ready to give potty training a shot. Lix has decided to try it when they get back from Utah. We are all cautiously optimistic. It sure would be nice to get one of these kids out of diapers. Cross your fingers for us.

On this morning Jarom was up early with Jenna and told her to play with her animals and read her books until Mom came in to get her so that Lix could sleep in a little. This was the scene when Lix went into her room.

All buckled up and ready for the first leg of her trip to Utah, with Fufu and Finago, of course

Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco, Cinco, Seis

2011-06-03T15:20:00.009-04:00

In my last post I told you all about Jenna’s transition from the crib to a bed. This time there is a less obvious, but far more tear jerking example of just how big she is getting. You may already be aware of Jenna’s borderline psychotic obsession with Disney’s The Lion King. This classic has accompanied her pre-nap and pre-bedtime milks for a number of months. And for most of these months she lovingly requested to watch “Seeba.” It was adorable, as most childhood mispronunciations are. But kids are pretty smart, and after a while they start to figure out that they aren’t saying things quite right, and they want to do better, even if their mother wants them to continue to sound like a cute one-year old until they are deep into their teens. So when Jenna recently climbed painstakingly up onto the couch and with milk in hand, clearly requested to watch “simba”, Jarom and Lix shared a surprised and sad glance. A few days later, as the family was leaving Target she took it even further, asking to have some milk and watch the “lion king” when she got home. She is almost 2, folks. In addition to breaking Lix’s heart by speaking properly, Jenna has become quite a letter wizard. She has the entire alphabet in her bathtub and can accurately identify about 80% of them, depending on the day. Counting to 10 in English is still a struggle, but she can do it better in Spanish.

Still hasn't used it effectively, but it's a start

Jenna was helpful and gave Bo a blanket

Jenna is SOOOO big!

Her first time wearing a headband

Bo is hitting his milestones too, although Jarom is definitely noticing a lower level of excitement as he reaches them. The ability to roll over just isn’t as impressive to him this time as it was the last time around. By the time they get to kid number 5 he is going to have to be writing advanced mathematical equations in preschool in order to get any parental praise. I guess that’s why Kristi and Jolene are such overachievers. But Blake has begun to do some rudimentary rolling over, and at his first doctor’s visit he was in the 90th percentile for height, which will be great when he is someday playing pickup ball at the church on Tuesday nights, desperately fighting to stave off father time and cling to what little remains of his past athletic glory. He is also starting to smile and put on some weight, which means that he looks like more of a cute baby and less of tiny old person.

Assorted Bo faces

To celebrate summer’s arrival the Richmond Winns took a day trip out to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. There were lots of beautiful flowers and trees, and it has a fairly significant kid’s play area that the Ennas took advantage of. But as the morning wore on it started to get hot, so they moseyed on back to the parking lot. On their way they had to walk over a bridge, upon which was sitting a Brown Watersnake enjoying some sun. Kenzie was the first to spot it, as she nearly put her hand on its head. Jarom picked Jenna up to give her a better look, and she immediately reached out to touch it, which made Jarom glad that there aren’t any poisonous snakes around, lest having a pet snake would lead Jenna to do something rash like want to play with a cobra. That afternoon, like so many of them these days, was spent watching the kids splash around in the inflatable backyard pool while sitting in the shade of the backyard. Like everywhere else in the country, it’s been really hot here in Richmond, and the girls can’t get enough water. Plus it is nice to sit down and relax after working out at the gym, something that all 4 Winn adults are doing. Nate got this crazy idea that he should run a half marathon, and he had little trouble pressuring Jarom into participating. So Jarom now has Nate scolding him whenever he does not meet his assigned mileage, which has been every week since this shenanigan started. They are still figuring out which half marathon to run, mostly because they can’t seem to accept the fact that they will have to pay over $50 each just for the right to run farther than they have ever run before. There is an early leader with one in November in Richmond. The most appealing aspect of that particular run is that it is sponsored in part by McDonalds and has 3 “Junk Food” stops along the route. Now that is the kind of marathon that Jarom and Nate can get on board with.

And last but not least, Jarom and Lix honored the brave men and women of the armed forces by finally painting the dining room on Memorial Day. Over a year ago Lix and her dad put up crown molding in there, and since then it has just been sitting as is, with various paint splotches on the wall, looking like a mess. Monday morning the family took a trip to the Home Depot to get just the right shade of blueishgray, and a few hours later it was all finished. For those counting at home that makes 5 rooms painted, with only 2 more left to do (master bedroom and mine/Blake’s.) Everyone who has seen it thinks the color is great, and now the room just needs some curtains, which Lix is already planning.

North by Northeast

2011-05-21T10:36:00.005-04:00

There was a time not too long ago when I thought it was going to be really cool to have a little boy join this particular branch of the Winn clan. Don’t get me wrong, Jenna’s great and all, but deep down it is every snake’s dream to have a little boy owner who will do things like hide you in his teachers desk drawer or his mom’s makeup bag, and bring all his little boy friends over to see me because “it is so awesome that you have a pet snake!” or whatever the kids will be saying 10 years from now. And I suppose in the long haul, it will be great, but right now the only change that I am seeing is less attention from the family and more stuff in the room that I am now sharing. Since it was going to happen sooner or later, Jarom and Lix decided to pull Jenna out of her crib and give her a big girl bed, which is really the futon that used to be in my room. Jenna has never been much of an escape artist when it comes to her beds, so they didn’t think that she would have any trouble adjusting to a bed without bars on it. And they were right. So far the switch has gone as smoothly as they could have hoped. The first night it was a little tough to get her to calm down enough to actually sleep, as she spent about 30 minutes jumping and running all over the gargantuan mattress. But she likes spreading her animals out all over it, and can be found sleeping in a different corner almost every night. About three nights into the experiment she had her first fall. Jarom and Lix were watching TV at about 10 when they heard a very loud thud. Jarom dashed upstairs, expecting to find a sad, crying Jenna. But once again he passed the paternity test, as she was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, sound asleep. Since then they have been careful to line the non-wall side of the bed with a few pillows to act as a buffer.

Jenna and Pete giving her new big girl bed its first test run

We are all continuing to get used to having another kid around. He is still pretty good, mostly staying calm and sleeping and eating regularly enough. It has been a big help to have Nate and Kenz and Kenna so close the last few weeks. Lix will often get calls or text messages asking if Jenna can come out and play, and then she will vanish, sometimes for an hour or two and sometimes all day. Alixa has really appreciated the time that she gets to take naps and not have to worry about chasing Jenna, who never seems to get tired. The other Winns have also recently joined the YMCA where Lix and Jarom work out, which means that Jarom now has a lifting partner and fewer excuses to not exercise, and Jenna has her best friend to hang out with in the daycare. Lix and Kenz might start working out together whenever Lix is feeling up to it again, which will likely be sooner rather than later. In fact, she went jogging for 50 minutes a few days ago, running up and down big hills 3 weeks post-delivery. That girl is a little bit crazy, but it is great that she feels so good already.

Annie did some at home salon work by waxing some noses

Nate was the biggest sissy of the bunch and nearly cried

Lix is trying her hardest to prevent Jenna from feeling like she has been replaced, and that isn’t always easy to do when you are constantly nursing and burping and holding the new little one. So her amazing husband insisted that she have a mommy daughter date and watched Bo while they went to the local high school production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. You might be thinking to yourself, “Self, that doesn’t make any sense. Why on earth would you take a 2-year old to a 3+ hour play where she has to sit in the same chair and behave herself lest she receive menacing stares from the snooty art patrons sitting a few rows up?” And if that 2-year old was anyone other than Jenna, you would be correct. But Jenna is a strange breed of 2-year old and she could not have been happier to sit and watch and listen. And it was great for Lix to not have Bo bothering her so she could just focus on her favorite daughter for a few hours and remind herself that this new baby hasn’t diminished her capacity to love Jenna in the slightest.

Grandma with her favorite grandchild

Lix with her favorite son

Jarom with his favorite daughter

Jenna playing on the swingset, with no pants

And Jenna decided to test that capacity just a few days later. Lix had wandered into Kohls to use a $10 gift card she had gotten in the mail, and was checking out cheap jewelry when Jenna decided that she wanted to run away and play hide-and-seek. Before Lix had a chance to react she had dashed into the forest of clothes racks, which just happens to be the most perfect design for hiding a toddler known to man. This promptly sent Alixa into a panicked state of terror. She told the workers that she had lost her kid and they called a code yellow, which means that they locked down the exits and recruited a whole lot of employees to start wandering around looking for Jenna. They found her after a short while hiding in a corner over in the Men’s department, no doubt in a form of protest against Lix constantly shopping without considering her husband’s need for clothing as well. There were some stern words about staying with mommy and some big hugs, and she has actually been doing much better about staying nearby whenever she is at a store or a park or any other open space. Lix wants to get her one of those animal backpacks that works as a leash, but Jarom is still convinced that they can train her properly.

Kristi and all the grandkids in their wedding outfits

The Winns also took a vacation recently, heading up to the site of their first meeting to attend a wedding reception for Kristi and David, whose actual wedding they had missed due to Blake’s refusal to be born a month early. Every trip up to Delaware is a good time because there are so many old friends and family to hang out with, but this one was even more so because Jarom’s mom, who is serving a mission in Utah, was coming out for the event. Nancy was very excited to meet Bo and Bo was excited to constantly swaddled and rocked by an endless stream of doting aunts and grandmother. The extended weekend was wonderful. The weather was just warm enough that the kids could swim in the pool, although they had to be forcefully removed and sent to the hot tub after a while to avoid hypothermia. Jarom was able to play some golf with the boys, which he loves, and was able to beat JD, which he loves even more. Lix got to leave the children for a few hours and have a little Vietnamese lady rub her feet and draw flowers on her toes while she chatted with the womenfolk. She got to visit Carters, her favorite store in all the world, and the kids now have more clothes than Jarom can even comprehend. There were wonderful group dinners and lots of visiting with cousins and siblings that don’t get seen enough. Plus, Kenna and Natie and Kenzie were there too, and that is pretty much all it takes to keep Jenna excited. And the fun weekend was bookended by visits to the Eastern Seaboards greatest new attraction, the Café Rio that was built just outside of DC. They are about 100 times slower than the Rios in Utah, but the food was great, as was the idea of being able to eat at Café Rio while observing eastern daylight time.

Three amigos

Adri was the youngest of the people who lined up to snuggle with baby Bo

Jenna wanted to help out in the reception preparation. She did good, but then tried to run on the slippery, wet floors and fell and bonked her head. Twice. She's a fast learner.

Her first attempts to eat cereal by herself. We might need more milk.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do

2011-05-06T09:20:00.003-04:00

It is amazing how fast kids grow up. And how easy it is to forget what your kids were like when they were tiny. I suppose this is all part of God’s plan to trick people into having children. You see, if you told people that they would have to spend 9 months being sick, gaining weight, acting hormonal with all sorts of odd food cravings and emotional mood swings, then pass an 8 pound thing out of their body, then spend the next few months taking care of a creature that can do absolutely nothing by itself, feeding it every few hours, changing it’s diapers, waking up often in the middle of the night, and then you would have to deal with it for the next 20-60 years depending on how successfully it adapted to adult life, you would have very few takers. But you spruce that offer up with some cute little smiles and a tax break here and there, and you can get some folks to bite once. Then that kid grows up and learns to talk and walk and do some things for itself and becomes your friend, and you forget about all the agony and get duped into going through the process again. Newman!

He's so little, but he kind of has monkey arms. He can already touch his hands over his head.

But I suppose that as far as newborns go, Blake is actually fairly well behaved. He rarely cries, and has actually been doing a pretty good job of sleeping at night. Some of his toughest hours come between 9 and midnight, which is when Jarom sits on the couch and watches TV with him so Lix can sleep. The big concern around here was that Jenna was a good kid so the next one would be a disaster, but so far (knock on wood) Lix is actually claiming that Bo is an upgrade. We shall see if that lasts. The most significant drawback has in fact been the diaper changing, as Alixa feared it would be. She has been peed on a couple of times, and has learned to take the proper precautions to avoid this. He continues to be a good eater and is starting to plump up a little and lose his newborn skinniness, which is good.

Cord gone, so he gets his first bath

Jenna has been a great big sister, and loves to give baby Bo kisses and keeps an eye on him whenever he is around. She also gets very concerned whenever he is a little grunty, and calls this crying, because I’m not sure she ever really hears him cry. She has also been acting a little more like a two-year old, with some tantrums and general stubbornness. We think that this may be a byproduct of a new kid in town who is stealing some of the attention she used to have, or it may be because she is almost 2. Either way her parents aren’t particularly thrilled about it, but think it is a small price to pay considering how well behaved she usually is.

This is what Jenna would have looked like if she had gone to Kristi's wedding

Jarom took a week off from work to hang out with Lix and Bo and Jenna, and actually spent most of the week taking Jenna out for trips so that Mom and baby could rest. One morning Jenna woke up her parents with some crying at about 5 am. Lix sent Jarom in to investigate, and after about 15 minutes of consoling her and trying to interpret what she was saying between sobs, he figured out that she wanted to go outside and see some animals. He managed to explain to her that it really wasn’t the best time for that and that she should perhaps lay back down for a few hours, but that he would be happy to take her to see some animals when the sun came up. When she arose at her normal time 3 hours later she had not forgotten that promise and happily jumped in her bed asking to see animals. So the family took a trip to Maymont, where they keep friendly goats and sheep and donkeys, along with more exotic wildlife like bobcats, foxes, and black bears. Jenna had a great time seeing the animals and pushing baby Bo in his stroller. It was probably a little too soon for Lix to do so much walking, especially because it is rather hilly, but she handled it well. She estimates that her recovery from this delivery has been one bajillion times better than the last one.

For someone who woke up at 5 to go see this goat, she seems remarkably ambivalent. But later she did feed a goose and a squirrel ritz crackers right out of her hand, so that's something.

In fact, she is already losing lots of weight and is enjoying her new, non-swollen feet. And she must be doing something right because this week she started receiving text messages from someone who claims to be her stalker. The text said “This is your stalker, I know everything about you.” That sort of message is more likely to represent a couple of high school kids picking a random number as opposed to a dangerous psychopath who follows you around and watches you sleep, so she isn’t overly worried. However, in order to teach the kid a lesson Jarom has been calling the number repeatedly, leaving strange messages when he doesn’t answer and asking for Steve whenever he does. Most of those calls have taken place between 1 and 3 in the morning, so that the “stalker” can appreciate being on the receiving end of childish phone pranks.

Jenna always organizes her toys when she is done playing with them

And speaking of phones, Lix hasn’t gotten a new one for a few years so Jarom decided that he would let her pick one out for a Mother’s Day present. She got an LG Octane, which isn’t anything special but does keep the Qwerty keyboard that she loves and provides a significant upgrade in the quality of the camera and will allow her to take videos with her phone. She liked it so much that when Jarom asked her if it was the best Mother’s Day present she had ever gotten she said “Definitely in the top 3.” Normally Jarom would be happy with a top three finish, because that gets you up on the medal stand, and there’s no shame in that. But he thought about it for a second and it dawned on him that this will be Alixa’s second (as in 1,2) Mother’s Day, so he just placed 3rd out of 2, which all of a sudden doesn’t seem so great. I guess next year he will have get her another diamond or a vacation home or something.

Bonus points if you know where the title comes from.

And then there were 4

2011-04-24T21:16:00.005-04:00

Most of you have heard the big news by now and are surely interested to hear about the new tenant in my room, but chronologically speaking, there are some things to cover first. Since the last post Jarom has been spending a lot of time around the house thanks to some fortunate scheduling at work. Things went pretty smoothly at the most recent facility installation that Jarom was working on, so his boss decided that they didn’t need to provide 24-hour on site help any more. But they still needed to be available to help whenever needed, so Jarom was assigned to be on call every night for a little while. This was good because it meant that he was able to spend the days with Jenna and Lix and help chase the little one around while Lix finished cooking the baby. He had a great time hanging out with Jenna, especially in the mornings. Jenna has recently kicked her reading habit up a notch, so the first thing that she says to you when you go into her room in the morning is “Book!” She will then sit in a bed, either hers or yours, and read book after book after book, even forgoing breakfast until she has read them. Then it was breakfast and bath time, and then off to visit a store or the children’s museum or the petting zoo that had been set up at the mall. Naptimes were accompanied with more book reading and some of Jenna’s other favorite pastime, jumping on the bed. Every day she got to watch an episode of Dinosaur train, a newfound love that she got from her cousin Luke on her last trip up to Delaware. The weather has been pretty nice so they could usually play outside, smashing dandelions or going on a bike ride. All in all, Jarom had a great week hanging out with her, and was very sad when there was no kid and he had to go back to work on Monday.

A small collection of Jenna's books, and reading them in bed

But his return to work wasn’t long lived. After several contractional false starts over the weekend, Alixa decided to take matters into her own hands and schedule a sewing date with one of her buddies for Wednesday evening, thus assuring her that she would go into labor and be unable to make it. Unfortunately, Wednesday was April 20th, or 4/20, which as we all know is the international reference to cannabis consumption. Alixa’s fear was that should the child be born on that day, he would be predestined to waste his life in the manner of Harold and Kumar on their search for the nearest White Castle. This trepidation was so significant that as they headed to the hospital and sat in the delivery room between nurse visits there were real discussions regarding whether or not to lie about the child’s birthday if he should arrive before midnight. Fortunately, they didn’t have to face that hopeless reality. The contractions didn’t get too intense until around 2 on Thursday morning. About that time Lix once again came to the conclusion that if there is a drug that can make all this pain go away, she should take it. So the anesthesiologist was brought in and an epidural was given. At 3:47, Blake Owen was born. He weighed in at 8 lbs, 2 oz, and was 22 inches long with a lot of very dark hair. He is a very calm and quiet baby, aced his apgars and barely peeped throughout the initial examinations. The only real complaint that the happy parents have about the entire process is that he came in the middle of the night instead of in the afternoon like his big sister. But St. Mary’s has a nursery and a lot of wonderful nurses who are happy to take your baby off your hands for a few hours while you sleep. Sadly, baby or no baby, there is no sleeping in a hospital because every 15 minutes someone is coming in to pick up the trash or drop off a tray of food or ask to take your baby’s picture or check your vitals or whatever else. And thus went Alixa’s 60-hour stay in the hospital. By the time it was over on Saturday morning, she was quite ready to leave. And of course there were lots of delays in the discharge process, as the doctor was busy and then the nurse was busy and then they couldn’t find someone to take her to the door in a wheelchair, and so on.

Once they were home they called the Bleyls, who had been kind enough to take care of Jenna for a few days. I’m pretty sure she missed her mom and dad, but she had a great time being away. Jenna got to hang out with Courtney, who is one of her favorite people, and also got to adopt three older brothers who were equally excited to have a new little sister around. She took a trip down to the James River, got to eat French fries while sitting on the floor in Courtney’s room, and got some sweet new pins that let everybody know that she is now a big sister. Now that everyone is back in the house, Jenna is slowly getting used to having a new baby. At their first meeting she was a little confused and mostly indifferent. Baby brother had always been an abstract idea that lived in mommy’s tummy, and now it was a real live person. She would look at him a little, but refused to give him a kiss. She has since grown to like him. Today when Lix went in to her room to wake her from her nap, she was excited to see mom carrying baby Bo. She has also started referring to the house as “Bo’s house” and will give him kisses. It looks like she is going to be a great big sister. All in all it was a pretty wonderful Easter weekend and we are all excited about the expanding family and very grateful that everybody is healthy and recovering well, and a special thanks to all the people who have graciously helped us out during the past week in so many different ways.

The Big Sister pins were courtesy of Conner and Courtney

He may have avoided 4/20, but it looks like he is still going to be a troublemaker

Happy Resurrection!

2011-04-12T13:50:00.004-04:00

We are now entering the final stages of baby prep, which means that the kid will probably hang on in there for another 2 weeks, making all of our lives as uncomfortable and difficult for as long as possible. Jarom and Lix have been busy getting his room ready, which means changing what used to be my room into a nursery. When you don’t have a person occupying one of the rooms in the house it tends to be a collection point for all manner of things that you don’t really need or use, but you maybe don’t want to get rid of either. So the past few weeks have been a giveaway spree as Jarom has cleaned out the attic and gone through all the stuff that we don’t need. He got rid of several lamps, a whole bunch of old wedding presents that still hadn’t been used, a bookshelf and its corresponding books, including an especially painful delivery of Alixa’s treasured “Twilight” collection to the local library. But there is a lot more space now, and I am pretty sure Lix wasn’t ever going to read those books again anyway. And after much prodding and correction, Jenna has stopped calling the new baby brother Horsey and has returned to Bo. So that’s a plus.

Playing with Kenna's new AWESOME kitchen set

Jarom’s nesting phase hasn’t just been limited to the indoors. He also noticed, by himself and without any prompting from his wife, that the Crape Myrtle and Dogwood trees in the front yard needed to be pruned. So he swung by the Home Depot, got some pruning shears, watched a Youtube video and got to clipping. I don’t think they look any better right now, but much like every lesson you learned from your parents, apparently it’ll be good for them later.

Hanging out at the Children's Museum

While he was out in the yard working, he happened to catch a glimpse of the state inspection sticker on his car and remembered that they are good for one year, followed by the memory of moving to Richmond exactly one year and 2 months ago. So it was off to Midas to get that little oversight corrected. But as often happens at the auto repair shop, things are never as simple as you might hope. I guess after 120,000 miles sometimes the muffler needs to be replaced because it has rusted a hole in itself. No big deal, throw down a hundred bucks or so and get it taken care of. Well, not exactly. You see, Jarom’s parents lovingly bestowed upon him a luxury car, the likes of which he could never afford on his own, and for which he and his family are forever thankful. But this type of snootymobile can not be bothered with your standard, run-of-the-mill muffler. No, no, it needs the special $550 muffler that also cures cancer and has to be specially ordered from the manufacturer, and we all know how renowned manufacturers are for their discount pricing. But in a few days the part will arrive and Jarom will once again be driving a legally certified vehicle around the state of Virginia.

In their Easter dresses, pre-hunt

This past weekend the Winns of Richmond celebrated Easter. What’s that you say, Easter isn’t for another two weeks? Are you sure? Well, what’s done is done. Due to upcoming travel plans for the Nate Winn family and upcoming family expansion plans for the Jarom Winn family, they decided to hold their easter egg hunt a little early. They figured the kids don’t know what day Jesus came back to life anyway, so no big deal. Alixa and Kenz “hid” some eggs and assorted other dollar store treats out in the yard while Jarom and Nate played on Kenna’s new kitchen set, and then it was off to the races to see who could collect more loot. Much to Alixa’s surprise, Jenna seemed to be the more aggressive gatherer. But both girls had a lovely time and the adults sat around in the nice weather and chatted for a while afterwards. It is a nice time of year here in Richmond.

Savoring the fruits of their labor

The other cool thing that has been happening around here is Jarom’s long distance participation in an old friend’s conversion process. Carrie Fitzpatrick (now Fisher) was a friend of Jarom’s at good old AI dupOnt high and for about 8 years afterwards had been lost. But the miracle of facebook brought her back a few years ago, and they have emailed each other sporadically since then. Then a couple months ago he finds out that Carrie is getting divorced and has been hanging out with (and for a time, dating one) a bunch of mormon folks. Not long after, she started meeting the missionaries and wouldn’t you know it, she got baptized this past weekend. Now if you were to ask high school Jarom to provide the odds on each of his friends being baptized into the LDS church later in their lives, and you put $1 down on Carrie Fitzpatrick, you would now be very wealthy. And Carrie would tell you the exact same thing. But she did go with Jarom to seminary once, and I guess Sister Rice brought her A game that morning, because I doubt there has ever been a person more excited about joining the church than Carrie is. And it has been very cool for Jarom to be able to talk to her and listen to the changes that she is making and the excitement she has for her family’s future. It has also caused him to look back at some other people from his high school days and wonder what they may have become. I guess you never really know what sort of stuff is possible.

Hopefully, the next post will have a baby weight to go with it.

In case the first video wasn't enough for you. Notice that the documenters outnumber the documentees 1.5 to 1.

Nighttime...Daytime!...Nighttime...Daytime!

2011-04-04T21:32:00.005-04:00

Jarom started his third Go-Live at work this past week, which means that they are installing the computer system that he works on at another hospital. It also means that he and his coworkers have to provide 24-hour support for a few weeks, and since he is a natural night owl Jarom is on the 11p-7a rotation. This is not a good situation for his marriage, because Alixa assumes that if you are home you should be hanging out with her and Jenna, and not sleeping. So to avert marital disaster, she packed up her bags and took Jenna up to Delaware to spend a week with cousins. Kristi was also having her bridal shower that weekend, so they were able to kill two birds with one painstakingly uncomfortable drive up the most congested interstate in the world.

Her week was spent hanging out with Jamie and Annie and their little ones, letting Jenna play in Grandma’s basement (which is the best place in the world for a one year old), trying to keep Jenna from contracting Luke’s illness, going to Carters to buy things that no child needs but every mother wants, and visiting with one of her best friends in the world, Amanda. Both girls had a great time, even though they missed Jarom a little. While there, Jenna discovered that she loves dinosaurs, and Luke has plenty of books and shows and toys to foster that new passion. This gave Alixa some much needed baby boy prep, as she will surely be able to tell the difference between a Pterosaur and an archaeopteryx, or a T-Rex and an Allosaurus in the not too distant future. The original plan was to return on Thursday, but there was quite a rainstorm that Lix had no desire to drive in. On Friday morning, she looked out the window and saw snow covering everything and wondered if perhaps the universe was telling her to get a divorce. But the snow melted and she was able to get back to Richmond safely, if not quickly.

Jenna still isn't sure how she feels about puppies

Jenna, Addison, and Hailey at the Children's Museum

Sometimes Brownie attacks Jenna in her sleep

Jarom wasn’t totally unproductive while they were away. He got the lawn mower out and cut the grass for the first time this season, which really should have happened a few weeks ago. He (along with his brother) also coached his young men’s basketball team to an undefeated season and the Stake tournament championship. The final was everything you might imagine, or see depicted in a bad Mormon comedy. There were technical fouls, ejections, obnoxious parents cheering on their obnoxious kids from the stage, and a couple of refs who could be heard muttering “why did I agree to do this” on several occasions. But in the end, the better team (Jarom’s) prevailed. And if the tournament gets canceled next year as a result of the stellar show of sportsmanship, as some are saying it will, that just means one more year as the reigning champs. He also managed to play some golf, watch some movies, and work a little bit. But he missed his family a lot, and could not have been happier to get them back after a week.

Everyone gathered around the computer enjoying the YouTube video below

Now that Lix is back the house is going all out to get ready for this new kid. There has been a whole lot of cleaning and organizing and getting rid of old stuff and putting junk up in the attic, and the result is a house that feels clean and tidy and a mom that feels like she is ready to add another rat to the mix. The due date is April 22, but I don’t think that Lix is going to make it that far. Bo will probably be here in a week or two. And speaking of Bo, Jenna has decided that she is not cool with that name. A few months ago when you asked her what baby brother’s name was, she told you Bo. Recently this changed, and neither Jarom nor Lix have any idea what prompted it. But now if you ask her, she says that the baby’s name is Horsey, and she will not be swayed, even if you try to correct her. We’ll see if she sticks with it. Maybe it’s a sign and we should actually use it.

If you give a _ a _

2011-03-24T14:53:00.003-04:00

Most people go through distinct phases in their lives. When you are young, sometimes you have friends and associate with people whose company you enjoy because they are funny and entertaining, in a Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O kind of way. They make you laugh, and hanging out with them gives you something to do. But as you grow older and hopefully mature, you realize that while those relationships may have been fulfilling once, and even though they may still be somewhat functional now, they are starting to be a little beneath you, and you should probably try to kick it up a notch. This is what has happened to Jarom and Alixa’s wire rack shelves. It was purchased a few years ago and has been a great thing for them to have in their past few kitchens, but Lix thought it was a little cheap and trashy and wanted to upgrade. So for her birthday Jarom told her that they could get some cabinets to install in its place. Unfortunately, after some research it was determined that cabinets would be a little too expensive and more of an installational challenge than Jarom wanted to take on. So he moved to plan b, which consisted of installing some shelves in the pantry so that the space in there could be maximized, and purchasing a buffet table to replace the metal shelves. Thanks to some kindly birthday donations from loving parents and some fortunate timing on a recent Walmart sale, both things were taken care of this week without destroying the budget.

One is before, one is after. You figure out which.

First up were the shelves in the pantry. Jarom enjoyed looking at all of the components and figuring out which ones they should get to be able to take greatest advantage of the irregular space of the pantry, while Alixa mostly just scared herself to death by playing with the pneumatic cutting tools that are used for customizing the length of the shelves (who would have guessed that it was on?!) After getting them on the walls and level, Jarom and Alixa started organizing the shelves and throwing away the foodstuffs that had expired. Thanks to some food storage “gifts” they have received from their mothers in the past year there were many items with sell by dates in the ‘08-‘09 range, and a few as far back as ‘05. Things got cleared out and organized, and it now looks great and holds all of our food. But if you give a Lixi an organized pantry that frees up some space in the kitchen, she’s probably going to want a new piece of furniture to fill the space. So the next step was the buffet table. Lix had looked at some higher end furniture places and found some that she liked, but at a hefty price. But on Monday as she meandered through Walmart she found one that was of fairly good quality and a full $100 below MSRP. So she snatched it up, made Nate help carry it around, and made Jarom spend about an hour putting it together. And if you give a Lixi a new piece of furniture in her kitchen, she’s going to want to paint an accent wall behind it. So she got some green paint, threw up some tape and down a drop cloth and did the whole thing while Jarom was out playing basketball one evening. She really wanted to keep going and paint the entire kitchen, but at some point you just have to explain to the mouse that it has had a cookie and it is time to be done.

Jenna has been busy training for her future career as a long distance runner. While Jarom never would have guessed this at the time, the fact that his house has a complete loop in it has turned out to be perhaps the single greatest feature. Jenna will spend dozens of minutes a day running around the loop as though it were a track. She will do this by herself or with a friend. Sometimes she wants her dad to chase her, and will chastise him severely if he should desire to stop for any reason. She sometimes runs with Kenna, although Kenna will usually stop before Jenna is ready to, giving up excuses like “too heavy” and instead offering to ride the bike alongside Jenna. She is very supportive and will clap and cheer her on, which makes me think that she will be a great trainer someday.

I apologize for the length of this video, but I am not exaggerating when I say that this had been going on for at least 5 minutes before it starts and at least 15 minutes after it stopped, so be thankful it isn't longer.

Baby Babbles Boutique is wrapping up a 3-week consignment sale this weekend, and it has been a mild success. There is still a lot of inventory, but it is slowly dwindling and nobody had to actually stay on-site for this sale, which was quite nice. The other exciting thing around here has been BYU’s run through the NCAA tournament and the Jimmermania that has become a staple on ESPN. Here’s hoping it will continue a little bit longer. Tomorrow Lix and Jenna are headed back up north for Kristi’s bridal shower and some hanging out while Jarom starts working some odd hours at work and enjoys the alone time that will be ever scarcer in a few more weeks when kid #2 arrives. Alixa is getting less and less comfortable and more and more anxious to be done with this whole ordeal. She is currently in the “we are never doing this again” phase, but Jarom will not be so easily duped. She went through this phase with Jenna during her last month, only to enter the “my baby is growing up so fast that I need another one to replace it” phase about 2 months after Jenna was born. She says that this time is different, but time will tell.

She LOVES pockets

Selection Sunday

2011-03-13T22:09:00.004-04:00

Alixa has reached the 6-week mark in her new baby countdown, so she decided to take a weekend trip up to Delaware to have a little baby shower/party with many of her friends there. They had a great meal at the Olive Garden and there were many wonderful presents that little Bo will surely appreciate someday soon. Jarom took advantage of the trip to plan a little golf outing with Jason and JD, despite the chilly weather. It was a great time, and was capped off by both Jason and JD missing an 18-inch putt (they claim it was actually 19) that would have given their team the win.

Alixa's favorite Delaware people

It was a miracle that these two would sit down and play together without killing each other

Jenna was thrilled to have a few days to play with her cousins in Grandma’s house. She had a great time with Luke and Hailey and Adri and Juliet, with some visits from Loni and her girls as well. And the house is a veritable paradise for those kids. Jenna loves climbing the stairs and would often disappear for long stretches of time before Jarom or Lix would find her in someone’s room playing with toys. This did not please Lix because it meant that she had to climb approximately 3,429 flights of stairs during the 72-hour stay. She made Jarom promise that he would never make her live in a house with more than two levels, and if it can be less than that, all the better.

A relaxed gathering for little people

Running around Longwood Gardens

As they packed up to go, Jenna told her parents that she was poopy. They gave her a sniff and detected nothing, which is usually a foolproof test. But apparently this was an odorless #2 (why can’t she have more of those?) and so they ended up leaving the poor little girl in a poopy diaper all the way home and through the night until the next morning. At that point it had burned her poor little bum raw, so the last few days have been filled with a crying Jenna at every diaper change and the announcement that Jenna’s bum hurts pretty much every time she had to get into or out of a chair. Jarom and Lix felt like terrible people, which they are, but it seems to be getting better.

Jamie was upset about Jarom pulling this stunt with Ethan. She feels that only dads should be allowed to kill their kids. Whatever. He looks more like Jarom than JD anyway.

Jenna’s swearing problem has also become more prevalent in her everyday life. She now replaces most of her L’s and W’s with an F sound. This means that such common words as look, Luke, work, and walking have all become words that would not escape uncensored on any TV channel. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Jenna is unwilling to move around without telling everyone how it is that she is moving, whether that be running, walking, or jumping. So poor Alixa has had to hang her head in shame every time she walks into a store with her daughter saying loudly, “I falking, I falking, I falking.” There have been some disbelieving stares as people try to process what they are hearing from such an otherwise cute little toddler.

The newest addition to Jenna's stuffed animal family, Brownie

At work, Jarom had his mid-year evaluation and it looks like he will be able to keep his job for a little while longer, which is great news. He has another hospital installation coming up in a few weeks, so Lix is already thinking about skipping town to head up for Kristi’s bridal shower while Jarom works the night shift. Baby Babbles Boutique is doing a consignment sale for the next three weekends, so that has distracted her a little for the time being. She is also in charge of her playgroup’s activities for the month. Her first was a field trip to the greatest fast food restaurant of all time, Chick-Fil-A. The next one will be a day at the park, which is wonderful because the beautiful Richmond spring weather seems to have arrived for good.

Squeaky Squeak Squeaker Squeaken

2011-02-24T16:01:00.012-05:00

Jenna can rarely be seen these days without her bunny hat and mittens.

There is a new sound around the Winn household: squeaking. Recently Alixa and Kenz took the kiddos to the children’s museum and saw a little girl there wearing some shoes that squeaked when she walked. This reminded Lix that she had purchased a pair of these shoes some 6 months ago. At the time they were far too large for little Jenna, and actually scared her when they squeaked and made her cry, but Jenna has grown up a lot since then so she pulled them out to give it another try. This video is basically the first time that Jenna tried them on.

You might think that she would get tired of the novelty of the squeaks, but you would be wrong. Every time Jarom and Lix let her wear them, Jenna makes every step as deliberately as possible so as to get the maximum volume out of her shoes. She also has no concern for the feelings of those around her. So when baby Bo had a craving for PF Changs the other day Jarom had to make sure and carry her to their table so that everyone else’s dinner wouldn’t be interrupted by the sounds of little squeaker.

This was Jenna's first car cart experience at the grocery store. She loved it and it prevented the other shoppers from wanting to throw her shoes away.

We did have a few days of beautiful weather last weekend, with temperatures climbing up into the 60’s and 70’s. So Jarom got to go play a few holes of golf and Jenna got to spend more time running around outside. Perhaps in part because of her new shoes, Jenna has taken to jumping everywhere she goes, instead of walking. She also enjoys narrating it as she goes. So in case the repetitive thumping coming from the other room doesn’t give it away, you will also hear Jenna saying “jumping, jumping, more jumping!”

Sadly, the warm weather has left us, and when the chilly temps came back so did Jenna’s sniffles. She’s had a little bit of a fever and it has made it tough for her to sleep well at night. The family took a trip to Sam’s club to get some groceries, and as they were walking around Jarom noticed that even her squeaking had become sad. The poor kid just didn’t have the energy to put any emphasis on her steps. But I’m sure she’ll be back to her old self in no time. But for the moment, we are trying to be extra nice to her, increasing her daily allotment of The Lion King from half a movie a day to the whole thing. She sure loves her Siba.

Lix had an experience with Jenna that she wanted to share, so I’ll let her wrap this post up-

Jenna is a very picky eater. She likes maybe five real person foods, and still eats baby food for at least one meal a day. I think she just cant handle new textures. I blame this on the fact that she has never put anything in her mouth. Even when she was a baby, nothing went into her mouth. I thought it was great then, but I have realized this is how babies eat new foods. She also has a VERY sensitive gag reflex, and just putting something foreign in her mouth makes her puke. Not just gag, but puke. It is a disgusting mess.

Well, the other day, I was talking to my dad and he said that we needed to be better about getting her to eat better foods. He said to bribe her with something good to eat. Now, I have read that this is bad, but I decided that he is right. She is 20 months old and at this rate will be eating baby food in preschool. So last week, we started. We told her she couldnt get up from her high chair until she had at least one bite of what we were eating for dinner. She was doing so well! You may have read about the meat loaf. That was very exciting. She also had some chicken and stuffing on Sunday and was doing very well. It was still only a bite, but she was trying it and not puking. So, we tried again last night. I found the smallest blueberry I could find and cut it into quarters. We are talking the smallest bits of blueberry you have ever seen in your life. We told her she couldnt get up until she had one bite. Well, she sat there for about 20 minutes and didnt even touch it. We tried singing, we tried bribing with oreos and peanut butter eggs and every other good thing we could think of. But nothing. Then she started to cry, but this was not a battle I was going to lose. So she sat sobbing in her high chair for another 25 minutes while I did the dishes. I kept telling her she could get up as soon as she ate just one small bit of blueberry. I even tried putting her in front of the tv to watch Micky Mouse Clubhouse to maybe distract her. But she just watched and cried and ate no blueberries. Finally, I decided to sneak one in while her mouth was open. Big mistake. I guess maybe because she was still crying and so upset she immediately spit it out and still puked! Just the thought of having it in her mouth made her throw up. So then I gave up on the blueberry. By this time it was her bed time but she hadnt had any dinner yet. So I tried to give her her noodles, but she wasnt having any of that either. So finally, I broke down and gave her some baby food. I may be a mean momma, but I'm not heartless. I wasnt going to make her go to bed hungry. She immediately opened her mouth and ate all of her baby food saying "yummy" after every bite. She was so worn out from 45 minutes of sobbing about the stupid blueberry, she went down extra easy for bed. The next day she woke up with a fever and was sick, so now I am thinking maybe that was the problem. Maybe one day she will eat real food, but I'm not holding my breath.

Jenna's sad puffy face after the blueberry incident

Mr. Fox

2011-02-13T22:26:00.003-05:00

Most people do not like aging. Well, that’s not entirely true. Most people wish that they were older until they reach a certain age, usually somewhere in the low to mid 20’s, and then spend the rest of their mortal existence looking back longingly on the days when they were fit, strong, full of energy and life, and with a world of hope and promise laid out in front of them. Well, Alixa just keeps distancing herself from that point in time. On Groundhog Day she began her 27th year. For her birthday dinner Courtney Bleyl offered to babysit both Jenna and Kenna so that all four parents could have a nice meal at the Outback, one of Alixa’s favorite places. That night her mom arrived. She had decided to visit to celebrate Lixi’s birthday and attend the baby shower that the nice people in the ward were throwing for her. The weekend was filled with lots of eating out and getting presents, and little Bo now has more clothes than he’ll be able to wear for the first few months of his life.

Jenna made this arrangement of her animals. You can tell that Alixa took the photo because the camera strap is in the frame. Ansel Adams she is not.

Jenna also seems to be aging at an unbelievable pace. She has started walking up and down the stairs “big girl” style, which means not on her hands and knees. And she gets very upset if you try to carry her up or down, going so far as to insist that you take her back so that she can do it herself. She has also progressed significantly in her talking, and now strings sets of words together. She is getting better at speaking clearly, and is quite patient when her parents don’t understand what she is saying and she has to try and explain it to them. She very much enjoys practicing, and will repeat things that people say, especially in songs. Lix takes her and Kenna to a singing group every Tuesday and they are both learning the words to lots of songs.

As you watch this video, keep in mind that we are still working on her counting ability and request that you be patient with us.

There was also a small milestone in Jenna’s eating today. Lix made some meatloaf for dinner and Jenna was told that she could not leave her highchair until she had a bite of it. It took about 20 minutes, but finally she wanted to get down so bad that she decided to try it. She seemed to like it, but not enough to take another bite. Alixa could not have been happier.

We also had our first experience of “trying to teach your kid a word and it comes out as profanity” today. Jenna has a puzzle with a number of barn animals on it, and outside of the hen house there is a fox. X is a hard sound to make, because you have to combine the K and the S sounds into one. So I guess Jenna just decided that once she makes the K sound she is done, saying fok instead of foks. I am sad to say that as soon as Jarom realized what was happening he began laughing hysterically, which only encouraged Jenna to repeat the word over and over. For the moment, fox seems to be one of her favorite words and we have irrefutable evidence that Jarom is a bad person.

Utah Vacation, Part Trois

2011-01-30T17:43:00.003-05:00

There is a creepy new show on TLC called “My Strange Addiction” that chronicles the bizarro lifestyle choices of people who eat couch cushions or comet, sleep with their hair dryer, or go tanning as often as thrice daily. Alixa has her own obsession, although hers is not especially unique, as it is shared by many people, notably including her brother-in-law Nate. She constantly craves Café Rio pork salads. So much so that even though we were in Utah for two full weeks at the end of December, she forced her family to pack up and head out again only three weeks later so that she could get her fix. Her addiction has also caused her to react in a hostile manner towards those people who are “crazy” enough not to feel the same way she does. She often speaks of wanting to punch people in the face for not fully appreciating the goodness of the Café. She may be clinically insane, but she makes great lunches for Jarom to take to work every day, so he accepts the bad with the good.

Lixi trying to take a nap

While they were out in Zion collecting stamps towards their next free burrito, they decided to attend the 80th birthday party for one Paul B Winn on the top floor of the Joseph Smith building at Temple Square. There was quite a collection of relatives and friends, many of whom Jarom had not seen in years and Alixa had not seen in ever. It was a touching tribute to a great guy who has lived a pretty remarkable life and seems to have a few decades left in him. All of the Winn children made the trip, so the rest of the weekend was spent doing a variety of fun things with the family. On Saturday there was a bridal shower for Kristi, attended by a whole lot of women. Jarom and Jenna did the smart thing and took a nap that lasted nearly the entire time. Then they drove down to Lehi to see Zak and Sam and their little munchkin, Eva. After a meal at Café Rio it was off through the Provo Canyon up to Heber where they had a horse-drawn sleigh ride planned. When told that she was going to meet some horses, Jenna was nearly out or her mind with excitement. However, once she saw that they were a pair of 2,000-pound draft horses and were nothing like the stuffed animals she loves so much, she decided that she didn’t really want to be close to them. Her mean mother forced her to get within a few feet, which terrified her and brought out some serious tears. The ride was far more relaxing, despite the chilly weather. Jenna enjoyed looking up through the clear mountain air and pointing out the many stars that she saw.

Throughout these past few trips the Winns have noticed an aggressive independent streak that Jenna is developing. It is fun to watch her learn to do things by herself, but sometimes it gets a little tiresome because she becomes irate if you help her in any way, shape or form. In fact, if she is in her independent mood and you help her, she will undo whatever help you provided so that she can start from scratch all on her own. So if you put her up on a couch that she was climbing by herself, she will jump back down to the ground and began the ascent again. She will also scream at you, usually just “no, no, no!” at the top of her lungs. So Jarom and Lix have learned to just let her take her time and do her thing, or to distract her if they need something done right away, like buckling up her car seat or putting on her shoes when it is time to leave. But it is definitely cool to watch her personality grow and to see her be able to do so many things that she couldn’t before. She is always proud of herself when she accomplishes her task, and she has learned to say “ta-da!” when she finishes.

A fine example of her newfound independence

On Monday they headed back down to Provo to take some pictures of Eva and Jenna at the request of their mutual grandmother PJ. Lixi’s aunt Christy was kind enough to offer up her services as a photographer. Her original idea was to go up the canyon a little ways and get some shots of the kiddos with the snow and the river as a backdrop. Sounds beautiful, right? Except that the two subjects were dressed in summer dresses, one isn’t old enough to sit up by herself and the other is afraid of playing in the snow. So after about five numbing minutes we headed back down the canyon to take some pictures in and around Christy’s house. I don’t have the photos yet, but I’ve heard that there should be some pretty cute ones. After the pictures Jenna left with PJ, and Jarom and Alixa headed to Rodizio’s, where they were meeting a large contingency of the Winn family for a wonderful evening of Brazilian grilled meat. Due to some traffic congestion most of the party was delayed, leaving Jarom and Lix by themselves at the table for about 20 minutes. Classier people would have waited until everyone got there before they hit up the salad bar and started having chunks of cow delivered to the table, but little Bo gotsta eat, and Jarom didn’t want Lix to feel bad for eating solo. So the table was already warmed up when everyone finally got there. But nobody cared and everyone enjoyed themselves.

They both fit, so their parents could carry them onto the plane

Tuesday began with a trip to Mimi’s for a farewell breakfast, and then it was off through the snowstorm to the airport for the first flight of their three leg journey to Denver, Minneapolis, and then on to Richmond. Fortunately there were lots of empty seats so everyone could stretch out a little, which is always a nice treat. So now everyone is back in Virginia, where there are no Café Rios to be found. Hopefully her withdrawal will not be too severe, because who knows when we’ll be able to visit the Rockies again.

Basketball Diaries

2011-01-30T01:40:00.003-05:00

Fourteen months ago Jarom was graduating from the University of Tennessee and amid a particularly fruitless job search when on a trip to Delaware for Thanksgiving his wife spoke to his brother and found out about a job opportunity in Richmond. Nate agreed to assist in the hiring process, speaking with his boss and essentially helping him to get through the preliminary stages, with only one condition: if Jarom got the job, he had to live within the same ward boundaries so that they could play basketball together.

Well Jarom got that job, and he has been playing basketball with Nate roughly every week since his arrival. Usually this means pickup ball, but during the winter months it also means playing for the church team. Last year Nate and Jarom were central characters in a feisty game against the nearby Innsbrook ward. Multiple technical fouls were called and according to some witnesses it nearly came to blows. Unfortunately, many of the people on the Innsbrook team were among the group that played pickup basketball each Wednesday. Soon after that game they decided to switch the night that they played to Tuesday, and asked the Winns to not make the switch with them. Some feelings were hurt, but both Nate and Jarom have managed to carry on with their lives.

Flash forward to January 28, 2011, when Jarom and Nate get to play the Innsbrook ward once again. For the purposes of this story I will tell you that while there are many people on the Innsbrook team that are whiny and annoying and do not like the Winn brethren, there is one in particular who seems to lead the way. I don’t know his name, so we will simply call him #12. Now it seems that #12 had not forgotten the events of last year, because as soon as Jarom entered the game and touched the ball he began to complain in his best little brother voice about how Jarom was constantly carrying the ball. When he was not in the game he would whine from the bench, and when he was in the game he would whine on the court. He whined to the refs, but to his great consternation they seemed unwilling to call the obvious violation. He whined to Jarom, who thanked him for his concern and referred him back to the refs. And yet not once was the violation called.

Actual photo of #12

This does not mean that his complaining did not yield any results. Because when Jarom knows that there is something that really annoys someone, he is an expert at snidely bringing it up over and over, until the person’s head explodes or they grow up and get over it. It gives him great joy to get inside another player's head. Nate also took notice of the griping and decided to react in his own way.

It is important to understand a little about Nate and basketball. No one would call Nate a great basketball player, but Jarom very much enjoys playing with him because he does a few things very well, he knows what those things are, and he doesn’t try to do anything outside of his skill set. He plays good interior defense, he gets rebounds, both offensive and defensive, and he sets picks. And setting picks is his favorite thing to do when opposing teams bother him, because it is the best way for him to capitalize on the mass advantage he enjoys over other people. So as soon as #12 began running his mouth, both Jarom and Nate knew what needed to happen. Jarom brought the ball down the court, guarded tightly by #12. Nate came just outside of the 3-point arc and set his feet. Jarom started to go right, then changed directions and drove hard towards the left. #12 was working feverishly to stay with Jarom and never even looked up. He practically bounced off of Nate and crumpled to the ground as Jarom calmly sank the now wide open 15-footer, and it was impossible for either Winn brother to keep from smiling as they ran back on defense and watched #12 slowly pick himself up and immediately seek out a ref to let him know that he had just been hit by an illegal moving screen. It made me a little sad that Bruce could not have been there to see his boys in action. In my mind’s eye I envision him jumping out of his chair on the sideline, sticking his tongue out and squinting while flicking his wrists frantically. He would have been so proud.

The whining continued throughout the game, which was an edge-of-the-seat, overtime victory for the Winn’s team, followed by a less than cordial hand shake between Jarom and #12 and a passive aggressive apology for all of the carrying violations he had committed. Ah, the joys of being mentally superior to an opponent. Both Nate and Jarom spent the next day or so on cloud nine, because there is no feeling that is better than beating a whiny, complainy little girl who really deserves it. I can’t wait till next year.

Back to the lab again

2011-01-18T17:38:00.002-05:00

Having returned from the Far West, Jarom and Alixa began the new year by laying out some resolutions and getting to work on them. During a mean-spirited game that was played in Grandma and Grandpa’s basement after a family home evening Alixa was asked to make a resolution for her husband. She chose “Go to the gym three times a week.” It hurt Jarom a little bit, but only because his physique has plummeted from mediocre to embarrassing over the past few years. The truth is painful. So he has been working out more, and Lix has been great about encouraging him. Unfortunately she is still baking cookies and sweet breads and making muddy buddies about every third day, so it seems to be a zero-sum game. I suppose there are worse things than being married to a great chef who loves to make yummy treats.

Another of the resolutions is to get the house ready for the arrival of Blake Owen (I reserve the right to make any adjustments to this name as needed.) This mainly consists of doing some organizing, especially in my room, which has hitherto been a storage repository but will soon become an actual room with an inhabitant that actually needs space to operate. So there has been some putting of stuff in boxes and sending it up to the attic, and the semi-regular analysis of old clothes to decide what things can be sent to the goodwill. The decision was also made to organize the upstairs linen closet and to provide the family room with some cubbies for the kidlet’s toys. Alixa received the inspiration from Wes Carter and bought the equipment at Target. I will admit that it has done wonders as far as keeping the floor free of toys and Jarom doesn’t trip nearly as often when walking through the house. It’s only mid January, so I’d be cautiously optimistic about the continuation of these goals, but so far, so good.

The new year has also brought with it a new church schedule, which has been great. The ward is now meeting at 9 am, which means that the Winns are less likely to show up early, but more likely to not be grumpy because church is interrupting their naps. Another big change is that Jarom and Alixa now have less of an excuse for not paying attention in Sunday school because Jenna hit the 18-month mark and now gets to attend nursery. It was little surprise that on the first day they went to drop her off she bolted away from Lix and excitedly began playing with the kitchen set, forgetting that she even had a mother. They have puzzles and books and a slide and other kids in there to play with, so Jenna is pretty much in her own personal nirvana. And the nice women that are there to take care of her love that she will sit on their lap for an entire book reading and that she pretty much never cries or complains. Jarom and Alixa are very nervous that the universe somehow messed up and gave this kid all of the good qualities of an entire family and now each subsequent child will be an unmanageable devil.

Basketball season has also started for the church leagues, and Alixa and Nate have been called as the young women’s and young men’s basketball coaches, respectively. This means that Jarom has unofficially been called as the assistant coach to the young women’s and young men’s basketball teams. He has practice on Thursdays from 6-7 (boys) and 8-9 (girls), games on Friday evenings (old men) and two on Saturdays (boys and girls). Throw in the once a week pickup game that he regularly plays in and that is a lot of basketball. But he very much enjoys it, and it is a lot of fun for him to help Lix and Nate coach. So far the teams have an aggregate record of 4-1. Jenna also enjoys hoops, and has become a very vocal cheerleader. Alixa taught her how to yell “Go Daddy” and “Go Natie” while watching their latest game, and she knows that she should never clap for the opposing team.

The only negative to speak of recently is a little bit of sickness that seems to have invaded the Winn home. Jarom has been battling a sore throat that isn’t too bad except for the occasional hacking up of phlegm that makes anyone within earshot want to puke, and Alixa and Jenna have suffered from it as well. The problem with Jenna is that she has a very sensitive gag reflex and sometimes she coughs so hard that she barfs. Jarom taught her how to take deep breaths in order to calm herself down, and she has gotten pretty good at controlling it herself. We aren’t sure if it is still the cough or if she has caught something else, but last night was a terrible mess. Jarom was heading to bed around 12:30 when he heard a cough and some gagging from Jenna’s room. He quickly went in and found her sitting up and crying, having thrown up on her favorite stuffed animal, Pendy Pete. He picked her up to take her to the tub, and on the way she threw up in the hall and again in the bathroom. They washed her up and cleaned up the mess and finally got her back to bed around 1:45. At about 2:30 she threw up again, and it was back to the tub. Jarom stayed home from work to take care of her today, as Lix needed to baby-sit Kenna and it probably isn’t a good idea for them to hang out all day together. She seems to be doing better, which is great. Hopefully it was just a quick bug and it is all out of her system now.

On a lighter note, everyone is very excited about Grandpa Winn’s 80th birthday party this weekend, where there will be lots and lots of cousins and family. Cross your fingers that everyone will be back to full strength by then so that they can have a great time.

Utah Vacation, Part Deux

2011-01-09T18:33:00.005-05:00

In the Winn family, Christmas is not associated with fancy meals, as we (I consider myself a Winn) are not a fancy people. After presents are opened in the morning, a large breakfast would be prepared and eaten. The rest of the holiday you were pretty much on your own to make whatever you chose. The Hegewald family tradition is pretty much a polar opposite. Christmas dinner is a fancy, dress up, sit down affair akin to Thanksgiving. In an effort to keep a small part of her childhood alive, Lix asked Nancy if it would be okay to have a nice dinner on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas. Her position is not anti-dinner, she just doesn’t want to spend all of her Christmas preparing food, so she was thrilled with the idea of Lix making some stuff. A honey-baked ham was ordered and picked up and rolls, potatoes, etc… were gotten and some class was brought into the Winn Christmas. It didn’t last long, but it was there for a moment.

Lixi's masterpiece

Christmas morning came at a leisurely pace, since there are no children at an age that puts them in a hurry. It was just the two toddlers and a bunch of adults. So the family went downstairs whenever and opened gifts and chatted about them and about each other. Grandpa got a ridiculous hat that he will wear a little too proudly, a Russian style one with the ear flaps that can be folded up. David got a coat that was very nice, but he complained that it was a little too tight in the arms. We get it, you’re a meathead. Alixa got the maternity coat that she has been asking for, so now she doesn’t have to choose between wearing her own coat unzipped or one of Jarom’s. Jarom got some professional grade hair clippers that are so nice that Alixa actually wants to help him cut his hair now. And the statuette that Lix picked out for Grandma made her cry when she opened it, so it was a pretty good morning all around. That night there was a mission party that Bruce and Nancy had to attend so the kids all went up to Temple Square to see the lights, which were lovely. When they got home Jarom and Rob decided to have a little wrestling match. Rob just finished a jujitsu class at BYU and Jarom is always looking for a good competition. Unfortunately, Jarom is a little bit out of practice since he hasn’t wrestled anyone for about a decade. He did okay until he remember how totally exhausting it is, and nearly had a heart attack after 2 minutes. He is planning on doing some training so that he can be better in late January for the rematch.

Inspired by the wrestling match, Jarom tried to think of other physical activities he could do in Utah that he hadn’t done since the 90’s and made plans to go skiing with David and Rob at Brighton. Might as well take advantage of the “Greatest snow on Earth”, right? He was actually impressed at how well he did considering the layoff. The biggest obstacle he had to overcome was actually the ski boots, which as usual were not the most comfortable piece of attire he wore that day. But he didn’t crash into any trees or require the assistance of the ski patrol, so we’ll call it a good day. The girlfriends that were left behind took advantage of their freedom by heading out to some of the 375,000 bridal stores in the Salt Lake Valley to find a wedding dress for Kristi. They found one that everybody loved and it only required the one morning, so we’ll call it a good day.

Before heading back to the right coast Nate and Kenz came down from Farmington, where they had been spending a week with Kenzie’s family, for an Enna photo shoot and a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory. The photos were taken at Sears by a girl who had little to no interest in taking pictures that day. Despite her best efforts to sabotage the session, the cute little girls managed to get a few good shots taken.

How many one year olds try to eat french fries with two utensils?

On their last day Lix convinced Jarom to make a drive up the canyon to the bustling metropolis known as Heber City. Heber is home to nearly 300 people, including one of Alixa’s best friends and classmate, Heather. Any time that Heather talks to Jarom she tries to convince him to get a job wherever she lives. Her case was a little bit weakened by the 23 inches of snow that had been dropped on the town the previous night. You could hardly tell where the houses and stores were. The fact that there aren’t a ton of jobs in Heber probably isn’t helping either. But it is a quaint place to visit for a few hours. They went out for a pizza at a nice little restaurant and then Heather got to show off her cute house and Jenna got to play with/look at her two black lab puppies.

Exhausted, at the end of a day in Heber and two weeks in Utah

Sadly, although it sometimes seems to be the case, Jarom does not have infinite vacation days and they had to return. The universe once again smiled on the Winns in their travels and provided them with an empty seat in their row so that Jenna had space to color and wriggle and lay down. This was surprising to Jarom, because he had recently won his fantasy football league title for the third time in four years, and assumed that he would have to sit next to Rulon Gardner for four hours to make up for his good fortune. But Lix is always giving her loose cash to beggars in order to amass good karma points, so a big thank you to her.

The Winns flew back to Philly, where they spent another day visiting with the residents there, and were lucky enough to attend a 2nd birthday party for Hailey Jane. The party was crashed by a slew of Slaughs, who were all in town for the holidays. Hailey got about a dozen presents, and it was all fun and games until both Hailey and Jenna decided that they wanted to play with the piggy bank. Then the screaming started. There were some tears and some yelling and physical violence was narrowly averted when the two parties were separated. Since they had been away for so long, Jarom decided that he wanted to get home to sleep in his own bed, so on New Years day they hit the 95 back down to Richmond, where everything was just as they left it. Such a great vacation, but it is nice to have them all back in the house.

Utah Vacation, Part Un

2011-01-07T16:23:00.007-05:00

This year’s Christmas vacation began one day earlier than planned thanks to a snowstorm on the eastern seaboard. So instead of driving up to Delaware on Thursday to catch their Friday morning flight out of Philly, Jarom and Alixa and Jenna packed up Carlotta and hit the road at about 10:30 Wednesday night so that they would have clear roads to drive on. They had some great hosts in Delaware who had beds made and cribs set up so that they could go right to sleep as soon as they got there. Thursday was spent playing games with cousins and getting ready for a very early cross country trip. Poor Jenna was woken up from her sleep at 5 in the morning so that they could catch their flight. When they got on the plane they found nobody sitting in the third seat in their row. Jarom immediately crossed his fingers and told the universe that if it would give them the empty seat it would be okay if he did not win his fantasy football league championship. It seems that the universe is a dealmaker, because even though the flight attendants seemed to keep that door open for eternity, nobody else walked on and Jenna got her own seat. She slept a little, and watched a lot of Tigger and Pooh on Jarom’s iPod, and soon enough they were landing in the Salt Lake Valley. Grandma picked them up at the airport and couldn’t have been more excited to see one of her favorite grandbabies. You might think that the first thing to be done would be to go to the house, but no. At the top of the things-to-do list was a stop at Café Rio, where Lix got her favorite, a pork salad. This was just the first of many trips to the Café, which is always a sign of a great vacation.

I guess Jenna has been paying attention when Lix gets ready every day

For the next two weeks the crew was staying with Grandma and Grandpa, who are serving as the president of the Salt Lake City mission. So the first morning was spent at the Mission Christmas devotional, where Elder Richard Hinckley, former SLC mission president, was the main speaker. When Jarom was on a mission, he remembers these sort of events as being pretty cool, but it turns out they are only fun for current missionaries, and not all that great for former missionaries with a wife and an 18-month old. Jenna was not overly impressed with any of the speakers, and spent much of the time running around the halls. After a nice lunch, Jarom went to the airport to pick up Lixi’s little sister Mikah who had just finished up her first semester at BYU Idaho. Her two brothers came up from Provo as well and a mini Hegewald reunion was held, first at Lixi’s grandparents house and then moving to the Winn home.

So many Hegewalds

This pile of junk had to be organized and distributed among the missionaries. This was just one of the tasks the Winn children were forced to do during their vacations. Below, another one of those tasks, and a very excited Jolene.

The next day was the last Sunday before Christmas, which in most LDS churches means a program consisting primarily of music. However, the ward that Grandma and Grandpa live in kicked it up a notch. They had what seemed to be a complete orchestra, with cellos, basses, violins, and assorted woodwinds to go with a massive choir and the piano and organ. The group sang songs from Handel’s Messiah, which is Alixa’s favorite. She has memories of going to that musical with her family, and she got a little teary eyed as she listened to the performance. Meanwhile, Jenna could not have been happier as she led the music from the laps of Grandma and Kristi the entire time, although her little arm surely must have been exhausted.

In addition to seeing lots of Jarom’s family, including Jolene, Rob, Kristi and her new boyfriend David, the Winn’s have lots of old college friends who have been unable to escape the vortex-like pull of the Utah Valley. The list consists mostly of Alixa’s old roomies, since Jarom neither has nor has had any friends of his own. First on the list were Dave and Laura, who were visited both pre- and post-delivery of their second baby, reminding Jarom and Alixa just how tiny those things are when they first arrive and how little they remember about how to take care of a newborn. They also got to see Joey, Laura’s pet chinchilla, a treat that Jenna enjoyed immensely.

Jenna has started feeding herself real people food, and Alixa continues to feed the Winn family whenever they get together

Next up was a trip down to P-town, with stops at the Hagen residence (an old bishop from the Winn’s school days) and the Carter household. The original plan was to eat dinner with Mandy and Dave and then play a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, one of Mandy’s favorites. Unfortunately, Jarom got some sort of food poisoning and instead spent the evening alternately throwing up in the Carter’s newly remodeled bathroom and laying on the couch under several blankets. Most of you know that Jarom has never been called the life of any party, but even by his notoriously low standards he considered this to be a little anti-social. So they decided that they would try again the next week when Jarom felt better. They did, and the next time they invited another of Alixa’s former roommates and her new boyfriend, and Jarom was pleasant and conversive and didn’t make a single trip to the bathroom to vomit.

Jenna spent lots of her time playing the piano...

...sending text messages...

...and eating spoons

The next big event was a trip to the BYU basketball game against UTEP. President Winn himself was in attendance, and Grandma was nice enough to stay at home and watch the kiddos. For a pregame meal the family went to Tucanos, where far too much meat was consumed and everyone left fat and happy. After the meal the girls dropped the boys off at the Marriot Center so that they could go to the BYU Bookstore to do some shopping during the first half. The aforementioned Bishop Hagen was kind enough to provide a bunch of tickets that were pretty good and conveniently located only a few rows from the honorable Judge Jordan, a good friend from Delaware who was in Utah visiting his progeny. The game was exciting, with BYU spotting UTEP to an early lead before beating the snot out of them by hitting approximately one million three pointers. The girls got there around halftime, which was plenty of college hoops for them. The twins and their significant others drove north after the game to the Winn home, where they would stay until early the next week. It made the house a little crowded and required some planning in terms of showers and meals, but it was a whole lot of fun to have so much family around. Jenna warmed up to everyone pretty quickly, and it didn’t take long until she could identify Rob, David, Kristi, and Jolene by name, although she would sometimes get a little confused when you would ask her to identify one of the twins while the other was standing nearby.

Two balding dads risking their daughter's lives. The daughters couldn't be more excited about it.

Jenna developed a small case of the sneezers, and Jarom insisted that the result of this particular one be documented

Alixa’s recently returned-missionary grandparents were hosting a little Christmas Eve party for all of the Hegewalds in the valley, so they stopped by to spend some time with the Gunthers and Omi and Opa. The highlight of the party was supposed to be a visit from Santa himself. He did show up, and I suppose for some of the partygoers he was a treat, but Jenna could not have been less pleased with his presence. From the moment he came through the door she was giving him dirty looks and it only took about 30 seconds before she broke into an all out scream. Just the thought of him being in the same room as her was too much. So Jarom took her down to the basement where they watched an episode of Curious George and waited for the bearded intruder to leave. He eventually did, but was nice to enough to leave behind a very cute little nativity set for Jenna even though she wouldn’t talk to him. Maybe next year.

Bad news, good news

2010-12-16T19:10:00.003-05:00

Every town, has its ups and downs, and this weekend we had some of both. The rollercoaster started on Thursday when the doctor’s office finally got in touch with Alixa after several days of phone tag. It was Nurse Kitty (names have not been changed so that the responsible parties can be held accountable,) and she had some troubling news about the ultrasound that had been taken. Upon further review, she said, there was a bright spot on the baby’s heart, which is an indicator of Down syndrome. She told Alixa that this was normal for 10% of cases. Obviously, those are not good odds. For the next 5 days we spent a lot of time worrying and preparing ourselves for the probable arrival of a baby that was going to be different from what we had been hoping for. There were some tears shed, mostly by Jarom, and some research done on what having a kid with Down syndrome would really entail. Lix tried to call Dr. Kitty (not to be confused with Nurse Kitty) to get some answers to a few questions that she and Jarom had, but was unable to get in touch with her because of some days off and some night shifts that were being worked. They set up another ultrasound appointment for Tuesday afternoon, and were cautiously optimistic. The ultrasound went well, and the Tech had nothing but good things to say. The weird thing was the calm, nonchalant way that she shared the good news. It was like it was no big deal at all. Then the ultrasound doctor came in, and it was more of the same. “Everything looks good”, “perfectly normal” and “no big deal” kept being thrown around, but without any of the excitement that might accompany finding out you were in the lucky 10% of a group. So Jarom asked for some more detailed clarification about the risk probability. The ultrasound doc said that the white spot was a calcium buildup that raised the baby’s risk factor from approximately 1 in 8362 to 1 in 8000. She said it might be more worrisome if Lix were older or if there were other signs (there weren’t) but that given her age and other test results everything looked pretty normal. This was both a huge relief and very confusing to Jarom and Alixa, who then went down the hall to talk to Dr. Kitty. They voiced their confusion at the 180 that had been pulled, and then got their explanation. It turns out that about 10% of all babies develop these calcium buildups in their hearts, and that of those who have them, only a very small percentage have Down syndrome. So I guess Nurse Kitty went to the same medical school as the guy from Arrested Development.

After all is said and done, I guess it was a good experience because Jarom and Lix found out that this baby is still healthy, but also learned that they will still love him even if he isn’t perfect.

Doing her best seductive pose

Sometimes it is hard to find a place to put your cup when you finish drinking

On a lighter note, Alixa had an embarrassing moment yesterday. She was babysitting Kenna so that Nate and Kenz could go out for their anniversary, and while she was over at their house she heard a knock on the door. As she typically does, she assumed that it was someone trying to break in and kill her, but was also polite enough to knock. She called Jarom and explained the situation in her best library voice, but he simply laughed at her and told her to go look through the peephole to see who it was. He even offered to stay on the line so that he could call the police in case of an attack. However, she refused to go near the door, using the classic 2-year-old reasoning of “If I don’t look at him, he will disappear.” Jarom continued trying to convince her to at least go to the door and look outside. After about 5 minutes of making the intruder stand out in the below-freezing temperature, Jarom remembered that she had told her visiting teachers to visit her at Kenzie’s house that evening, and she went and let them in. It is amazing how strongly paranoia governs some people’s lives. Merry Christmas nice ladies who came to share a kind message with me, hope you didn’t get frostbite.

This table had been set up for guests, but Jenna thought it would be fun to rearrange it so everyone had to eat backwards

As promised

2010-12-11T18:24:00.001-05:00

12 Days til Christmas

2010-12-10T21:27:00.003-05:00

The past few weeks have been a nice break from vacations and strange schedules. November included a lot of going places and a lot of nights being awake, so it has been sort of pleasant for everyone to just go to work, come home, hang out, sleep in their bed, and rest up for Christmas.

Jenna visited her dad at work and rounded up all of the stuffed animals from the entire department

Alixa is still trying to sell all the stuff she made for her big craft fair a month ago, so she and Jarom drove to a little place called West Point about 1 hour from here to hawk her wares at a little town Christmas show. It was fun, and they sold a few things, but the towns main reason for being is that there is a paper mill there. Any of you who have lived near or driven by a paper mill know that they are famous for two things: making paper products and making you want to rip your own nose off so that you don’t have to smell it anymore. The fair was inside the local firehouse, and as long as the doors were closed it was okay because there were some baked goods for sale there that dominated the odorscape. But every time they had to step outside it took all their effort to not gag.

Why don't more people buy her stuff? You can here.

Back at the ranch, the big recent development is that Jenna has finally thrown in the towel and decided that it is okay for her to drink milk out of a sippy cup instead of a bottle. This has been a battle that has been going on since Lix stopped giving her bottles in early November, at which point Jenna essentially stopped drinking milk. She likes milk, and she likes sippy cups, but she apparently did not like them together. But she has now relented, and is back on the wagon, happily drinking her chocolate milk while she watches her show (usually Curious George or Handy Manny.)

As any child ages there are certain photos that all parents are required to take of them. Naked bathtub pics, kissing brothers/sisters/cousins/some other kid pics, trying to put on mom’s shoes pics, etc… We finally took care of a pretty big one this week, the “Look Ma, I unrolled all of the toilet paper!” pic. Next up, crying on Santa’s lap and getting into mom’s makeup. Stay tuned for those.

Jenna’s favorite treat these days are M&Ms, which she calls niminiminiminims, although the length of the word varies from long to interminable. She knows where her mom keeps them on the kitchen counter, and will stand below them and point at the desired snack and say their name until you come and get her one.

Jarom continues to have bad luck with glass. His leg has scarred up nicely so he decided it was time for a new wound. So last night he smashed a glass in the sink and sliced up his finger. It was bleeding like crazy but didn’t seem to be too deep or long, so he just cleaned up the blood and picked up all the broken glass bits and threw a bunch of bandaids on it and went to bed. Today he is waving the white flag of surrender by going to Walmart to get some plastic cups before he loses an arm or something.

A Series of Jenna's Hats

Jenna's favorite Christmas present, a new reading chair

Fancy or Bruce?

2010-12-01T22:28:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago the Winn’s Thanksgiving plans involved staying in the nice, warm Richmond area and having Alixa’s parents drive down from Cleveland to hang out for a few days. Jarom was scheduled to be working the night shift at the hospital until the end of the month, so they were unable to go anywhere. But things went remarkably well at the most recent go-live (that doesn’t make sense to most of you, and it’s okay. It’s boring work stuff.) so Jarom was able to work from home Thanksgiving week. And he can work from home equally effective in Richmond or Cleveland, so they packed up Carlotta and drove to the bitter cold of Northeast Ohio. PJ and Mars were thrilled to have the company and Jenna was super excited to have a giant new house to explore.

Practicing her headstands

The week was pretty laid back, consisting of some game playing and assorted activities and lots of time sitting around relaxing. Jarom and Lix got Mimi to babysit a few times while they went out for a nice dinner together or braved the 38 degree weather to play a round of golf. The whole crew went bowling one night, and Jarom brought his A-game, topping his personal best with a round of 184. Jenna also enjoyed rolling the ball down the lane, although she had to be restrained after she pushed it or she would run after the ball in an effort to catch it.

Another highlight of the trip was the many hours that were spent in the car. Most of that time was filled by a single children’s music album by Raffi. One of those songs is about growing up, and there is a line in it about how the kid can finally reach the faucet today. We are starting to have a lot of those types of moments with Jenna. At the bowling alley there was a step to go from the carpeted level to the wooden bowling surface, and for most of the night Jenna would approach that step and crawl up it using her hands and knees. But after they had been there for awhile, Lix and Jarom were sitting there talking and Jenna approached the step. Jarom reached his hand out to assist his daughter in stepping up, but she ignored him and simply stepped up and kept moving like it was no big deal. Jarom and Lix shared a look that said “Well, I guess she’s a big kid now.”

Look how well she can drink out of a big girl cup!

Maybe not that well

As with all their vacations, this one seemed to end too soon. PJ did her best to fill Carlotta with food and other stuff that we may need, and Alixa did her best Nancy impression and cried like a faucet as they pulled out of the driveway. It really is nice that Jenna gets to see so much of her grandparents, and they love to see her as well. Jenna still asks where Mimi is sometimes, and Jarom and Lix would love to have Opa around again to bear the lion’s share of the “reading with Jenna” burden (I know that makes them sound like horrible parents, but after you’ve read a book 22 times in a row you need a break!)

Back in the warmer climate of Southern Virginia everyone had to go back to work. It had been over a month since Jarom went into his office, having spent all of his time recently on site at the hospital. And Lix had only worked sporadically as Kenna’s babysitter. But they will get back into the swing of things for a few weeks until Christmas throws them off once again.

The other interesting tidbit from this week was the ultrasound appointment this morning where they found out the sex of the new baby. Alixa has been not so secretly telling people that she really wants another girl, and wouldn’t you know it, she is not going to get one. When the ultrasound tech told us it was a boy Lix died a little inside, but she is recovering well and is getting more and more excited about it by the minute. She is still unreasonably terrified of being peed upon, and is not nearly satisfied with her stable of boy names, but she has accepted the fact that she will be having a son and is coming to terms with it. We are all very excited about this new development and especially happy that he seems to be perfectly healthy and normal. We have been seriously so blessed this year and hope that all of you have been too.

Life of a Salesman

2010-11-29T20:29:00.002-05:00

Some might say that Alixa is accident prone. Others may say that she is clumsy, or doesn’t watch where she is walking/driving. I’ll let you make your own judgments. A couple weeks ago she was driving the Carlotta (the new Santa Fe) around near our house when she ran over some sort of puddle. Unfortunately, that puddle happened to consist of yellow road paint, and she splattered it all over the driver’s side of the car. So they had to take it in to get detailed at the hefty pricetag of $350. The reimbursement from VDOT is in the works, but now that the government has announced its spending freeze, I am not sure when we might get that money back. For the rest of the post, I’ll let Alixa tell you about her vacationing.

Since the craft fair was so hectic and so much time was spent preparing for it, I decided that I needed a break and the next weekend Jenna and I took off for Delaware. I invited Jarom to come, but he was still working the night shift at that point and was sleeping all day so he said to go without him. Turns out he stopped working the night shift the day after we left and actually had the whole weekend off. He ended up golfing and playing paintball while we were away. I am pretty sure he just wanted some alone time but he claims he didn’t know that was going to happen. Whatever. One of my excuses to go up was that Annie needed to find a house, and I am an excellent house shopper, so I was going to go help her look at houses. Well, that didn’t actually happen, but we had a lot of fun and I am really glad we went up.

We started our trip on Friday and left Richmond around 10 am. We would have left the previous night, but Annie called and said her kids were puking and that I should give it another day, if I came at all. Well, I wasn’t about to let some flu symptoms ruin my weekend, so I waited until Friday, packed up the car and left. I was so proud of myself for driving the whole way by myself. I had never done that before because I get really sleepy when I drive and Jenna isn’t much for coherent conversation, but I did it and we made it in one piece. We only stopped once for lunch at Panera at the busiest shopping center in the world. After that we hit traffic and it took forever. So the trip ended up taking about 6 hours with stops and all, but Jenna was really good and only whined a little.

When we got there we started having fun immediately! Annie and Jamie are such good hosts. They let us eat their food and play with their toys. Jamie even bought us doughnuts! Jenna still only eats baby food and spaghetti noodles so I mostly enjoyed the good food by myself. Jenna did LOVE playing with her cousins though. She thought Hailey was awesome and had lots of fun jumping on the bed with her. I know she liked her because she kept calling her “Nenna” (Kenna) and that term is reserved for only the best of friends! There was one incident where Hailey stole the toy Jenna was playing with and after having to give it back picked up whatever toy she could find and threw it at Jenna as if to say “Fine, take them all!” But they all narrowly missed her head. Hailey has a surprisingly good arm! Other than that they got along really well. Jenna also tried to play with Luke, but he loves his mom too much and wouldn’t leave Annie’s side long enough to play. So Jenna played in Adri’s and Juliet’s room. They have awesome toys! Her favorite toy was the doll stroller that she pushed around the upstairs landing for at least 3 hours a day. She would put a purse on each arm, put a doll in the stroller and push and push. It was pretty cute. She became very independent on this trip. One minute she would be in the kitchen with me and then next she would be headed up the stairs to the girls’ bedroom to get the toys. Then she would play up there until I came to check on her. It was really fun to see her be so independent. While the kiddos played, the moms chatted. It was great to catch up with Annie and Jamie. Annie and I even managed to sneak out and do some shopping while Jason watched the napping kids. We also had dinner at Gramma K’s house on Sunday night and ate some delicious chicken tacos. Kimmie and her family came and we chatted all evening.

We were supposed to leave on Monday so I could be back to watch Kenna on Tuesday, but Nate called and said he had the day off and he could watch Kenna, so we stayed another day. We went up to Lancaster, PA on Monday and hung out with Amanda Boyd, a friend of mine from back in my BYU days. We ate at the Olive Garden and did some outlet shopping. Jenna had lots of fun with her daughter too. Her name is Addison and she is almost three. She called Jenna “Jenny” and it was super cute. They ran all over the Gap together while we found some Christmas dresses. Once again, a successful shopping trip!

Tuesday we finally left because we missed Jarom and Jenna really missed Kenna. Jenna was so exhausted from the fun weekend that she slept nearly the entire way home. We didn’t even have to stop. We had a fantastic time up in Delaware and will probably make more weekend trips up there in the near future. It is so awesome that Jenna has so many cousins her age to play with!

It's not fair!

2010-11-08T23:10:00.003-05:00

Alixa is roughly halfway through her pregnancy, and we have now left behind the nausea phase and entered wholeheartedly into the hormonal weepy phase. Over the past month or so there had been subtle hints of this transition, but events of this week really brought it into focus.

The first event was movie night, when Lix rented Toy Story 3 to watch with Jarom. The latest offering from the Pixar crew follows Woody and the gang as they struggle to deal with their abandonment issues when Andy gets ready to leave for college. It was a wonderfully done movie, as Pixar movies usually are, and at the end there are some scenes where Andy’s mom is giving him a hug and Andy has to give his childhood toys away to a little girl. **Spoiler Alert** Jarom was just trying to enjoy the movie but he kept getting interrupted by the sniffling coming from the girl on the other couch. After the movie ended, Jarom tucked Lix into bed and got ready to leave for his night shift, but before he left he checked on Jenna and then made a comment to Lix comparing Jenna and her stuffed animals to Andy and his toys. For some reason this set off the waterworks all over again.

Someday these two will grow up and leave Mr. Tiger and Midnight behind

The next day was the start of the craft fair that Lix and Kenz have been working so hard for over the past few months. The booth that they set up looked great, they had made approximately one trillion bows to go with the hats, bow holders, carseat canopies, and blankets. The doors opened and the people began to trickle past, admiring the display and commenting on the cuteness thereof, but not offering to buy anything. After a few hours Lix left to grab a bite to eat and had a breakdown. She thought of all the people she knows and wondered who would be the most sympathetic, perhaps someone who regularly weeps for apparently no reason at all. That person is Jarom’s mom. She was a great virtual shoulder to cry on, consoling her about the slow pace of sales at the fair and empathizing with her on the unfortunate truth that children inevitably grow up. Between that call and her always understanding and ever supportive husband Lix recovered admirably.

Business at the four-day fair improved each day, but after it was all said and done it fell short of the lofty expectations that had been set. Two days before the fair the inventory had been tallied and the anticipated gross sales amount was over $20,000. The first and most important business lesson that was learned is that theoretical sales are just that. I guess there is a reason that most start-up businesses fail in the first year of their existence. It is tough work. But the products that they have are well-made, so they will keep tinkering with the prices and look for new outlets for sales. I’d be remiss if I did not do my part by plugging their website, www.babybabblesboutique.com, where you can see examples of the things they do and place your orders. Free shipping on orders over $25!* Tell your friends! They do custom orders, too! (*offer not available in all areas, see website for details.) Hopefully they will be able to continue selling their inventory, and while they will certainly not reach the $20,000 mark, they can still make a little money.

Profitability aside, the experience has been a great one for Alixa. She very much enjoyed improving her seamstering talents, and has become better friends with Kenz as a result of their shared time and effort. And should she ever try her hand at another business venture (investors, hide your wallets!) she will be that much wiser about how to do it. Jarom is very proud of her for going out and doing this, and is also happy to have a new well from which he can pull jokes out of. Seriously though, go to the website and buy some stuff, or Jenna won’t get to go to college.

This is what happens to Jenna when she gets tired.

Recently we took a field trip with all the Richmond Winns to the petting zoo, where the goats apparently love Ritz crackers more than anything in the world.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

2010-11-02T18:17:00.005-04:00

I don't know if WonderWoman flies or not, since I wasn't alive back when she was a big deal, but irregardless, Halloween was a smashing success. The festivities began on Friday at the Ward Halloween party, which Alixa was helping to put on. Jenna got all dressed up in her WonderWoman costume and Alixa made herself into a q-tip by gluing cotton balls to her head and feet. The party went well, with lots of kids in cute costumes. Jenna spent most of the evening looking quizzically at all of the strange looking people and playing with Kenna, who came as a bumblebee.

On Sunday the girls headed over to Kenzie’s house around 4 to take some pictures and start the trick-or-treating. As usual, pictures were difficult because these little girls have no interest in sitting still. So after playing in the front yard for a bit they decided to get going, even though it was still very light out and at every house people had to go searching for candy because they weren’t ready yet. The girls were a little shy at first, but it didn’t take long before the excitement of getting candy overcame any apprehension that they may have had about the strange people they were meeting. At each house Jenna would happily take the offered candy and put it in her pumpkin bucket, and then reach for more. It is hard to say no to cute little kids in costumes, so more they would get. Jenna got very good at going up to the door and knocking, and even did her own version of trick or treat, which was basically just a series of grunts.

After getting her candy Jenna would quickly turn and head to the next house. Unfortunately, Kenna did not share her long-term investment strategy of collecting as much candy as possible while the getting was good. She wanted to eat each piece of candy the moment she got it. In fact, she was in such a rush that she didn’t even wait for Kenz to unwrap the candy, opting to try and chew through the wrapper instead. As a result of all of the stoppages to eat candy, it took 45 minutes to get through 8 houses. After they had hit up all of Kenz’s neighbors they picked up Jarom and headed down to the hospital where Nate and Jarom are spending their workdays. All of their coworkers enjoyed seeing the enna girls, and they collected many more handfuls of candy.

They stopped at a few more houses on the way home so that Jarom could see Jenna in her now expert trick or treating form. It was fun to watch her enjoy the experience so much. She was loving every minute of it, and seemed to be aware of her cuteness. She even got comfortable enough to do some poses, sticking one arm up in the air whenever Lix would say “do-di-di-doo!” Lix probably loved it more than anyone, in part because she believes that her child is the cutest kid in the world, and in part because she loves trick-or-treating, and finally got the chance do it again after a many-year hiatus.

Other than the joys of getting free candy and dressing up, the only real news from the Winn house is that Lix is going to divorce Jarom. This is because Jarom has started working night shifts and must get his sleep during the day. Alixa, ever the reasonable spouse, automatically assumes that since Jarom doesn’t have to be at work during the day he should be available to do things around the house, babysit, and run errands with her. But instead of doing those things, he can sometimes be found lazily sleeping the day away, sometimes for as many as 7 straight hours! She has made her displeasure known, and now the ball is in Jarom’s court as to whether he will continue his delinquent behavior or get his butt in gear. Happy Election Day!