Paternity Test

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

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?

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

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

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.