Addition by subtraction

It is fall in Richmond, and Jarom couldn’t be happier about it. The temperature has cooled down a little, and it'll be even better in a few more weeks. Football has started, and along with it Fantasy Football. Jarom and Alixa had their annual opening week matchup, which Alixa won as she often does. And what is even better than all of that, Jarom doesn’t have to go back to school. Words cannot express how happy he is to have a real job and some stability in his life.

Reading a story with Daddy and Beardog

Kenzie, however, does have to go back to school, which means that Lix gets to watch the little hoodlums on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She says that it is wonderful, and enjoys it much more now than she did six months ago. One is a pretty fun age with these kiddos, even if they are a little whiney sometimes. They have gotten much better at playing with each other and sharing things, including illnesses. Kenna got sick and had to go to the urgent care for a bout of pneumonia and a few days after that Jenna started to run a fever and have other sick symptoms. When Jarom slices an artery in his leg and nearly loses his life he is told to suck it up until morning to save a few bucks on the copay, but as soon as Jenna feels a little warm Lix is packing up the car to get her to a doctor. Typical. So they paid a visit to the doctor late Saturday evening. The first thing the doctor wanted to do was check her ears and her mouth. Bad idea. Some of you may know that Jenna has a very sensitive gag reflex. If you give her a big spoonful of food she may spew it back at you, so you can imagine what happens when a big, fat tongue depressor gets shoved in there. The doctor actually barely got it in her mouth the first time before a little vomit came up. I guess he is a glutton for punishment, because he went back for round two and got everything in Jenna’s tummy. Most of it ended up on Jarom, who had to spend the next hour or so smelling it until they got home and he could shower. Jarom also had the honor of holding Jenna still for the chest x-rays while she cried angrily. It isn’t much fun to be a parent when you’ve got a sick kid and they have to poke and prod her to try and find out what’s wrong. In the end she got some antibiotics and after a few days of it she got better.

Jenna's Halloween costume

Baby Babbles Boutique also made their first sale this week, to our neighbor, Angela. We had her over for dinner while her husband was working a 24-hour shift at the firehouse and she decided to get a carseat canopy for her new niece. To celebrate their newfound riches, Jarom and Alixa continued to go car shopping. As a corollary to buying a new car they investigated selling the Camry that Alixa has driven since she was 17, almost 13 years ago. The mere thought of getting rid of that car caused Lix to get weepy on multiple occasions. Jarom took it in to Carmax and was pleasantly surprised to hear that they would give him $2,000 for a ’99 with 150,000 miles on it and a whole lot of body damage. Not to mention the dried vomit that is still stuck to the ceiling from that fateful day in March two years ago. They had looked at new minivans a little, but mostly had their eyes on small SUVs, and were most intrigued by the Hyundai Santa Fe. It is cheap, has a good warranty, looks good, and Alixa really enjoys saying Hyundai in an exaggerated Korean accent. They got to know Carl down at the dealership pretty well, taking several test drives. They finally decided to pull the trigger, and Jarom got to dust off his old Peruvian negotiating skills to haggle on the price. I’m sure he could have gotten it a little lower, but they were pretty happy with the price they were offered and decided to get a new car. It is a black 2010, and has lots of things that Lix loves. It has tons of cargo space, so she can fit the double stroller and still carry groceries and other stuff. It is an SUV, so she doesn’t have to bend over to get Jenna in and out of the car, and she loves sitting higher up while driving. It is Bluetooth compatible so she can talk on the phone without having to pull her phone out or hold it. It tells her the temperature outside, and how many miles she has until she runs out of gas. And it dings at Jarom when he doesn’t put his seatbelt on. But most exciting is that it is new, and she loves it.

Lixi's new ride

As they have been driving around the last few days in their new car, Jarom has noticed that the backseat seems particularly empty with just Jenna sitting there, so he went back in time a few months and knocked up his wife so that she can have a little sibling to play with in the back. Lix had her first ultrasound today, and the little blob is as healthy as a little blob can be. Lix has been fighting nausea for the past month on a much greater scale than she did the first time around, perhaps in a cosmic payback for her “mentally strong” comments that were made towards her sisters-in-law. But we are very excited, even though this means that I will lose the right to my own room and have to share with this newcomer.

Jenna has begun the nesting phase of this pregnancy by stuffing an assortment of things in kitchen cabinets

And finally, Jenna wanted me to rank her favorite aunts for some reason.

Tied at 1 – Jolene, Kristi, Jamie, Kenzie, Loni, Sam, Mikah, and Jemima
9th – Annie

No offense Annie.

Even LeBron wouldn't stay there

For those of you who are keeping score at home, Jarom recently turned 29 and began the inexorable 365-day march to middle-agedness. Alixa and Jenna helped him celebrate by going out and test driving a Toyota Sienna. Because nothing makes a guy feel better about getting old like looking into buying a minivan. He also got to go to Red Robin and hang out with some friends in the evening, and Lix even skipped out on a church activity to be there, so it was a fun day.





Jarom got me a mouser before I was hungry again so Jenna got to have two pets for a few days. She loved it and would get crazy excited whenever you would ask her if she wanted to see the mouse. She would run into the room at full speed and point and make noises and wave at me and Cracker. After keeping him around for 5 days Jarom eventually had to let him go outside because the crew was leaving for Cleveland. He was good company to have around, and I wish him the best out in the world.

Jenna at 6 and 14 months in Opa's tub

For her dad's birthday, Jenna got some fashionable new boots with the fur

To celebrate the end of the vacation season before Lix has to start going to work twice a week Jarom took some days off to drive up to visit Alixa’s parents in the The Ohio State. It is about an eight-hour trip through some lovely parts of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. It also took them near Pittsburgh, but there isn’t anything pretty about that. Their first task after completing their drive was to hop into the car and go pick up Opa from the airport, as he was returning from taking Abe out to Utah. They filled their time by golfing (sometimes in nice weather, sometimes in the rain), playing card games, and watching Jenna tear her grandparent’s house apart. I guess it has been a long time since PJ has had a little one, because she had all sorts of things on the low shelves in her house, and Jenna was glad to fulfill her duty as a toddler and pull them out and carry them to new places. One semi-rainy morning they went to the zoo, where Jenna enjoyed the animals until she fell asleep. She got to meet gorillas and monkeys and kangaroos and lions, and they even had a giant birdcage where you could walk in and feed friendly parakeets, which she loved. Fall had just arrived in Cleveland, and the Winns were a little unprepared, having only brought shorts and t-shirts, so Jenna spent the day bundled in a blanket to keep her warm. The day was capped off with a trip to the Cheesecake Factory, mostly because Alixa had been wanting a nice steak, which she got.




On Labor Day PJ made a wonderful French toast breakfast and then they packed up the car and said some tearful goodbyes in the driveway. It was especially sad for Mars and Pidge as they had just recently become empty nesters. And Alixa can’t see her parents cry without getting pretty weepy herself, so it was quite the sobfest. The ride back home was fairly uneventful, with Lix and Jenna sleeping for a good bit of the way. They were sad to leave, but both Jarom and Alixa had jobs that they had to get back to on Tuesday, as Kenz was starting school again and needed her babysitter back.

Eating lunch outside the Eat'nPark in Middleofnowhere, VA

Chinese Jenna and her makeshift bib

Speaking of jobs, Lix and Kenz are doing great in preparation for their November craft fair, and now have their website up and looking pretty good. You should all check it out, and also share it with your friends, especially those who might be in the market for trendy accents for their tots. The site is www.babybabblesboutique.com. If you have seen it but haven’t checked it out lately go see it again, as they have made significant revisions and improvements. They accept all major credit cards and do custom orders, so feel free to make requests.