Februany

Happy Black History Month everybody! Alixa has spent the month coming down from her Utah Vacation high. For the most part things are the way they were before the trip, but there have been a couple of major changes. One of the first things that Jarom noticed when his family came back was the subtle influence that Kristi had on his wife and daughter. Alixa has been kicking up the fanciness quotient on her wardrobe, and even got a box of Kristi’s old clothes to add to her lineup. Most disturbingly, she has begun to wear leggings in place of pants. I’m sure that Kristi would be proud. As for Jenna, she has become a little more of a girly girl. I don’t know if that is directly attributable to Kristi, but I will blame her anyway. In fact, just yesterday Jenna was playing with some toy animals and her little plastic Simba fell on the floor next to a cobweb. As she was reaching for it she asked Lix what the cobweb was and was told it was a spider web. This immediately changed things and she was afraid to pick Simba up. After a few minutes she was able to extract him by gently gripping his tail and pulling him away from the cobweb, in the same way you might try to carefully remove a piece of cheese from an armed mouse trap.

Jenna likes to wear Lixi's "fancy" shoes. Lix has nightmares of when Jenna will be a teenager.

Thanks for the miles of bubble wrap Grandma. We are still working on popping it all.

One of Jenna's favorite things to do is "help" Lix bake by eating batter

Bo is in that stage of life where two weeks seems like an eternity and you can’t even believe that this is the same person he was last month. Sadly, he forgot the one trick that he knew while he was out west and will no longer stand on Jarom’s hand. Fortunately, he has replaced that trick with his new disappearing act. If you set him somewhere and then turn around to do something, he will vanish. He then reappears in other rooms, under tables, in the bathroom, or standing alongside a couch or the coffee table. He has become very fond of being upright, and seems like he is well on his way toward walking, which will only bring more trouble. He still hasn’t stopped smiling and loves to chat with you and will happily wave goodbye when you leave.

We have been watching a lot of the "Jungle Book". This is his best Mowgli impression.

Trouble!

Trouble!

He tried to go to sleep on the llama rug. It is so soft.

The house has been battling a winter bug the past week or so, and Jenna got hit the hardest. She was pretty bad for a few days, which were mostly spent watching movies on the couch and taking naps and doing a lot of coughing and sneezing. There wasn’t any throwing up, which is a huge plus, but the poor little girl had the saddest sick eyes I’ve ever seen. She had a lot of trouble sleeping through the nights so Lix set up the pack and play in her room to minimize the amount of distance a parent had to cover to help her when she would wake up. Jenna has lately been waking up crying loudly, which is a little sad and a little funny. The things that upset vary greatly, from bugs in her bed to frogs to shadows to not being able to turn the fan off. Sometimes she makes a little sense and sometimes she makes no sense, but usually you just need to give her a hug for a minute or two and she’ll calm down and fall back asleep. One time Lix went in there to find her crying and trying to get out of her bed through one of her windows. Lix asked her what was wrong and she sobbed that she couldn’t get her door open. Lix told her that wasn’t the door and laid her back down. Her imagination is incredibly overactive. It’s sad that she is scared of whatever it is, but the way that she relates those fears to you just makes you laugh.

Oh so sick.

So what if it is sunny and 65 degrees. She will still wear her owl hat.

Lix made her a belt for her beanie babies that she wore around all day long

Lix celebrated her 27^th birthday in Utah, but then had an encore event with her girlfriends when she got back. Ever since we moved here to Dallas her social agenda has been through the roof. This is the first time since college that she has had a large group of girls who are in the same life situation, and she is taking full advantage. It seems like she is doing something with somebody almost every day and usually one or two nights a week. She’s also been babysitting Kenna a lot recently. Jenna loves that, although the two of them occasionally have disputes. One day last week they were hanging out having a good time and Jenna referred to Kenna as Kenna Wee, because she says her L’s like a W. This upset Kenna, who corrected Jenna’s pronunciation. Jenna replied, “that’s what I said, Kenna Wee.” This toddler version of Who’s on first continued for a few minutes, with Alixa’s gleeful encouragement. We have since run the same routine with Jenna using other words that she can’t quite say, and the results are hilarious every time.

Home Depot has the BEST carts.

Valentine’s Day also came and went, and Jarom celebrated it by watching Breaking Dawn, Part I with Lix. This was a significant sacrifice on his part. He went into the viewing with very low expectations for the film, based on what he had seen in previous Twilight movies and his general disdain for sappy love filled teenage vampire romances and bad Kristen Stewart acting. Somehow, the movie still managed to disappoint him. And yet he has no doubt that he will end up watching Part II whenever that gets released. In case anyone was wondering whether or not Jarom loves his wife, there you go.