True Colors?

What, exactly, is the baby trying to say with this shirt.

Is it the Color that he likes? A nice Vibrant Utah Red?
Or is it just the shirts message?
Either way, I think this little boys true colors are shining through! Thanks Aunt W.

Random acts of Cuteness

It has been quite the week here at the Wheeler House. The baby got a new tooth- that is two! They are very small and sharp and he likes to chew on my hand, most of the time I don't remember the teeth until I am frantically trying to pry my hand out of his grip, those teeth hurt! I think he must be part shark. We also had an Eczema flare up this week, so if it wasn't his new tooth hurting and waking him up at 2 am, it was his itchy skin keeping him from going to sleep, like I said it has been quite a week. Here are some pictures of the amazing things that Baby has done this week.

Yes- that cute little diaper bum is up in the air- more and more he pulling his knees forward and pushing up on his hands- a few weeks ago I saw him move forward about 2 or 3 feet, but he seems to have forgotten how to do that and now he mostly moves backwards while in this position.

He is sitting up on his own and playing with toys- I have to prop this toy against a table or another large toy because he presses so hard on the buttons that it moves away from him and then he falls over. If he can avoid falling over he can play in the sitting up position easily for 15 minutes of more.

He also likes to play with a sippy cup while sitting up- the doctor said to let him start playing with cups now so that he could be completely used to them by the time he is 1 year old. He uses the cup as a chew toy mostly which is fine with me, better the cup than my fingers.

Ducky tubby, your the one, you make bath time lots of fun, Ducky Tubby I'm awfully fond of you.

A never-ending need

During Sunday School this week our teacher shared small bit of a talk given by Elder Russell M. Nelson (I think). The talk was about repentance and the fact that it is not needed just once or just for large transgressions, but we should be repenting each day of all our sins, large or small, sins of commission and sins of omission. I must admit, I kind of stopped listening to the teacher because my own mind was flooded with thoughts. I thought about the Psalm of Nephi and I thought about how so many Prophets have warned us not to procrastinate the day of our repentance. And I think I came to a new personal understanding of why repentance is so important and what I am doing wrong.

My ultimate goal is to be something more than I am; eventually, with a lot of help, I hope to be like Christ and like God. I am nowhere near meeting that goal. I know it is possible, in fact I have been given exact directions on how to do it, but like with most things that come with directions, I tend to try to figure it out myself instead of keeping the directions close by and following them closely. But I understand a little more today why I need to laminate those directions then put them on a string around my neck and refer to them several times each hour.

I have always loved what I call the Psalm of Nephi (2 Nephi 4:15-35). At one point he says “Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.” (17-19)

This man was a prophet of God, and yet his soul was grieved because of his iniquities. I remember the first time I really thought about what he was saying, I was stunned, I knew that a prophet had to be worthy to receive revelation from God and yet there were times that even a prophet felt unworthy, when even a prophet felt that he had sinned. If someone as good as a prophet felt that he fell short, then what was going to happen to me, I make big mistakes. Even though it was more than a decade ago I also still remember the thought that entered my mind while I was pondering this prophets words. I understood for the first time that I and Nephi, and everyone else were all in similar situations; we all have a never-ending need, we all need to rely upon the power of our Saviors atonement.

At first we recognize the huge sins we have committed, they are the elephant in the room that cannot be ignored. By our actions we have separated ourselves from our God and we must repent of those sins to return to our Fathers presence. It was at this point that I also recognized what it truly means to have the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, to be with me. If I am worthy and repentant the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Ghost, will be my companion, and if I am in the presence of the Holy Ghost I am in the presence of a member of the Godhead, so in a way if I am practicing for the day that I can be, literally, in the presence of my Savior and my God. It is easy to recognize the Big Sins, usually we knew they were wrong long before we ever did them, but we made our choice and we chose wrong. All is not lost; we know we can repent.

So what happens next? Hopefully we don’t run out and commit more huge sins, but we also know that we are not perfect we are still making mistakes, we still sin, smaller mistakes, smaller sins, but we are still separating ourselves from our God and as such we find that we once again need to repent. And so the never-ending cycle continues. Basically, what I learned from this pondering upon Nephi’s words was this, the more we repent the more we see what we could change and what we could do better. When you are dealing with an Elephant in your living room you are probably not too bothered by the fly on the wall of that room, but once you get rid of the elephant suddenly the fly is very, very annoying. As we repent and become more in tune with the Spirit, we notice the smaller things we didn’t see before. That is what Nephi taught me, to repent so that I can become spiritually sensitive and able to more clearly see what I still need to change and fix and repent of.

Today that teaching mingled itself with the words of many other prophets who warn not to procrastinate the day of our repentance. I knew it was important- after all it takes a while to truly get rid of an Elephant, but it is not just the Elephant sized sins we need to worry about, it is all of the sins, even the little itsy bitsy ones that we can barely see. That is why we cannot afford to procrastinate, because if we do we may not have enough time to become spiritually sensitive enough to even see the bunny sized sins let alone the speck sized ones.

In the end, after all we have done, we are still going to be imperfect, we are still going to have made mistakes but if we have done all that we can our Savior will fill in our gaps and build us the bridge back to our God. I don’t want to get to that day and realize that I have not done all I could have done; I think that would truly be Hell.

Fun with Uncle Paul

In Celebration of our Baby Boy’s 6th month of life we took a trip Logan to visit Uncle Paul and Aunt Diane. With Uncle Paul’s help, the baby had Ton’s of Fun.

Here are the Baby’s stats from his 6-month checkup-

Weight- 18 pds. 15 oz. 76th percentile
Height- 27 & 2/3 in. 87th percentile
Head Circum.- 17 in. 30th percentile (still so very humble)

And here are some pictures from our fun filled weekend.

When he should have been sleeping on Friday morning, the baby went exploring in his crib. He found some light coming through the the corner of the crib- the pictures I took with the lights off didn't really come out well, but as you can see, he was very proud to show me his discovery. OK, so we were not actually on a trip yet, but look how cute he is in his size 12 month froggy pajamas!In Logan, the baby learned how to jump on a Trampoline

We went to First Dam and enjoyed the view of the water from a nice little fishing spot.

A tiny little bird let us get very close to it, we don't think it could fly.

The baby discovered that the water at First Dam is quite cold in September

We tried to go the the Farmers Market, but as it turned out the regular location for the farmers market had been magically transformed into the Finish Line of the Top of Utah Marathon. We stayed a while and watched as amazing people crossed the finish line, many of them continued to move under their own power, but we saw quite a few who crossed the finish line only to fall into the arms of volunteers who helped them to a recovery tent. The highlight of the Marathon was the free bottles of Nesquik- Chocolate Milk that were being handed out like Candy! I got to meet one of my favorite people, The Quik Bunny! As you can see, the baby was jealous.

Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do or Do Without!

Way back in 2006, Ken and I sat down and got as close to creating an actual monthly budget as we ever had, the purpose of the budget was to see if we could survive on Ken’s income alone. We could, but we wouldn’t have much money to do fun stuff, but who needs to do fun stuff when you have a warm place to live and food to eat- right? With the knowledge that we could survive once we had a baby the budget went to the back of the darkest part of our brains.

Then, more than a year later we brought the budget out again, this time we knew we would be having a baby within the next few months and thought it would be good to practice actually living within the family budget, it was much harder than I thought, because I always knew in the back of my mind that I was working and so we actually had more money then the budget said- so if we fudged a little it would still all work out just fine. Well in the past 6 months I have earned about $200, which is not much room to fudge.

So on Monday we pulled out the budget one more time and it was the right time to do it too! It is weird to say, but it was a fun and eye-opening experience. Fun? I know I am still trying to figure that one out myself, but it has really lit a fire inside me and this morning someone on the Today Show threw some more fuel on that fire and so I thought I would tell you about it.

We have a lot, I realize that, and my new fire is helping me recognize that I don’t really need anything more than what I already have. We have nice clothes, Most of them are free of holes and many of them are quite new, so I don’t need to go shopping for clothes. I have so many “Things” that I forget what I have, so I don’t need to buy myself more things. I know how to cook, so I probably should cook more and let Betty Crocker and Swanson and Red Baron cook for my family a little less. These are all ways I can save money and make our new budget work. I feel the fire inside telling me to be more like my grandparents and parents and “Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do or DO WITHOUT!” and I am actually excited to do this, I really, really, really feel like our family is going to be very blessed and very successful in our efforts to be more frugal.

Back to the Today Show, they were discussing Greed in America and really the entire financial crisis that our country finds itself in. Matt Lauer asked the two experts (they were really just financial journalists) if this most recent crisis was going to change America, if it was going to now be cool to live on less and be more frugal. NOOOOO was the response from one of the experts, this is not a direct quote but it is the way my mind processed it -the good times are not over, we will always find a way to spend. My opinion of her opinion- What a horrible, horrible misunderstanding of Good Times. Spending does not bring the Good Times, Security and Self Sufficiency bring the Good Times and as such I am going to try my hardest to “Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do or Do Without!” because I want my family to have Good Times now and in the future!

I will let you know how I do, good or bad. Wish me luck. I think I am also going to add a new phrase to my Affirmations “Frugal is Fun”.

(By the way- for those who are wondering how we are going to do Fun Things on our new budget- two words “Gift Cards”. If we have a gift card we can go out to dinner or the movies or anything else like that. Discovercard Cash Back Bonus awards will keep us in Restaurant Gift Cards for a while, but any movie theater gift card donations will be gladly accepted for birthdays, Christmas, or any day really. Ken is grateful for the gift card he got at Christmas that will allow him to continue to purchase DVD’s, as long as those DVD’s are for sale at the Sears in Fashion Place Mall.)

A New Best Friend

The baby discovered a new friend on Monday,He spent quite a while talking to this friend and reaching out to touch him and then, sadly, he moved the mirror and his friend was gone! So he went back to playing with his big brother, Peter the Penguin.

Hello-I'm done with my Nap!

The baby should have been taking his morning nap, it wasn't quite time to wake up, but he was making enough noise for me to go in and see if I could help him get back to sleep. I walked in and saw two little eye staring in the direction of the door, then I heard a squeal of Joy and I gave in, 45 minutes was pretty good for a Monday Morning.After all, How do you say no to this proposal?
Translation-"Oh, Mommy, We could have so much fun right now if I could be done with my nap".

The bumper actually came out today during the afternoon nap, I think it was getting to be too much fun to play with, and it had been spit up on. He went right back to sleep after its removal and now he kind of looks like he is in Jail.

Olympic Champions!

Our Church had its very own Olympics this weekend. We were Team Wheeler, complete with Fantastic Uniforms! We all participated in the 5k run/walk- for me it was more of a run/walk/run/walk/walk/walk/run/walk. Ken pushed the baby in a running stroller that a kind neighbor let us borrow. I quickly discovered that Ken could catch up with me if I ran ahead of him, but there was no way that I would ever catch him if he got ahead of me, so I imposed the first rule of Team Wheeler- only Kate can run ahead, because she is slow.

As you can see we swept the Medals in our category- (the Wheeler category)
Baby got Gold, I got Silver and Ken got Bronze. Ok, Ok, so we may have bribed some judges, or even more truthfully we may have just purchased the medals for ourselves at a party store. Still it made for great fun.

After the 5k there were many other Olympic type activities, for example; Hula Hooping, Water Balloon Toss and Water Balloon Volleyball, Milk Jug Toss, a Potato Sack Race, face painting and of course a Dunk Tank. I never knew Ken was such an Amazing Dunker! At first he teased our Bishop, saying that he was just going to push the button.

But then he went back to the Line and let one go-

Hitting the Target perfectly

And finally, the Baby enjoyed his first romp in the grass!

Fetish

Baby has his first fetish.

Feet!

His own, or anyone else's, if he sees them, he absolutely must touch them and if possible, get them into his mouth.

Bambi and the Baby

This Baby is asleep. A few weeks ago I took the bumper out of his crib to inspect it, I thought there might be a spider living in it. There wasn't, but I did put the baby down for a nap in his crib without the bumper that day. He didn't nap, I found him 20 minutes after being put down for his nap lovingly caressing the cribs slats, he had never noticed them before and found them very interesting. In the weeks since that day the baby has learned how to pull down the bumper to find the crib slats, and even more recently he has started caressing and hugging the bumper itself. I told my family about the bumper hugging and my sister C said "He thinks bumper is his Mother". I thought, Yes, he has started to hug me too but I doubt he loves the bumper as much as he loves me. As I went to bed that night I realized that she had just switched Thumper for Bumper, I was pleased with my funny sister, "Ha, He thinks Bumpers is his Mother! Bambi! Ha!" I am pretty sure Ken thought that was an odd comment to make as we got into bed. But Hey, that's me, Odd.

The Thoughts inside my Head

I don’t know why I spend so much time ignoring the thoughts that pop into my head. You would think that after a couple of decade of making my life that much harder, by doing it my way, I would want and quickly follow the help these thoughts tend to bring. I say all the time that I am grateful for these thoughts or impressions or lightning bolts from above, but I realize today that I, more often than not, follow these impressions only after trying it my way first. I felt kind of dumb.

The Baby and I are Nap Training, yes; my house is now the Nap Training Center and as with anyone’s stay any type of training facility, the first few days are going to be rough.

I have a pretty good baby, quite near angelic. He sleeps well at night and, up until a month or so ago, was doing ok with napping during the day. We were still following the “Put your baby down for a nap within 2 hours of him waking up from his previous nap rule” and when naps only last 30 minutes….it felt like he was taking 1,000,000 naps per day. The Healthy Sleep Habits guy made it seem like the baby would just start taking longer and fewer naps, my baby actually started taking more frequent shorter naps. This was a pretty good sign to me that both Baby and I needed to make a change.

So, It was about 2 weeks ago that I felt like it was time to get in a Nap Routine! I now believe that if we had started 2 weeks ago we would have had a good routine going by now. But NO- I, being Kate, checked out a book, it is a good book, it has put me to sleep a few times, and so it wasn’t until today that I got to the part about napping. (I actually checked it out 2 weeks ago but I thought that I should read from the beginning instead of skipping ahead to the good stuff, It has taken a while to get there because, as previously stated, it has put me to sleep on more than one occasion). So, Instead of getting right down to the nap training I waited two weeks, what has happened in those two weeks- baby has started teething.

The Sleep Lady gave me some good ideas this morning, and so, I had a plan for the day all mapped out in my head. So what did I do when the first “Thought” came along that didn’t match my plan? I ignored it, that is right, I said “Whoa, that is not on my map, I must follow my plan, stick to the plan, the plan will help us….” WRONG, baby woke up after 30 minutes, even though the plan clearly stated that the morning nap should last 90-120 minutes. So, I listened to him talk to himself, he did manage to go back to sleep for about 15 more minutes but then he woke up again and instead of talking he whined then cried. I went in to try to comfort him and help him go back to sleep and finish his nap. So I spent a half an hour sitting next to his crib, rubbing his back and his hand and he spent a half an hour trying his very best to get me to pick him up, he won. He spent 1 hour and 15 minutes in bed, sleeping only half of it.

I had planned to put him down for his next nap around noon, but he started to fall asleep while he was eating at 11 and so, remembering all I have learned from reading all the sleep books, I put him to bed “Drowsy, but awake” at 11:30, close enough to noon right? This time I ignored the pretty strong impression that I should let him play, or roll around on the floor, until noon and then put him down. So what happened? He did fall right to sleep, but 30 minutes later he was talking to himself, this time progressing to crying instead of falling back to sleep.

It was during those 30 minutes that I had the realization that I should follow thoughts and impressions the first time. So this time I went in to see the baby and did what I was impressed to do. Oddly I was impressed to change an only slightly wet diaper and then put the baby back in bed. He went back to sleep, he has stirred a few more times but we are not coming up on the 2 hour mark for this nap!!! Wish us luck- because I have had the thought several times now, that it is going to take a couple of weeks before we are professional nappers/nap trainers.
So the thought that sticks in my head now is this- If I know that my life is easier and days go by smoother if I follow the thoughts and impressions that I pray to receive each day, WHY IN THE WORLD do I ignore them the first time and try it my way. How do I remember each day, with each thought, that I need to follow the impressions the first time and not wait until I know, without a doubt, that I need help?

Between a Toy and a Soft Place

Life isn’t easy, but I think sometimes I make my life harder. For example if I had been a dutiful daughter and learned how to clean a house really well when I was young, I wouldn’t need to make and use my own chore chart now, I made my life a little harder. Thankfully, I can overcome that little problem (and I think I am- it is 9:15 and I am already 90% done with my chore for today). On the other hand there are hard things in life that we didn’t bring upon ourselves and most times cannot fix on our own. The sweet baby has helped me remember these things and come to understand them a little bit more.

Here is how. As you can see from the picture below, the baby is stuck between a toy (the leg of his gym on the left) and a Soft Place (yes, it is another toy- a soft elephant puppet).

Many times recently I have been about the daily business of the house while he played, I would hear the distress signal and come running to find the baby had rolled into some very interesting positions that he didn’t seem to know how to get out of, and I was not quite sure how he got into (I have been telling Ken that we need a night vision camera for his room so we can see how he moves around his bed so well, now I want a camera for all the rooms- I am pretty sure we could win $100,000 on AFV, but Ken is still skeptical). So back to my original thought, the baby made his life a little harder, he didn’t intend to get stuck, he tried to get out of his situation and I have seen him get out of similar situations before, but for some reason, these times he couldn’t and so he called on someone who had power to help him. The baby is teething now. I think we are pretty lucky, I noticed the extreme amount of drool on Saturday night and sure enough when I felt around in his mouth there was a sharp little point. There was a slight rise in fussiness but it was easily attributed to poor napping over the past couple of days. He is such a happy little kid, my Sister C even asked my Dad at Dinner yesterday if I had been as happy a baby as our little boy seems to be, maybe it is genetic. Well as we tried to put him to bed last night our baby gave us a glimpse of what teething is really like.

We have only heard the Pain cry a couple of times, and then we were usually pretty good at figuring out the problem and getting rid of the pain. I have never felt so unprepared in my life, as franticly tried to figure out what I could do to take away his pain. In the end all I could do was give him Tylenol, feed him and Pray, basically I did what the baby does; I called on someone bigger, someone who has the power to help me.

Well, baby didn’t sleep horribly but he did wake up quite a few times. I got him up at 5:20 and let him suck an ice cube- which to my surprise, he loved. He went back to sleep about an hour and a half later and slept for 2 hours or more (the real reason I got my chores done so early today) and now he is my happy little baby again. I sure hope that God does not take pictures of us before he helps us out of the predicaments we get ourselves into, but if he does I hope the pictures of me between a toy and a soft place are as cute as the ones I have shared with you today.

Just to end, I have never felt so inspired and willing to follow the thoughts, impressions and promptings I seem to get, as I have been over the past 5 ½ months. I am pretty sure that this is a side effect of the amount that I am asking God for help. I hope I never forget the things I am learning and always remember that I can call on Him.

New Soul

My father really enjoyed the song on the Macbook Air ad. He liked it so much that he found it online and had everyone who came to his house listen to it. It was quite catchy, written and preformed by Yael Naim a French/Israeli R&B artist.

Since having the baby I have seen so much of this "New Soul" in him that someday I want to put pictures of him together in a montage with this song in the background. I am not quite that talented, but Ken reminded me this morning that I do know people with just the right talents needed for me to realize my dream of the perfect video.

Someday I hope to share the finished product with you but for now you will have to dream about it, like I do. But here is a little "Dream Seeding" for you, hopefully you see what I see.....

First start the music then scroll through the pictures.

I'm a new soul

I came to this strange world

Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take

But since I came here,

felt the joy

and the fear

Finding myself

making every possible

mistake.

(I don't have pictures for the next two verses, but you can listen until the end or scroll back up and enjoy the pictures a few more times)
New soul...

In this very strange world...

Every possible mistake

Possible mistake

Every possible mistake

Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes...

Now to end, I must say, the baby is the exact opposite of a mistake, but I sure get some good pictures of him learning how to use his brand new body. It must be odd to be a new soul.