Ariana at Six Months Old

I can´t believe how much a baby progresses from day to day. This month Ariana has become so active and everyday she is learning and doing something new. This month she started holding her own bottle (Yay!) and crawling (Uh-oh). She is not all out speeding around yet, but she gets a little faster and steadier every day. If I put her on the floor I put her on a bedspread or her little foam alphabet pad, but for some reason she goes straight for the tile. When she gets there, she just lays down on her tummy and starts licking the tile. Weird! I clap my hands at her and say “Ari, no!” but she just looks up at me, laughs and goes back to licking. Is she lacking something in her diet? Now I am afraid to leave her on the bed because she sees the tile from there and tries to go for it but of course doesn´t realize there is a drop involved. She is starting to move fast enough now that I don´t think I can let her play there anymore.

Just today she started boosting herself up onto her knees. She climbs up the wall with her hands and kneels there holding onto the wall or her little rocker, what ever she can pull herself up to (my leg). She was kneeling up to her little chair a few minutes ago, and had her first bonk against the tile. It sounds horrible when a head hits the tile (carpet isn´t used here, just tile floors or cement floors. Hard on crawling and walking, but I heard they´re great for potty training). But a little cuddling, caressing and juice resolved the tears pretty quick, so I don´t think there is any permanent damage.

She weighed in last week at 17 lbs 10 ounces. She only gained one pound last month. She´s a little bit anti-social, I think because she is holed up with just me all day. At church and the store she gets a little aggravated when people try to hold her. She already has a reputation as being fussy at church. She´s not at home though, she is very calm until she´s tired, then she´s a bit of a screamer. Cherish observed that she has no middle ground. She goes from a 0 to 10 in about a half a second. It´s just good that she´s usually a 0.

We are enjoying her so much and happy to be here with her.

Yanguez update

We are now officially land owners in Panama. The title took about three weeks to get and now we are working on building permits, hopefully we can start building a house pronto.

I am in the young women´s presidency at church and Isaac is a sub in the Elder´s Quorum Presidency (the actual counselors are currently inactive, but they don´t want to release them hoping that obligation will help them come back), Isaac has also just been called to be a Sunday school teacher. They´ve also called me as choir director, and anyone who knows me very well knows how funny that is. But I know the tunes to most of the songs, so that qualifies me. We had our first preformance 2 weeks ago, after only three weeks of practice. Not bad, but not great.

Isaac is almost finished with his first semester in the University of Panama Nursing Program. He says he would rather be studying in Utah though. He is doing well and is moving forward.

A week and a half ago someone dropped off a little puppy on our porch at 4 am. Since we sleep in the livingroom we heard her yelping right away. She was really little and all wet and shaking. Isaac gave her some warm milk and put her back in the laundry room. The next morning we noticed she had thrown up the milk and had diarrhea. We kept trying to give her milk, but over the next day and a half she got really weak and the diarrhea was getting worse. Isaac took her to the vet and they said she had Parvovirus, fleas and ticks. They gave her a couple of shots for the virus and a Gatorade type drink to try to rehydrate her. They told us that 80% of puppies with parvovirus don´t make it. Isaac helped her with the drink every four hours and pulled about 30 ticks out of her ears, belly, paws, etc. (The ticks here, called agarapatas, are huge and nasty. They are big pulsating bags of blood that can get as big as my thumb nail when they are full. Gross.) She seemed to be recovering, a few days after the shot; she was walking around, yapping a bit again and even tried to climb the big steps out of the laundry room. Then the following days she started getting weak again, until she couldn´t even walk the day Isaac took her back for her follow up shot. They gave him some stronger vitamins and some other things to nurse her with, saying that the virus will sometimes attack the heart or liver after the GI tract. She died that evening. It was really hard to see her suffer. We weren´t even planning on keeping her, but we wanted to help her live. Sad.

I am including a picture of an ant that was in season for about 2 weeks. Destiny was telling me about the huge ants in the new Indiana Jones movie. I told her we have them just as big here, but with wings. If you had your car parked under a light at night, hundreds would get stuck to the moisture of the roof. It was kinda creepy. I took the picture of it next to a juice bottle so you can relate the size a little better.

CONGRATULATIONS HEIDI! Heidi, yep, the youngest Morrell from the Paul and MaryAnne clan, just had a baby boy on June 27th. His name is Elyn Heston Brown. Way to go little sis!

Who Are You?

So I got tagged, but I changed the questionaire, is that ok in the blog world?

Place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not. This is for your entire life!

(x) Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
(x) Gone on a blind date
(x) Gone out with someone you met on the internet
(xx) Skipped school (Dad always said "Don´t let school get in the way of your education")
(v) Watched someone die (watched a puppy die and have seen a lot of dead people, sad)
( ) Been to Canada (nope, just Europe, Central America and South America...)
( ) Been to Mexico
(X) Been to Florida
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
( ) Felt like dying
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang Karaoke (One of the hardest things for me to do)
( ) Paid for a meal with only coins
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?
(X) Made prank phone calls.
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out your nose
( ) Laughed until you peed your pants
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain (does rollerblading count?)
(X) Played Chinese stoplight
( ) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone you care about
(X) Gone ice-skating (once - and I chipped my elbow - ouch!)
(x) Been skinny dipping outdoors
(X) Gone to the movies in a foreign language

1. Any nicknames? blondie, fula
2. Mother's name? mom
3. Favorite drink? Diet Coke
4 . Tattoos? no
5. Body Piercing? Nope
6. How much do you love your job? What Job
7. Birthplace? Germany
8. Favorite vacation spot? Lake Powell
9. Ever been to Africa ? not yet - soon
10. Ever eaten cookies for dinner? cookie dough
11. Ever been on TV? Yes
12. Ever steal a traffic sign? No
13. Ever been in a car accident? Does running over someone count?
14. Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? 5 door - stupid wagon
15. Favorite salad dressing? Cafe Rio´s tomatillo
16. Favorite pie? Humble pie- but only when I serve it.
17. Favorite number? 1
18. Favorite movie? Return to me
19. Favorite holiday? Thankgsgiving - of course they don´t celebrate that in Panama...
20. Favorite dessert? Chocolate volcano with vanilla icecream (Chili´s)
21. Favorite food? Shepherd´s Pie
22. Favorite day of the week? Friday
25. Favorite smell? Rain (stole that answer from a friend, but I have to agree with him)
26. What do you do to relax? Read a novel
27. How do you see yourself in 10 years? Nurse Practitioner with 4-6 kids
28. 5 people I am tagging: Cherish, Melinda, Carrie, John, Emily

We love visitors!

Cherish and Grandma Westover came to visit the first week in June. We stayed in a condo on the beach, we were on the 20th floor and had a beautiful view of the ocean. It was cloudy most of the time, but that kept it pretty cool, and there was a pretty impressive rainstorm one of the days. I love watching rainstorms like that over the ocean. We went up the mountain to visit a botanical garden/aviary/mini zoo (en el valle de Anton). Grandma LOVED all the flowers and foliage she saw everywhere. I tried to talk her into moving in with me during the dreary Utah winter months, she said we´ll see. hmm. We had a great time with them here. Good sights, good food, good company. We are excited for Isaac´s brother and his family to come this month.

The temple open house starts next week. We´ll be working as volunteers a few days during the open house helping with tours and first aid. The dedication will be August 10th (I think) followed by a mission reunion covering 4 mission presidents at the same time. I´m looking forward to seeing some mission buddies there!

Holy Crap!

So the doctor put Ariana on phase one Gerber juices and baby food. I was excited to be able to start giving her real food, I feel so bad eating in front of her. I gave her juice the next morning for breakfast, the whole four ounces. About an hour later, as I was talking to a neighbor, I heard and felt a BM, which is always a good thing since she had problems with constipation a lot the first few months. But she doesn´t stop, it keeps gurgling out. Then my arm was all warm. I turned her over and she had diarrhea seeping clear up her back. She gave another little pushed and it started coming out of her arm sleeves! I am totally not exaggerating! That was a surprise. I only give her half at a time now.

She hates the spoon concept. She gets pretty mad when she tries to suck on the spoon and doesn´t get the expeted results. I cut a hole in one of the nipples so I can still give her the cearal and baby food, but this way she gets to suck it up. I try it with a spoon first everytime, and I let her hold the spoon while she eats. We are getting there. That stuff stains clothes though. Both her best onsie and my favorite shirt are lost causes now. Bummer.

She weighed in at 16 lbs 11 ounces on Friday. What a chunk! She moves around a lot, I´m still not exactly sure how. She doesn´t scoot or crawl but some how she moves. I think it´s a rocking thing, just shifting her weight back and forth. She´s sneaky.

She reacts and laughs a lot now, I love it! But she is way attached to me. I tried to teach Relief Society on Sunday and the minute I handed her over to someone else she started screaming. Isaac was teaching EQ so I couldn´t have sent her with him either. I couldn´t focus, neither could anyone else. Three or four different women passed her around for about 5 minutes while I stumbled through my lesson trying to be heard over her screaming then I finally put my manual down and went to the back of the room to get her. She stopped crying the second I took her back. I finished the lesson juggling her and my manual but she was happy. Isn´t this supposed to start around 9 months old? I told the RS president that we need to make sure next time I teach that Isaac and I aren´t teaching on the same day.

Welcome to Paradise

martes, 27 de mayo de 2008

I have been highlighting alot of the icky things happening here right now. But can I just reaffirm that I really am living in a tropical paradise! We have a huge variety of beautiful beaches with bathwater warm water as close as a half hour from our house. Across from the beach are the mountains which are just as breathtaking. I could take a picture of my front yard and put it on a paradise postcard!

But my favorite thing about Panama is the fruit (and fish). Right now our neighbors are GIVING us bags full of sweet, ripe, huge mangos. They are so yummy! I have been cutting them up and freezing them so they don´t go bad and we can make shakes. We´ve also been given some papayas that I made milk shakes out of. They are so sweet I don´t even have to add sugar. And the pineapples here – amazing. 60 cents of amazing. There is a myriad of other fruits that are just so yummy and interesting but you get the idea – oh yeah – passion fruit – mmmmm. Everytime I watch Lost (we just started season one a few weeks ago, but we are on season 3 now) I totally feel like we are living in a place like that – except for being stranded on an island with crazy people – ok, it even feels like that sometimes. But the greenness, the fruit everywhere, the pretty beaches and beautiful water, the perma-sweaty clothes. That´s our life!

Nature just reminded me about my other favorite thing here – the rain. I LOVE Panama rain. It comes down hard and long. But it brings in a nice breeze and smells so good. It just started raining now and my computer is at a desk looking out my living room window. A few minutes ago I was watching these stunning little hummingbirds pick at the flowers in the front yard, but now it is a sheet of rain that makes all the greenness glisten. I love greenness.

So, yeah, there are bugs and spiders and competitions between the ants and the mosquitos (more like cohabitation) but you have to take the bad with the good. Cherish said she would rather have snow than bugs. Not me, I´ll take the bugs any day if they come with a good tropical rainstorm and a barrel of mangos!

I took all of the pictures in this collage except the one of the city. Doesn´t it look like a paradise to you?

Ants in My Pants

May 20, 2008

Ants. I am so feed up with ants. At first I felt bad killing them. But now I decided it doesn’t matter because they come back by the hundreds. They are in all of our clothes, of course the kitchen, last week I found a column of ants going from the ceiling, down the baby’s mosquito net and into her bed. Fortunately I noticed it before she got bitten (don’t know if that is the right tense). It took me an hour to shake out all of her blankets, wash the mosquito net (by hand of course, no washer or dryer here) and get all of the ants out of the little nooks in her bed. I remade her bed and hung the mosquito net in a different part of the room. In the evening when I went to put her down – they were back. I big column marching from the ceiling down the mosquito net and all over in her bed. Argh! At least that time Isaac was there to help me do the process over again. Then he put Icy/Hot sports cream all over the hanger so the ants wouldn’t climb on it again. He’s a thinker.

The ants also invaded my toothbrush. Hundreds of these little tiny ants. But it was fairly dark and I was in a hurry so I didn’t actually notice until I saw something weird on my lips as I was brushing my teeth. Yeah, ants, all over in my mouth. That day I started looking for a new place to live. We’ll move in August when our contract is up.

A few nights ago Isaac took the 4am turn with the bottle and he turned on the light in the kitchen so there was enough to see by in the living room (yeah, we sleep in the living room still). He could see a large black shape a foot or two away from the bed, and he watched it for a minute. He said he could tell by the way it moved that it was a tarantula. So he took of his flip flop and threw it at him; he’s a pretty good shot, he got it. Course the sound of the flip flop smacking the floor woke me up, and he said, “Don’t worry; it was just a little tarantula, just half the size of my palm”. Not one of the big ones. I took a picture, but since it was dead it had all its hairy legs pulled in and it’s not that impressive. I asked Isaac to let me get a picture first before he kills the next one.

Last night I was hanging clothes up on our clothes lines and I saw this huge, ugly beetle on the clothes line. I just decided to steer clear of it. They don’t scare me but I don’t like them very much. But at one point my head brushed up close enough for it to jump on. I didn’t notice till a half hour later when I scratched my head and felt this big thing on my head. I freaked out and called Isaac in to untangle it from my hair. The funny thing is that that beetle freaked me out a lot more than anything else I’ve seen so far. I guess I felt attacked.

We decided to build a house. One with windows that close and real doors, rather than the open iron gate we have for a back door. I’m so excited for that. They say it will take about three months. Not too bad.