July Collage

What a Cutie! I love the little faces she is starting to make all the time!

Same Thing, Another Month

Ari With Abuelita

A group of the young women when we went to the temple openhouse

Ariana´s hair-do by her two year old cousin Avery

It seems like this month just flew by and there isn´t anything super exciting that I can think of that is different than my post last month. Ariana is very proficient in the crawling department, although she still won´t follow me into another room, she just cries when she sees me leave and calms down when I come back. I guess it is good though, I only have to keep one area baby proof still.

What amazes me is that she is standing up everywhere. She loves to pull herself up to the furniture to stand, which I know is a totally normal thing, but in a six month old? She´ll be 7 months tomorrow, but she has been pulling herself up for a couple of weeks now. I think she´ll be a nine month old walker. Her balance has even improved alot the last few days. I guess a few hard knocks on the tile makes her a fast learner. I try to cushion all of her favorite standing areas as much as possible but she always seems to find her way out of the cushion zone. Maybe she´s a thrill seeker, great.

Manuel (Isaac´s brother) and Chelsea flew in yesterday. We are excited that they could come with their 4 kids. They are here just in time for the Temple open house and dedication. They´ll stay for 3 weeks, that means three weeks of beach for us too, yay. It´s funny that we live here in a tropical paradise yet we only go to the beach when we have visitors. We should get out more often.

Isaac is finishing up his finals this week. One semster down, many more to go.

Any Thoughts?

We would like some advice from the parents out there. For the past three weeks or so Ariana has started waking up at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning, random times, no schedule . The month before she finally started sleeping in until about 6 or 7. Now she rarely sleeps through the night. Do you:

A. Pick her up after one or two minutes, try to soothe her and give her a bottle.

B. Let her cry for 5 minutes or so to see if she will go back to sleep and give her a bottle if she doesn´t.

C. Ignore her completely, she´ll go back to sleep eventually.

Any thoughts on the subject would be very appreciated!

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!