More pictures!

Ugh, there are no jobs for which I am qualified. I received many good suggestions from my friends about what to do, but most involved more education. While I don’t completely object, I already have a couple degrees and it would be nice if I could use them. Also, there is a reason that I got the degrees I did- it’s because I like them. If I wanted to do something else, I would have done that. At this point though, I just don’t want to have wasted five years of school.

Oskar is becoming a bit difficult in his old age. He is still a super easy baby compared to some I’ve heard about, but he is getting a bit fussier as he realizes that he controls his parents. They say that babies can’t build habits until they are three months old, so around then I’ll try not to pick him up right when he starts crying. It’s hard though- he is so freaking loud. I wish we had a larger place because it sounds like he’s screaming in a closet and it seriously hurts the ears.

It’s  5:45 and Oskar hasn’t pooped yet today. Who is scared to go to church tonight? It’s me. He’s going to explode. Everyone will hear. It’s another thing he does with great volume. And in this case, it will be both in size and sound.

This is mostly a post just for Oskar pictures. Enjoy!



"Yes, I know I'm super sweet."




(Add belly laugh here.)




Very happy pre-carseat.




"What have they done to me? I am planning my revenge."




Yea, this is probably one of the sweetest things that has ever happened.




This is the face I got when I put him down when he was almost asleep. Laughter followed.




"Look how strong I am! My head is huge!"



Mostly Oskar Pictures

As promised, an official 2 month picture. Not the best, but it shows
some personality, so that's good.

I learned today that Vatican City became a sovereign city-state in exchange for papal recognition of Mussolini’s fascist regime. Now I’m probably missing some information, but it is still upsetting. Not cool Catholicism, not cool. I learned this in a documentary about sexual abuse and the reluctance to punish those responsible in the Catholic Church, so they definitely had an angle they were working. I thought the documentary was pretty good though. Very upsetting, but I thought it was done well.

Oskar is so funny. Sometimes I think he already has imaginary friends because I’ll go to the kitchen and come back and he’ll be looking off in the distance and laughing at something. I also love when he comes inside after a walk and we lay him down on the blanket and since he’s all bundled up he just sits there like he can’t move (picture above). One thing I don’t like is that sometimes his nose whistles when he sleeps and it is a super high, surprisingly piercing note. It seriously hurts the ear. Dan walked Oskar to church the other day and Oskar was super bundled up and we hadn't adjusted the size of the carrier since he was about three weeks old. Dan said Oskar grunted with every step he took all the way to the church. That is about a half a mile of grunts. Oskar also likes to sing with his Dad. I posted a video below.

Our radiator seems to get louder as the year goes on. Simultaneously, Oskar is reacting to loud noises and sometimes they even cause him to wake up. That’s nice. It’s like the radiator doesn't even care that I have a teeny tiny baby that needs to sleep. Much more importantly, I need to sleep.

It is beautiful when it snows. I was going to go outside the other day and get a better picture but apparently people frown upon those who leave babies alone. Oh well, we couldn't see the mountains that day anyway.

Attitude might be a problem with this one.

Yes, I realize that my posts used to be longer and more entertaining, but besides the baby, nothing is happening. I keep looking for a job and feeding a baby who just won’t stop eating. That is my life.

The word ‘won’t’ is a contraction of ‘will’ and ‘not.’ Pretty sure we should say wiln’t instead. Yep, that just happened. Embrace it.

Superb Owls

It has been quite balmy as of late. It’s kind of nice, because of hauling the baby around and everything, but it is definitely not the winter we expected when we found out we were moving to Anchorage. We were expecting snow. Lots and lots of snow. We have not gotten lots and lots of snow. Dan is sad. I’m just surprised. Part of me thought since they got so much snow last year, they wouldn't be getting as much this year, but the other part of me thought I was making stuff up. We were able to walk with Oskar to church tonight. That went well. He didn't notice that we were outside.

Dan and I were able to go see Les Miserables last Friday with the help of some friends who were able to babysit for us and some other friends who gave use free tickets. We both enjoyed it immensely and I hardly cried at all. Hopefully when we get back to the cities we can go to the stage production- Dan has not seen it and he needs to.

Oskar is now over two months old. He is relatively portly and we recently noticed that he reacts to being tickled now. He has a great laugh. He is such a great baby. I’m usually the one who puts him to sleep at night and he likes to be held for a while, but then squirms when he’s ready to be put down. Then he likes to suck on his pacifier for a bit, and when he’s done, he simply spits it out and closes his eyes and goes to sleep. It’s not always this simple, but it has occurred quite a few times and I find that impressive. We took an official 2 month picture, but I can't get the computer to recognize my SD card, so that will have to wait. So for now, enjoy this one:

Dan did his first funeral last week and he said it went pretty well. As far as funerals go, I guess it was the good kind because it was a 90-something that had lived a good life and not a tragic accident of a young kid.

We were very rushed before getting picked up for the Super Bowl party we were going to. It was a whole mess of getting the Cheps (Oskar) ready and making a giant batch of guacamole, which is never a tidy process. We were successful on both counts, although there was guac all over the table for a while and we had to leave a bunch of food scraps out so when we came home there was an onion explosion. Also, I got to the party and realized my shirt was on inside out. That wasn't the surprising part though. The surprising part was that I didn't care and I wasn't even a little bit embarrassed. I was more annoyed, because it was just another thing I had to do. Oskar did pretty well at the party, but there were about 50 people there and he was a bit over stimulated so around the time of the blackout he and I escaped to a quiet location and talked about what we are going to do in the upcoming year. I don’t know if he could actually understand or if he just thought the sounds were funny, but he got super excited whenever we talked about meeting more aunts and uncles. By the way, Super Bowl is a ridiculous name for an athletic championship. Just think about it. Dan and I still intend to host our Superb Owl Crock Pot party as soon as we have a home that can fit more than six people. See you in ten years.

I got inceptioned!

That’s right people, a dream within a dream. When I woke up for real, I was so confused because I seriously thought it already happened. As Dan told Oskar, we are living in the future. It’s hard to trust his opinion though. This is a conversation he had with Oskar:

“Should we sing a song?”

Bright eyed stare.

“Should we sing the liturgy?”

Bright eyed stare.

“Okay! (Singing) The Lord be with you…”

Don’t worry; we've already told Oskar that his parents are weird. He knows. 

I salute all the women who want to be stay at home moms. I do not. I feel bad about this because I have the opportunity to spend time with my baby, and I know a lot of moms that have to go back to work wish they could be home. I have realized that I wish I had a job to go back to though. I love my baby and he is a very good baby, but is it so wrong to wish that I had more to my life? I think not.  Wow, that sounds mean. Oh well.

Oskar can giggle. It is a very joyful sound. He is also doing very well at sleeping through the night. Usually I get up twice (last night was only once!) to feed him and he goes right back to sleep. Although, upon further consideration, I don’t know that he actually wakes up… The trouble with Oskar is that he absolutely does not care if his diaper is dirty and this can lead to the parents forgetting to change the diaper once in the night. This leads to a slightly wetter Oskar than one would like. He doesn't mind though. In other good news, Target finally makes long jeans. Overall, it’s been a pretty good week.

I finally sent in my application today for that job I mentioned last time. I think that’s what bothers me about staying at home with a baby. You can't get anything done. I guess I would have been able to do it faster if we had an internet connection, but still, this took me 15 days to pull together and that is just stupid. In the midst of it all I thought I found a typo in my thesis. Luckily I was looking at a rough draft. I wrote metal instead of mental. The final draft was fine. I had to look at my thesis to refresh my memory so I could write about it for this application. Up to this point I have avoided looking to closely at it for fear of finding a typo. 

And last but not least, an Oskar pic. Dan said he looks drunk. He is not drunk.

Oskar is sleeping! I can update the blog!

On Monday we had Oskar's 6 week appointment. He has moved from the 50^th percentile to the 75^th and the doctor said he looks really good. We had four vaccinations to do, three shots and an edible one. The edible one was fine, but our little friend didn't care for the shots, or the removal of the band-aids for that matter. He did get a little fever, but not high enough to warrant calling the clinic. We gave him some acetaminophen and the temp was back to normal about a day later, most the time it was at 99.5ish, so nothing to worry about.

Post-appointment nap. He won. 

Oskar is smiling and making sounds now, so it’s getting to be a lot more fun to play with him. He is very expressive, which I  think he gets from Dan. He even likes Peek-a-boo. I hate that game and I think it’s stupid, but I participate nonetheless. He’s also drooling a lot. I thought that babies only really started drooling when they were about to get teeth; luckily I was wrong. He scared us a bit the other day because there was a lot of blood in his ear. Luckily it wasn't coming out of his ear. His nails were long; he wasn't wearing his little mittens and scratched himself a bit. He didn't care. Ears bleed a lot.

We went to our baby class reunion on Saturday. It was fun to see all the babies, but a bit awkward at the same time because we really don’t know each other that well and we probably won’t be seeing each other again. We were pretty well aware that our child has large feet, but we compared his feet to another baby who was a little older, who was also told he had large feet. Oskar's were about 3/4” larger. They are cute feet, but they are by no means little baby feet. When they did his foot prints at the hospital they barely fit in the boxes. There are a couple clothing items he can’t wear anymore because his feet get squished. He’s officially out of newborn clothes and is even wearing a couple 3 mos. outfits. Life would be easier if baby clothes were sized the same. They need a universal template.

I am working on applying for a job I saw posted online a few days ago. Due to the lack of software on my computer, I am finding it very difficult and it is taking a lot longer than I would like. A few files I need are the wrong file type and I don’t have what I need to convert them. Don’t worry, I found a solution, but it’s a bit annoying. Given my history with applying for jobs it just seems like a lot of work for a job I’m probably not going to get. Oh well, I must keep trying. No, I’m not pessimistic, I’m realistic and my lack of optimism has a solid foundation of rejection.

I watched a program the other day called How William Shatner Changed the World. It was quite entertaining. It was more how Star Trek changed the world, but Shatner hosted so that’s that. At one point he was wearing a nice button down shirt, what looked like yellow chinos and then black Velcro-strapped sandals with white gym socks. Don’t they have people in charge of making sure that doesn't happen? Then again, maybe the audience they were expecting for that program wouldn't generally care about such things. I learned many things though, including that the transporter was a last minute addition. They were going to have a shuttle craft, but it wasn't finished in time so they were going to have five or six episodes where the shuttle wasn't available. Oh happy accidents. The “beam me up” is the first thing many people think about when they hear Star Trek, and for some (an unfortunate group to be sure) it is the only thing they know about the franchise.

I also had my 6 week postpartum appointment. I am healthy again! I am actually down below my pre-pregnancy weight around where I was in eighth grade. That was exciting. It becomes less exciting when I remember that muscle weighs more than fat and I have zero muscle right now due to my immobility during pregnancy. We’ll see what happens when I start exercising again. Knowing my body, I wasn't surprised that I lost the weight so easily. For better or for worse, my body continues to be weird. I have mentioned this before, I know, so I will now provide some examples for those who are unaware.

1.      When I went to college, I decided to have my cholesterol checked just to see where I was at. I still don’t know how they figure this stuff out, but they didn't give me a number for my bad cholesterol because they couldn't detect my triglycerides. Seriously, I don’t know how this works, but I found it weird that they couldn't detect any triglycerides and because of this provided me with no number. Shouldn't there be a number?

2.      Regardless of what I eat and how much I exercise, I have only been successful in losing weight twice pre-baby. In fact, usually when I try to lose weight, I gain weight. Probably it's muscle weight, but it happens really quick that it's a bit discouraging. One time I lost weight was when I got some terrible illness that still has not been identified and the other was when I got pregnant. Both times I lost ten pounds in about a week. Kristin and I recently discussed how having a baby is a great way to lose weight for the two of us. I think my body was throwing in an extra reward for the 9 months of hell (in addition to the pretty baby).

3.      I sprained a rib in eighth grade. It still hurts. I still feel ridiculous telling people I sprained a rib. I barely believe that it’s possible, why should they?

4.      I went to the doctor and she told me to eat more red meat and salt. Best. Day. Ever. (I kept passing out- turns out I have low blood pressure and sudden drops in blood sugar. Nasty combination.)

5.      This is perhaps the strangest and truly unique. I have encountered two natural piercings on my body (see image below, sorry if it disgusts you). I now only have one because I kept sticking stuff through the one on my neck and apparently it didn't like it. No one knows what these are. You may ask: how did I find them? Well, it looked like I could stick something through it, so I tried, and I was successful. 

So many things from my head

For those of you who come to the blog not via Facebook, here is the poo series:

Today is the senior pastor’s last day at church. He’s a great guy, so it’s sad to see him go, but quite understandable that the time has come for him to move on. His wife is staying here through May so hopefully she’ll continue coming to church so we can keep seeing her. I don’t know if that would be weird for her or the Interim if she continues coming though. We’ll see what happens. One neat thing is that since they are moving to SW Minnesota, we can visit them pretty easily once we move back to Minnesota.

We still don’t know when we’re coming home. I hate not knowing. June? Great! August? Fine! Just let me know. I like to plan things and it’s not like knowing would really let me plan a lot, but not knowing makes me feel like a vagrant. Yes, a vagrant.

Dan finally got assigned a supervisor by the Bishop. It will be the Bishop. No pressure. Really, there probably isn’t any, but it sounds a bit intimidating. I don’t think they have an Interim yet, so next week will begin Dan’s marathon sermon training. There are a couple other people who said they will give a sermon over the next few months, but mostly it will be Dan. Luckily he’s been giving sermons for a few years now. He’s looking forward to it. His original choice for an internship was a church where he would have been the main pastor, so it’s nice that he’ll get a bit of a feel for that. Are you a pastor? Do you want to live in Anchorage for a bit? If so, contact whoever you would contact for such things.

Speaking of marathon training, Dan is also starting that for real marathons. He plans to run the Mayor’s Marathon this summer up here. With a new baby, an exhausted wife, a suddenly more demanding job and only one car (to get to the gym while the roads are too slippery for outdoor training) hopefully he will be able to train like he wants.

I’m watching a program where they just said one aspect of a grizzly bear is that they are a gentle giant and that if you are near one just watch for cues and let them choose how close they let you come to them. They are going to get sued (the writers, not the bears).

I myself have started the glorious process of job hunting. It’s a bit tricky because I don’t know if it’s appropriate to apply for jobs and then say, hey I’m not available for at least 5 months. Usually when there is a job opening, one would think that the position is already vacant and needs to be filled now, not 5 months from now. I’ll probably wait a month or two and then send some out. I haven’t really found anything I’m qualified for yet anyway. There was(is?) an opening for an architectural blog writer that I think would be neat, but then I thought about writing that cover letter: “Hi, I consider myself a decent writer, although I have no professional experience and haven’t even taken a writing focused class since high school. Oh and by the way, I don’t live in the Twin Cities right now, so can we Skype for an interview? Also, I won’t be back until at least June, but possibly August, so I hope that’s okay too. No worries; I can telecommute. Hope that’s cool.”  Yea, I don’t know, to ask for all that I just felt I really should have more to offer the position. I would also really prefer a job on the design end of things. Although really, a full-time position in any field will do, I am formally educated in architecture and anthropology. For real, if you hear about anything I might be able to do, let me know. I reek of desperation and I think that’s okay.

I also need to find new health insurance so Oskar can be a healthy boy when we return to Minnesota. Have whatever opinion you want about Obamacare, but I could really use that insurance marketplace thing that will be up in 2014. I hate finding health insurance. It’s stupid and it makes me feel stupid. And then I feel like I get it, but it seems how my current plan works with its wording doesn’t line up with how the other plans work, and it’s all from the same company so it makes me crazy. This sounds confusing I know, but I get what I’m trying to say. I’m dreading this much more than finding a job. Check back with me in a couple months though to see where I am.

My mom and dad got me new gym shoes for Christmas (I refuse to call them tennis shoes; it is irrelevant to my use of shoes. I could use the term sneaker, but I don’t like that word very much and its use makes me feel like a grandma in sitcom). They are black, white, pink and blue, and quite honestly a bit girlier than any gym shoe I’ve had since probably second grade (pink and white LA Gears, they came with a matching license plate style key chain that said, get this, ‘LA GEAR’). I am inexplicably drawn to them though. They look like they will make me go super fast, so that is encouraging. I also find myself hoping that pregnancy has cured all my aches and pains and working out will feel better than it used to. My body is a bit unconventional medically, so I thought this was a fair hope. The excruciating pain I feel in my knees when getting down to and up from the floor to change Oskar’s diapers suggests otherwise.

Ugh, this stupid bear program! “Our fear gets in the way of appreciating our similarities.” Um, I disagree, but I do know that a lack of fear has gotten many people killed by grizzlies, so there’s that. Some of you may ask: why doesn’t she change the channel? Well, surprisingly, there isn’t much on at 5:00 am on a Sunday and my kid keeps grunting and pooping, so I can’t sleep. That is why, mon frère. 

The daylight, it's increasing!

On Monday Oskar turned one month old. Time flies when you’re not getting any sleep. We haven’t had an appointment in a while so we don’t know how much he’s grown, but the double chin would seem to indicate that he is doing just fine. He smiles a lot in his sleep and after eating, which is super cute, but hasn't started smiling in response to us. There were a couple times we thought he did, but I’m sure it was coincidental. Below is his one month photo. He is losing a bit of his hair, but it still looks better in real life than in the photo just because his hair is so fine and the flash just cuts right through it. Most of the time we think he’s a good and cute baby, but we still have a few really rough nights here and there. He learned a new trick. He has been able to grab my hair since he was about a week old, but now he can grab his own hair. This would be all fine and good except he is doing this without knowing that he controls his hands. Obviously it hurts him and he just starts screaming. It’s terrible. Besides that he is starting to make some more pleasant sounds. Not quite cooing yet, but it’s on the way I think. The other day I was putting Oskar in his sleeper/crib thing but needed to get a blanket out from underneath him. Once he was down I tried the waiter/tablecloth trick. It did not work, but he didn't mind, just had a bit of a tip.

The days are getting longer! Not that I go out much, but it’s getting me excited for the spring and summer. We still don’t know when our end date will be, but we are excited to take the train up to Denali in the summer sometime. It’ll be nice to see the city green again as well. Like all cities that have any legitimate form of winter, unless you have a lot of snow the city loses some beauty. One nice thing about anchorage I've found is that the trees tend to retain more of the snowfall so it often looks like a Christmas card instead of just dead and brown. The summer will also bring a trip to Chicago for a wedding in the middle of August, the traditional Park Rapids vacation, and of course, the state fair. August will be great.

The holidays were good here and brought us many visitors. It was very nice. Our next visitor will be coming in March and then I think we have some in the spring/summer as well. Good stuff. People are great here, but it’s always good to see the people we’re closest too.

Below is a picture of the grandparents with Oskar at Christmas. They are all laughing because Oskar just had a very loud and giant expelling of waste. It made for a very nice picture.