Utah update

Time to get back to blogging. Jeff has taken his Step One exam and is back to working in the hospital, which means I have a laptop again! Actually, I have had my laptop back now for a month, but I got out of the habit of blogging. My new goal is to blog at least once a week. Hopefully I can do it.

Jeff did well on his step one exam (phew! big sigh of relief!) He is doing his surgery sub-internship this month which has pretty long hours, but it could be worse. I took this picture a week before he took his test. Jeff was studying at home (he studied at school every day with his friend Elliot, but Elliot took his test a week before Jeff. So for that very last week Jeff studied at home) and Christine brought a book to Jeff and climbed right up into his lab between him and the laptop. Times like that just melt my heart.

Immediately after Jeff finished his test Christine and I flew to Utah and spent 10 days with my family.  In Utah Christine learned some new words:

STAIRS My parents have lots of stairs in their house, and Christine LOVED going up and down the stairs. At first I was very nervous when she tried to play on the stairs (she almost fell down the stairs but luckily grandpa was right there to catch her) but once she figured out how to scoot backwards down the stairs I stopped worrying and let her have fun.

SNOW (she says it snooooo drawing out the o) Christine loved to look out the large sliding glass door and watch the white flakes in the air.

SKIING My dad went skiing while we were visiting and I explained to Christine that papa was going skiing in the snow and she responds "skiing!" It always surprises me when she says a word for the first time. It's never the words I expect. But for some reason that stuck with her. When we got home we read one of her books (Sandra Boynton's "The Belly Button Book" about Hippos who love their Belly B's and on the last page it is winter time and the belly buttons have to be covered up because it's cold outside. I showed Christine, "look it's snow!" and she points to the daddy hippo and says "PaPa! snow! skiing!" and now every time we read that book she flips right to that last page so she can look at "Papa" and talk about snow and skiing.

SAMMY My parents have a cat named Sammy, and Christine LOVED Sammy. She was always a little scared to touch her but had so much fun looking at her across the room and pointing to her or chasing after her but never getting too close. Now ALL cats are "sammy" when we look at books with cats she points and says "Sammy! Sammy!" Before she never cared for the cat pictures, always skipping the cats to find pictures of the sheep, but now the cats (I mean sammy's) are her favorite ones.

There isn't a new word associated with this story, but while I am talking about animals in Utah I want to add my sister has a little wiener dog that I thought Christine would enjoy. In our apartment complex there are lots of dog owners and Christine loves to point at the dogs and say "ruff ruff" so I thought she'd like seeing the little dog up close and getting to pet it. I was so wrong! Christine HATED the dog. Every time the dog would come close to Christine she would start bawling. She was so scared of her! Moral of the story: Wiener dogs are not real dogs, they are large rats and Christine can tell the difference!

LOTION (pronounced "lo-lo") Utah is quite dry and Houston is very humid. So when we go to Utah our skin drys out so quickly.  To help our poor shriveling skin I would rub down Christine with lotion twice a day (she still got dry, scaly patches on her skin). She loved this routine and thought it was so fun to help rub the lotion all over. When we got home we continued the tradition since she liked it so much (actually, she requested it. I put on her pajamas and she says to me "lo-lo? lo-lo? LO-LO!" translation: Mom! where's the lotion?!) In my bedroom I have a basket full of lotion and other things right within her reach. Lotion had never been of interest to her and so I had never thought of moving it out of reach. Just a day after being home I was working on laundry and unpacking our suitcases while Christine ran around entertaining herself. As I was putting away clothes Christine runs to me with a huge grin on her face "lo-lo!" with a thick layer of lotion all over hands and face. I wiped off all the excess lotion and went in search for the bottle that the lotion came from. I was fearing the worst but luckily found an open but clean bottle on the floor of her bedroom. phew! she had managed to keep the mess on her hands. About 5 minutes later I went out to the living room only to find this:

Oh dear. The first bottle of lotion was not the culprit. The funniest part of this story to me is that I thought I had lucked out of cleaning lotion from the carpet. Ha!