Home

I'm currently at my parents' home, running loads of laundry through their machines, as we have yet to acquire such a luxury as an in-home washer and dryer. Another luxury we have yet to acquire at our new home is an internet connection, so I thought I'd take advantage of this opportunity to write.

We're in our new home! And I'm in love with our new neighborhood!

We've still got some work to do on our house (I'll post pictures when we've got an internet connection at our place, which will hopefully be sometime this afternoon), but it's coming along nicely and already feels like home. Soren had a rough couple of nights at first, but seems to be perfectly happy in his new environment. And he still gets to see Grandma and Grandpa a couple of times a week (because I, as Abraham likes to quote, "canno' stay away from th' titty"), a thing which brings him much joy.

On Saturday night Soren and I came home from the grocery store to find a thin young man wearing a Harley Davidson jacket plowing out the snow in our driveway with his four-wheeler. He said his name was Shane and that he and his wife, Katie, and their 16-month-old son, Coen, live right next door. I thanked him from clearing our sidewalk and driveway and he remarked, "Oh, well, we have a trailer and hog a lot of the parking space during the summer, so I thought I could maybe recompense by keeping the sidewalks clear." He looked like a very nice man. I'm planning on taking over cookies so that I can meet Katie and Soren can meet Coen.

The neighbor on the other side, Sr. Sotelo, has a continual stream of women coming in and out of his house. I think they're grown daughters; Abe suspects he's running an underhanded business from his home. But he spends a lot of time outside talking to his two black poodles. So, shady business or no, he seems like a nice enough man.

We went to our new (church) ward on Sunday and were so excited. The second we walked in I felt at home. There was a row of very active children in front of us, among whom was a baby boy just a couple of weeks younger than Soren. He crawled under the bench to visit and the two of them touched each others faces and toddled up and down the church bench together. Soren also used his newfound as a driving surface for his little truck. The friend didn't seem to much mind.

After sacrament meeting we were flooded by people who were eager to meet us and make us feel welcome; Soren's new friend's mommy, Ingrid, a mother of four little boys, took me under her wing, finding a copy of the ward director for me, sitting by me in Relief Society and telling me everyone's names, smiling at me encouragingly when I made a comment.

And, of course, the gospel is the same wherever you go, and it was good -- as usual -- to be able to attend church and be reminded again of the things that are most important in this life.

When we got home from church, a cute elderly couple who live across the street waved and said, "Welcome to the neighborhood!"

We're in a good place. I'm excited to see what the next few years hold for us.

Catch-up Post

I've been up to my elbows in childcare and new house affairs for the past couple of weeks and have simply not had the strength to either post on my blog or read the blogs of others. So if I haven't posted on your blog lately, it's not because I don't love you. It's just that I've got other things going on at the moment.

Here's the run-down of our little family's activities during the past few weeks:

-The first week of this month, through no real fault of his own, Soren single-handedly delayed the conception of his next sibling ("by a year," is what I would have said earlier this month. But now it's been cut back to a couple of months. They say that women's brains are programmed to forget negative child-related things so that they'll continue to produce offspring. I believe it). How did he do this, you might ask? He developed a nasty case of croup. Every experienced mother that I've told this to has sighed sympathetically and said, "Oh. That's the worst." And it was! It was miserable. I was certainly grateful that it wasn't a life-threatening illness or anything like that, but it was hard to have him be so miserable for so long. And it reminded me of what it was like to have a newborn: lots of midnight wakings, inconsolable crying, and a general excess of neediness.

(Soren, sad and sick, forces himself to eat some saltines to keep his strength up.)

-And then, after Soren got over his illness, I came down with a nasty cold of my own. I have never, in all my days, experienced so much sinus pressure for so long. I even tried taking a nasal decongestant, a thing I have never done before, but it made no difference. My daddy-in-law suggested snorting up a bunch of hot water while I showered, but I was afraid I might drown myself, so I didn't try it.

-All of this occurred in the midst of the painfully drawn-out closing process on our house. I had no idea that buying a home would be such a convoluted process. Abe and I have developed strong legs from jumping through so many hoops throughout the past several months. Would you believe we've been actively working on this process, beginning with our loan application, since August 2007? Yes, that is six months. Six months! Just to buy something!

-But the good news is that we're drawing near to the end of this whole process. We finally own our own home and, for the past week, Abe's dad has been here, helping us get the house all ready for us to move into. They, with a little help from my own dad, have been making walls and banisters, tearing up floors, painting, insulating, repairing, plumbing, and wiring. I'll be posting "before" and "after" pictures on our blog soon. They're sure to be impressive.

-It's been great to have Daddy Skousen visiting for the past several days. He and Abe have been able to spend one-on-one time together that they haven't been able to enjoy for years. And it's been fun for Soren to have another adoring fan on hand. For me, it's been a constant source of amusement for me to observe the parallels between Abraham and his Dad. The ways in which they talk, act, and think are remarkably similar. Abraham is unmistakably the genetic offspring of his father. No doubt about it.

(Here, Soren shows Grampa Skousen his Christmas package.)

-I also noticed recently that my baby has a multitude of nicknames. I'll record them here for posterity, with a parenthetical reference following those who are used primarily by one individual: Sorenito, Sorentino (my dad), Sorenelli (my mom), Sorentelli (my dad), Bill (Uncle Dewey), Toad (Abraham), Spud (Abraham), Squirt (Abraham), Nito--pronounced Neeto-- (Me), Noodle, Beebee (Me). There are others that I'm forgetting, I'm sure, but I've got to wonder if we're confusing the poor child.

-Soren has been a mister whiny pants lately. Especially around me. He'll be perfectly happy, then I'll walk into a room, and he'll start fussing. I'm all paranoid that I've been doing something wrong. Do I pick him up too much? Have I been giving in to whining? Am I responding to needs or giving in to manipulation? It's so hard to know...

-Another worry I've got is that Soren's not using words yet. Not even really "mama" and "dada" in context. He does talk to himself in Sorenese a lot, wherein he makes all kinds of difficult sounds, like "s" and "t" and "r." And he does say "hi." But beyond that he doesn't seem to match words to objects or circumstances. Again, I wonder if this is my fault. Have I not been prompting him enough? Should I be making a conscious effort to teach him words? Or was it the nitrates in the hot dogs I ate when I was pregnant? Have those affected his brain development?

-A cute Soren trick lately, though, has been clapping. He picked up clapping lately and just can't stop. He claps in the high chair. He claps in the bathtub. He claps while playing. He claps when I sing the pat-a-cake song. I'll go to pick him up out of bed and he'll be clapping (sometimes even clapping and crying simultaneously).