Train keep a rollin'

I'm ashamed to say that I haven't blogged in almost a month. This is even after I've received encouragement from Kit, family, friends, well wishers, and some guy that wants Kit to contribute to his book about the mother/daughter relationship (I deleted his comment because is sounded fishy and unsolicited. I can't wait until fish guy reads this!) So, what has happened in the interim? I'm sure that any of you that are interested in our family have been making up cute stories for some time now about Rhoda crying, sleeping, and pooping (her three favorite activities right now). To put all of these stories to rest, I am finally updating the blog (and, of course, it is about crying, sleeping, and pooping).

Since our last writing, we have had visits from multiple people including Kit's aunt and cousins, my mother, and the Aanderud clan. We drew straws and I was lucky enough to get my mother and the Aanderud clan as my blogging subjects (Kit will blog about her family's visits and it should be up before this one).

Below is a picture of my mother doing her two favorite activites at once (the pink blob is Rhodie).

Unfortunately for my mother, she came when we had just finished the honeymoon stage of Rhoda's homecoming. I was starting to get stressed out by the lengthy increase in my daily "to-do" lists. Kit was trying to remain sane after being up most of the night, and, unlike my mom, she didn't have a good book to read. For the first few days, my mom spent a lot of time around the house helping with chores, holding Rhoda, and reading (a true vacation for my mom, even with the chores).

I don't know if my mom can fall in love anymore since she already has two granddaughters, but she fell in love with Rhoda almost immediately. I wish I had some pictures of the first time she held Rhoda because she stared at Rhoda and Rhoda stared at her; You could just see the bond of love they were forming. I think they must have connected on a deep level because Rhoda started walking after that.

Man, I am giddy today. I will try not to mess up the facts too much more. Much of those first days was spent in the house and running errands such as going to the grocery store (My mom forwarded a funny email my aunt had written about finding our grocery list in her coat pocket. Mom borrowed Aunt DeeDee's coat for the trip). For my mother, all of this errand running was old hat (She spends a lot of her day running errands for my erratic family), but it was hard for me. I wasn't used to going to the pharmacy to pick up diapers while figuring out what to bring home for dinner as my dad tried to talk to me about World of Warcraft on the phone (he called me more than he called mom--weird). My mom's good nature and temperament helped keep our house sane for a few days, plus she did the dishes! For all of you that don't know, dishes is the most dreaded job in our house.

Even with all of our errand running, my mom managed to get a huge amount of time holding and entertaining baby Rhoda. In the picture below, she is reading baby Rhoda's favorite book, instilling, as she did in us, a healthy love of books from a young age (and Rhoda LOVED it).

It is a great book for someone so young. It contains black and white faces labeled as family members with slight differences in every one. It says smile at the bottom of every page. If you actually read it to her, you will end up saying smile around 40 times and feeling totally lame. Of course, Rhoda loves it so it is totally worth it (she actually tries to smile back at the faces in the book sometimes).

By the time the weekend rolled around, things were a little more sane around our house. We had cooked a few good meals (just ask my mom) and the list of errands had substantially decreased. We listened to General conference and took Rhoda on her first stroller ride! The picture below is from between sessions of General conference. We went to a park called Shaker Lakes which was completely packed (it was the first warm day of the year). One of my schoolmates was on a run and I got to proudly display my child (even if we didn't say anything to each other).

I was very sad to see my mother go that Monday and I told her that she should have stayed two weeks. She, of course, responded that my father would have killed her, but since he called me more than her I don't know what the problem is.