First Birthday etc...

Here is the post of all posts! We have been pretty busy at our house. We were getting ready for Sam's birthday and I was busy making my niece Kate her birthday present that I haven't been able to write in awhile. I made her alphabet magnets:

We went to the Hansen's for Sam's birthday. We made a little cake and stripped him down to his birthday suit so he could fully enjoy himself and mom could enjoy him enjoying himself.

He was a lot more bashful than we thought he would be.

Covered! He was painting with it all over the table.

This is currently my favorite picture of Sam: 

 

The next morning we opened presents and this is what Sam got:

He loves it. It was fun to watch him explore every surface of that thing.

He's a natural.

We left the plastic covering on the handles because he loves playing with it.

Sam and I headed down to Brianhead that weekend to go celebrate the two grandkids birthdays (since his cousin's is two days before his) and he discovered balloons on this trip.

Or should we call them 'pops' :).

He was having a blast with some wood puzzles from when my mom was growing up.

I thought he would like to open the present this time but he still was just content playing with the ribbon.

Grandma and Grandpa Ott gave him a tractor that has a bunch of farm animals in it and Kate got really jealous and wanted to play with it instead of Sam. It was really funny. She would keep taking things away from him while saying, "No no no no..." 

They both were entranced by this toy.

Sam eating the party hats...I'm hoping that this is a phase or we might have a lot of explaining to do when he goes to friend birthday parties. 'Of course Sam will come, just make sure there aren't any streamers or hard to swallow toxic objects.'

We were so excited to get a package from our Stout admirers.

Sam liked playing with the box of course.

He had to taste everything.

This week I've been a little more negligent in my parenting. I had a good friend getting married and made her a wedding cake topper. It was going rather poorly (broke while baking etc. etc.) and Sam was being a saintly baby and wasn't crying a lot. 

While John was babysitting him, Sam did what John calls 'his circuit'. Where Sam will go in our house in a circle while making the same pit-stops in each room. For example: In the hall he would press the start button on the catch phrase game each time he passed it, stop and chew on a shoe, make a stop at the garbage can, touch the dishwasher, etc.

Sam's most favorite places in the house are the places he should not be. Here he is getting stuck under the bed and screaming his head off! John heard him but couldn't see him anywhere... He said that Sam's whole body was completely under the bed when he went to go get the camera. Yes, we are those parents. :)

First Christmas

There are moments when I am sad that Sam won't remember the first few years of his life,

but then there are times when I think, "Well, you won't remember this anyways...so as long as the pictures are cute, you will never know what really happened which means, there will be less emotional scarring later down the road." 

Which is exactly how I felt about Christmas this year. 

We spent two weeks at John's parents' house in Fremont California. It was beautiful! The weather was charming, the company couldn't be more agreeable...all signs pointed to a relaxing fortnight. Unfortunately, we were plagued with illness. Fever, headache, runny/stuffy nose, cough etc. Poor Sam, we had to upgrade from his piteous nose sucker that we were given at the hospital, to a Nosefrida.

For those of you unfamiliar, a Nosefrida is an instrument that has a long hose with a little pointed hole on one end for his nose and the other end a place to put your mouth to suck through. It allows you to siphon out your child's mucus and makes a melodious sound while you are doing it. Sam handled it well at the beginning, but it got to the point where he didn't want to go into his bedroom because he knew what was coming. Needless to say, I'm glad he won't remember the measures we went to to facilitate breathing. He would probably have nightmares the rest of his life about people he loves trying to suck out his brains, or of people trying to mummify him alive with a Nosefrida.

Besides our humbuggery, Sam couldn't have had a better time.

He bonded with the natives. 

Was adored by his cousin

Generously gave pony rides to those who wanted them

and got to explore the inside of a penguin egg at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

We were constantly pampered and spoiled and, under the circumstances, had the best Christmas possible! Thanks to: Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandpa, Hannah, Sariah, Paul, Maria, Kevin, and (of course) Elsie!

We miss you already!

Secret World of Babies...and what they find funny

I guess I was super naive right before I had a baby. I thought having a baby would be like being pregnant; it changes your life and every aspect of it, but you can still get around and do almost everything you are used to doing.

Babies are NOT like that. My friend Liz babysat Sam on BYU campus a week-ish ago and said, "Wow, having a baby around is so different. You have to think about which doors you are going to use and...how do you use the bathroom when you have a baby?!"

Babies don't just affect what you do all the time...they change how you do it or determine whether you'll be able to do it at all. I personally think that they do it on purpose.

Consider: The Hook
In many babies, the hook will look different, but in all babies it is the same. The hook is an action or look that will draw you in. It is a moment that happens every so often that will make you forget everything negative and renew your complete and utter devotion to whatever they want whenever they want it.

Oh they are adorable alright, but I look at Sam and think: He totally knows how to control us.

Sam's Hook: The laugh

It took quite a few months to perfect and hone in on his skills of manipulation, but every minute was worth it, because his laugh brings us so much joy that I'm pretty sure our devotion is secured throughout all eternity.

I give you....the laugh of Sam:

We still aren't sure what exactly was so hilarious to Sam, but the facts are these:
-He was REALLY tired
-His Dad is always funny to him
-The Lion has never done that before
-It was a noise he had never heard before
(-Before I had started recording, Sam had already been laughing for five minutes)

All I really know is that this will be my 'bad day' video from now on because I can't help but laughing every time I see it. Well done Sam, mission accomplished.

Family Videos

I always thought that they were called 'Family Videos' because they were videos of your family. Seemed the logical origin to me. But I have been wrong. Family Videos are videos so random that no one but your family would really want to watch them. For some reason we find satisfaction in watching things on a video that we witnessed in real life. "Let's watch David babble on the counter to a pen for 15 minutes...AGAIN!" It's just addicting. No story lines, no plots, and no script. 

Just weird people. Weird people with cameras.

I give you: Sam the pirate (why Sara fears leaving Sam alone with his Dad sometimes)

This next feature film is evidence of how boring family videos can be. But for a true family member (especially 10 years from now) the joy is going to come from the details. "Oh wow, did I really have bangs like that?" "(*sentimental sigh) There was my old cell phone." "Remember when we didn't have AC? Those were the days." So even though Sam doesn't really do much, look at all the facts one can gather about our lives now in this video:

I give you: Surrounded by toys without really knowing it

The final truth about family videos however, is that no matter how fast you are at the draw, you always miss what you intended to capture. Little did you know that two minutes before this video, Sam was squealing, laughing, and singing to himself. I guess I should just enjoy it now instead of trying to catch it for later.

Blessings

 It's hard to know how to exactly put Sunday into words. It was Sam's baby blessing. I don't know how to talk about the hours it took to get him ready before heading out the door...or the huge family turn out...the opportunity to spend one last Sabbath with Sister Kristina Stout...or the third generation outfit Sam wore...the beautiful blanket knitted by Sam's great-grandmother...or the circle of worthy men supporting my son in their strong hands. 

I don't know how to tell the story of my father's heroic deeds in quieting Sam during his blessing by sticking Sam's baby fist into his screaming mouth. 

I don't know how to confess that I was relieved when Sam started to fuss during Relief Society so we could spend some quiet time nursing to ponder all the things that were said. Even though I can't really put all of the details of the day into words, I would sum up Sunday into this:

I am so blessed.

Weak for my Weakling

So I've become one of those parents. You know the type. As soon as you see them they try to attack you with pictures and stories of their children. As much as you love them, you don't really care about the number of poops little Tommy has had that day (while the husband recites the detailed data of each one and the probability of when the next will strike), or which percentile his head fits into. But...here I am posting a video of my adorable child when he is not really doing anything. The sad part is...I've watched it three times because he is just so stinking cute! In this video you get a plethora of typical 'Sam-isms'. In fact, if this movie had a description on the back cover on the case it would probably read something like this:

Enjoy the adventure of Sam Stout's every day life. On this dvd you will get to know him through his coughing, sneezing, and grunts of wisdom.

I was always afraid that I would treat my children's lives like I do my own--always looking forward to the next step. I can say that that is thankfully not the case. I am enjoying each new change, each smile, each toot (told you I was one of those parents) and it seems to be going all too fast. I guess when you are a week away from going back to work and missing your child for 8 hours of the day, you enjoy each squeak even more than you would otherwise. I've posted this video so you can enjoy it with me.

My Pessimistic Microwave

You know those days when you accidentally sleep in and you STILL have a sleep hangover? Then you don't have time to take the shower you desperately needed and miss breakfast because of that extra sleep you got that you didn't want? Well...that's nothing to the kind of day my microwave had.

Used to just hanging out on the counter, the Stout's microwave innocently sat there and broadcasted the time of morning when it started to feel a little tickle on its top. Sara must have felt its discomfort because she went over and found that there was a spider running across it. Getting hit several times, the microwave bravely soldiered on, knowing that the day just had to get better. After spilling translucent chicken defrosted juices all over its plate inside, the microwave lost it's positive spin on the day. For later, when it was being used far below its potential (as a timer!), it showed its hopeless outlook on life by broadcasting to all the world that the time was the "End". The end of the world? The day? The suffering? The story? We aren't too sure, but one thing we know...it lost it's positive outlook.