Happy Birthday John!

My father's birthday was December 27th. He is now 60. To celebrate this milestone, I threw him a party with 51 of his closest friends and family. About 60 people were invited, so 51 is a pretty good turn-out, especially this time of year. Even my father's cat, Bob, came out to enjoy the party. We had a lovely time, lots of good food, and hopefully my father ended the evening knowing how fond of him people are.

In addition, I asked people to send me written stories about him which I compiled into a book for him. He loved it and it was also a big hit at the party. One of the great things about making the book was learning all sorts of new dirt about him, but also learning how many ways he has touched people over the years.

The party was a lot of work, but it was significantly lessened by the amazing help of my friends Sonja and Liz who came and were our staff for the evening. Most of my parent's friends thought I had hired them! I am just floored to have friends who would do that for me. It's a humbling thing and they worked really hard to make it a nice party. All the friends who came also made it a nice evening, and Sophia was quite the hit for the hour that she was there. Paul's parents took her home and put her to bed after about an hour.

Sometimes it is just brought home to you how much love and support surrounds you: friends who will help throw a party for someone they don't even know, people who will celebrate the birthday of a well-loved friend, and family who pull together in times of crisis. It is just humbling to be part of a network of such amazing people.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! This is the first of two Christmas posts as we have so many pictures to share. Please scroll down for more pictures.

We are home and happy to be here. Christmas and visiting family is great, but coming home is wonderful too. Many people have been saying to us how wonderful it is to be celebrating our first Christmas with Sophia, and it is. Every once in a while she’ll look at the tree or a toy and get an expression on her face of pure joy. When I compare this Christmas to where we were a year ago, every day is full of joy. A year ago we were waiting for a birthmom to pick us and carrying our cell phones everwhere in case we were contacted. It was sad and stressful. This year we have an amazing, growing little girl.

But the season is also full of stress (of course this is not a problem unique to people with 9-month-olds). Sophia is quickly overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle. Present opening absolutely wiped her out. In part this was because we had to hold her the entire time. With all the wrapping paper and ribbons on the floor it wasn’t safe for her to crawl around (since she puts everything into her mouth, it's a choking hazard) and she was quickly frustrated by not being allowed to move. But also the noise and craziness was highly stimulating for her. There were also times when a new toy would scare her. You have this image of a child on her first Christmas tearing into presents with absolute glee. But it’s not realistic. That’s a vision of an older child. We had to carefully regulate how much we exposed Sophia to all of that. We removed her from present opening to a nap at both Paul’s family’s house and my family’s house. It’s not as exciting, but involves a lot less angry baby.

But enough complaining. As expected, Sophia got lots of wonderful gifts and she was really happy with them. She got 3 toys she can push and walk with and LOVED that with tremendous enthusiasim. She hasn’t yet learned course correction so she ran into walls and furniture and got stuck a lot, but she still loved it.

Saturday afternoon as soon as I was off work we went to Portland and spent the night with my parents. Sunday morning after Sophia’s morning nap we went to Battle Ground to spend the day with Paul’s parents and Barry and Jess. Aunt Amy and her partner Karen were there in absentia by sending gifts. The Smith family tradition is to open presents Christmas Eve and my family’s tradition is to do it Christmas morning, so we’re able to accommodate everyone. This morning with my parents we had Christmas stockings, our traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs with ham and cinnamon rolls and then after Sophia went down for her nap we opened our presents. Many lovely gifts were given and received with both families. As expected Sophia made out like a bandit.

This afternoon we visited my grandmothers in the nursing home. In the late afternoon Sophia continued to impress by holding a bottle on her own for their first time. We left in the late afternoon and came home. Now to find places for all the wonderful presents. What a wonderful Christmas this was, if tiring and stressful at times.

More Christmas pictures

Playing with uncle Barry is always a hit.



I bet you can't guess what this present is!
It's for the garden Barry is planning at his new house.

Sophia enjoys her toys and swinging with Daddy.











Grandpa John got a tie with lots of little pictures of Sophia on it.



Sophia holding her own bottle.

9 months old!

Yesterday Sophia was nine months old and she is WALKING! Boy are we in trouble. She is taking up to 5 steps unaided and then leaning forward to reach something a few feet away and going ker-plunk. (Perhaps she has issues with depth perception.) She has been walking for about 5 days now and it's very exciting. When she wants to get someplace with speed, however, she still prefers to crawl.

Last night we opened our Christmas presents to each other, not seeing the point in hauling them to Portland where we will spent the next few days. Sophia seems to like her bear hand puppet and Leapfrog Learning Table with all sorts of activities and music she can play. Mostly she wanted to eat the bows but we didn't let her.

Today Paul is helping Barry & Jess move into their new house. Sophia is with Grandma Darla. This evening we'll go to Grandma Nancy's and Grandpa John's and spend the next two nights at their house going back and forth to Earl and Darla's so we can celebrate with everyone.

Happy Christmas everyone!

We survive & cute baby pictures

I'm sorry I haven't updated since last weekend's dramatic posting. We are quite well after the storm and even our food in the deep freeze survived so I don't have too much to complain about. We had a lovely weekend with Earl and Darla, celebrating Daral's birthday and their anniversary. Then we attended the annual Wittmayer family Christmas where Sophia began the season of making off like a bandit in the present department. Sunday night we got home to a refrigeratgor that didn't even smell bad. So we have little to complain about.

Plus we have these cute new pictures of Sophia to share. So despite holiday stress and business, life is good.

Thermal Refugees

Yesterday evening we lost power at our house. There was a major windstorm in our area, and the airport in Salem reported winds of 80 mph. We thought it was just one of those funny temporary things that happens, but as time went on and the power did not come back, we became more concerned. Apparently there are about 350,000 people around Oregon without power and they're saying some of us may not have power all weekend. As it was 55 degrees inside our house during Friday we thought it might get a little too cold for Sophia overnight. So we have come up to Battle Ground to stay with Paul's parents. We were coming up here Saturday anyway to celebrate Darla's birthday, so we're just here a day early. We're really enjoying the light and heat! Back at home we lost everything in our refrigerator and inside freezer and that will be expensive to replace! We are just hoping that the power comes back on soon enough to save the food in the freezer in the garage. In the meantime, we'll enjoy family time here in Battle Ground where there is warmth and light.

Food wars and other fun

It's been a while since I've posted. Things have been crazy. Last week we didn't have a single free evening. Things have been so nuts that Abby the cat has been lobbying to be shipped to a more sane house and is camping out in a box so she's all ready for the trip.

On Monday the 5th my mother spent the evening with us because my father had a meeting in Salem. As you can see, Sophia is trying to share her teether with Grandma Nancy. Grandma Nancy is always a big hit with Sophia.

On Wednesday my book group had our holiday gathering at my house. I am so lucky to be in this book group they are wonderful women and lots of fun. Every year for December instead of reading a book we bring children's books to read to each other and then donate to a local charity. We also pig out on junk food. It takes some pressure off trying to read a book at this crazy time of year and it's a lot of fun to have stories read to us. This year Sophia got to join us and have the stories read to her. She seemed to enjoy it!

For several days last week and some over the weekend Sophia has been a miss-grumpy-pants for a variety of reasons. She pushed through two new teeth on the top recently. We also discovered today that she has a new tooth on the bottom (bringing her total to 5) and we have no idea when it came through. We have also been having lots of mealtime wars. Almost every meal in her highchair is accompanied by screaming, arm-waving and attempts to push the food away (all on her part). We're not sure what is going on, but it's getting tiresome. She was a pretty good eater until the last several days, but it was comforting to learn today that she is doing this at day-care too so it's not just us! We've been trying to worry less about mess while she's eating (thus the extreme mess-face in the photo) to cut down on the stress but that isn't helping. Hopefully this is a phase she'll grow out of soon!

Christmas begins for Sophia

We have been very busy the past few days having fun and visiting with friends and family. Thursday morning Sophia and I spend some time with my friends Becca and Frank Shields, visiting before they move away to Missouri. Today we attended their going-away party, where I got to see Becca's daughters Trish and Nina. I was good friends with Trish in high school. There aren't too many people around who have known me that long. I try to keep them away from Paul so they don't tell him stories. We had lots of fun at the party, but Sophia hasn't been feeling too well today, so after about an hour, she'd had enough so we left. We spent some down time at my parent's house, and then we went out to dinner with my parents and Aunt Sue and Uncle Jim.

Also exciting the this weekend was that yesterday Sophia and I spent in Portland visiting with our cousins Kathy, Teresa, Elizabeth, Kaylee, Toddice and Great Aunt Char. For six years now, Kathy, who is my mother's first cousin, and her granddaughters Teresa and Elizabeth have come up to Portland and decorated my mother's house for Christmas. My father and I are unbelievably grateful because that was never something we enjoyed doing. While they are in Portland, Kathy's daughter Kaylee and our Aunt Char and cousin Toddice come over 4-generations of Slayton women have lunch together. It's a special holiday tradition and I was glad Sophia could join us for the first time. Now that she is crawling and standing, she also discovered that Grandma's wheelchair is very good for helping her to stand, and Grandma's knees are at a perfect height. Grandma didn't seem to mind at all!

As if all of this wasn't enough for a busy weekend, today we also decorated for Christmas. Sophia went down for a nap, and when she got up, the house looked different. She seemed very excited by the tree and all the decorations, looking at all of it with big smiles. We were careful to put non-breakable ornaments on the bottom of the tree. Also today, she heard The Night Before Christmas for the first time. There are so many traditions to share with her. I'm even singing Christmas songs to her, and for me, that's a big step. I may even come to like Christmas. We'll have to see.

SNOW!!!

For our friends and family in other parts of the country, it will be hard to understand how exciting it is for there to be snow in our part of Oregon. But snow here, especially snow that sticks to the ground and doesn't melt immediately, is very rare. When I was a small child I once asked my mother what the song "White Christmas" was about because I had no frame of reference having never seen a white Christmas. I still think I've only seen 2 or 3 in my life. So, today when it snowed I was very excited and had to bundle up Sophia and me and go outside. She was very puzzled by the snow. She also didn't seem to understand why I was so excited. We pressed a passing stranger into service as a photographer so we could get a photo of Sophia's first snow-fall.

Sophia's first Thanksgiving

This is our fourth year hosting Thanksgiving and the year we have the most to be thankful for. This year we have our very own little girl! What a wonder and joy she is. Attending this year we pretty much had our usual crowd, my parents, Paul's parents, Barry and Jess, our friends Christina, Peter & Miriam, and Derek, Ann Marie, Alex and Gabe. Special guests this year were Paul's grandmother Lael visiting from South Dakota and his sister Amy who lives in Washington, D.C.

We all gorged on wonderful food, enjoyed talking to each other and had the most fun watching and playing with the four children. The first thanksgiving we hosted Alex was the only child, and now there are 4. Who knows how many will attend next year! One of the cutest things that happened was that Gabe has a new special name for Sophia. He calls her "Fofie" which sounds a lot like "Sophie" with the "S" and "ph" replaced by "f." It was so cute that by the end of the day several others were calling her "Fofie." I even found myself doing it after everyone left!

Sophia did not nap enough since she wanted to show off her new impressive skills of crawling, pulling herself up and standing. New today are the skills of kneeling on her knees and of pushing herself up on her hands and feet like a little a-frame structure. She really wants to walk and with the way she is gaining rapid command over her body, it can't be too far off.

We are lucky to be parents this Thanksgiving, and also lucky to have so many friends and family who came to celebrate this holiday with us. Tomorrow we're off to Battle Ground to spend more time with Amy, Lael and Paul's parents, so the party continues!