Our first week in Utah we had the great pleasure to watch Theodorable while Haley and Jacob went to Cancun with some of their friends.
He was giving me serious Baby Merrick vibes. Mostly because of the fatness. My soul delighteth in fatness.
It was fun to have a baby around again.
There's a lot more time spent on the floor.
Look at the squish!
There is nothing so nice as a fresh, warm baby squish.
He had a tendency to hold his arms tightly to his chest and grab on to his soft squishy skin so tight that it would be red afterwards, so we did try to keep him clothed as much as we could bear it.
Even swaddled babies are snuggly. Baby grub.
Theo has very small nasal passages and is consequently an alarmingly loud eater and sleeper. His dragon snorting is especially ominous over a baby monitor speaker. But then he looks like this!
Milk drunk.
Theo has a pronounced partiality to Drew, who has a pronounced similarity to Jacob.
Theo accompanied us to the Highland Fling, which is always a fun time.
Do you think now that we live in Highland in The Highlands that I will need to learn to play the bagpipes? I just looked them up--a beginner set is only $122! I could walk around the neighborhood every morning at 9:00 this summer and wake everyone up, like the Queen. The neighbors will love me so much!
We missed seeing the high school marching bands in the parade. Did COVID kill bands? I hope not. After the parade we walked down to the library sale with Grandma Paula for a little while, then let the kids run wild through the bounce houses while I lurked with a napping Theo in the shade. It was a sweltering sort of day and the air was all smuggy from half of the Western US burning at once. Lest you think I am exaggerating, this screenshot is from July 28th, the week before:
It's good for me to see this actually. I'm writing this post in *cough*February*cough* and am feeling very sick of winter. I will count my blessings! There were some other fun things in the field in addition to the bounce houses. Most of the kids tried the climbing wall...
...and then they surprised me by waiting patiently for an hour and a half for a turn to walk on water. It was nice to be able to dangle feet while they waited.
Vivien made sort-of friends with the older girls in front of her in line. I was watching from a distance and couldn't really tell if they were being nice or if they were bothering her. One of them pushed her totally into the water at one point.
I was sitting there trying to decide if I needed to intervene and had my camera flipped towards me accidentally, so in case you were curious, this is my Momma-bear-at-bay face. I needn't have worried. Vivien looked the girl straight in the face (well, not straight, since she was a good six inches taller than Vivs), said, "That was rude," and used her wiry strength to return the dunking in kind.
At last, it was their turn.
Some hard working teens were in charge of rotating the kids through the 4 balls.
They used leaf blowers to inflate them.
The kids all covered their ears--I'm sure it was very loud!
It was funny to watch them rolling around on a frictionless surface.
Vivi had a pretty good stretch on her feet at one point.
Here's little Merrick flailing around.
They let the kids stay out as long as they wanted, which might seem like it was a bad idea, but it actually worked out pretty well.
How long could you last, doing gymnastics with no air exchange under the glare of a full August sun? Rafe's post-experience face will give you some idea of the humidity involved inside!
Haley came home and we had to relinquish The Theo. He is a hard baby to give up!
But we still get to see him lots.
We started settling in to our life of squatting in Grandma Paula and Papa Mark's basement.
We had a chore rotation...
...and a dinner rotation, too. Here was a fun picnic dinner at the park.
Some people rode bikes, some people drove.
I had grown used to being fed by Bo pretty regularly in Albuquerque, so I chose to make a lot of Korean food for my dinner nights.
This necessitated trips to the Asian market, where I would send pictures to Bo and she would help me know which brands to get.
We got to celebrate Annie's 6th birthday!
She wanted a Harry Potter party, so as many cousins as could came over and we played Pin the Sock on Dobby...
Here's that sweet little six girl with her birthday present from Jaina.
Just a few more end-of-summer pictures. Here was a fun dinner with everybody at home.
It's just so fun to be here!
We had an outing to BYU. What was it for? I remember not. I just went back through my texts with Haley to see if I could find out and saw that we were going to leave after I'd finished teaching English Connect. I had forgotten all about that! Mom had virtual consultants set up to help the Guatemalan missionaries work their way through the English Connect stuff since they didn't have any gringo missionaries to study with and I helped out with that for a few months. Anyway, I think we went to visit Alex in the HFAC...
...then met Haley for lunch at the Creamery.
Vivien sure loves her burgers.
Last, here's a summer picture of Mr. Merrick...
...and Rafe in his favorite pajama shirt...
...and Vivien, who had a rough move emotionally. Probably more on that later.
Goodbye summer!
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