Gosh I Love These Boys...

It kills me how alike they are.

Clap Clap Clap!

We had Aunt Nat for a visit for a whole week! We had lots of fun and did lots of things. She taught Emerson where his various body parts are located, how to make his toy animals walk, and most importantly, how to give high fives. We also had him clap on command, hence the title: Clap Clap Clap! As long as you say it and do it at the same time, Emerson will obey.

Emerson had such a big day that he fell asleep in his highchair before eating dinner.

We got to see the new baby elephant at the zoo.

This was our reaction to the nasty turtles mating. Yes, we accidentally witnessed the gigantic turtles at the Columbus Zoo mating. It was DISGUSTING.

We also made Cafe Rio for Cinco de Mayo. Yum.

Our amazing creamy tomatillo dressing

Child and Nat playing at COSI

E in his little rain slicker playing in the water exhibit.

He had an absolute blast at the little kids' play area

We also had lots of fun at German Village, the American Whistle Factory, and just hangin'. Thanks for the fantastically fun trip, Nattie! You're the coolest.

Happy Mother's Day

I've been reflecting on mothers a lot today and have had a good Mother's Day myself so far although it's been weird not to be in Utah with our own mothers. However, Ben is grilling up the steaks right now for our own little Mother's Day feast....mmmm.

I'm so grateful to have been raised by such a wonderful mother. She's very fair, thoughtful, loving, funny, beautiful, generous, precious and fun. Mom, you don't give yourself enough credit for all of your many talents! Ever since I was little I wanted to grow up to be just like you, and I still feel that way. You're a wonderful example of motherhood and have done such a good job with all of us kids. I appreciate you so much more since becoming a mom, and I'm sure there are still things I don't understand fully and won't until I've been a mother longer. Thanks for teaching all of us so well and for being such a great example. You've already made it as a mom and a grandma! How talented of you! Thanks for everything. I love you so much!

I'm also grateful for my mother-in-law. She is also a good example of motherhood. I'm glad she raised such a respectable boy for me to marry. And I'm grateful to her for including me in their family. "I like them a lot." (That's Christensen code for expressing love and/or appreciation.)

P.S. Mom, click here to see the rest of your Mother's Day present!

Catch Up

Mixing bowl hat family

King E with his miniature gorilla

Mini-Kong getting ready to go down the slide

King E helping mini-Kong go down the slide. (He laughed hysterically the first time Mommy did it and tried to mimic me.)

Just a quick catch up of our activities. We were watching King Kong one night and realized that Emerson got a miniature gorilla toy in a pack of animals we gave him for his birthday so we gave it to him and laughed a lot because he was a giant boy with a little gorilla. And we've been spending a lot of time with mixing bowls on our heads because that's one of Emerson's favorite toys and he thinks it's funny.

Stirring Things Up

(Please excuse missing and floppy socks in these pictures. I know he looks ragamuffinish)

I just thought I'd post really quick one of Emerson's favorite things to do these days. He LOVES to stir things. Well, let me back up. First, he loves to drop things into some kind of container and he has always loved spoons of any kind. So when I was making dinner one night and he was being a "big helper" I had the idea of giving him some toys to stir around. It was a hit and now it's one of his favorite things. (I tried goldfish crackers, but quickly discovered he likes to pulverize them into tiny bits and make a huge mess....bad idea.) Recently he's moved on to throwing things into containers, or picking things up out of containers and then throwing them across the kitchen floor. I love seeing his little arm raised up as high as it can go and then quickly fling something straight into the ground. It's so cute.

Battle For the Wooden Spoon

This is Ben speaking. I know, many of you blog readers wondered if I even exist. Well, I have nothing against the blogging world, but simply don't do it nearly as well as my wonderful wife. Yes, you Melinda. However, it is past 1:00 and I have 10 more pages of GI physiology that I have to finish before I can take my test tomorrow morning. Naturally, I think I have time to make my blogging debut right now.

Our son will be the end of us. As seen in this video, he rambles and rants to himself all day long. While Melinda was at card club last night, I took the little man for a walk to the mailbox. This excursion should last about 2 minutes. After finding his little shoes and jacket, we headed out. I opened the door and he shot out as fast as he could go, leaving me in the dust, and ran straight off the edge of our porch. He didn't even break his stride as he hurtled himself off to certain doom. Proportionally, the drop off the 6 inch step for him would be like watching a normal size person walk off a 3-foot wall. Sure, it probably wouldn't kill you to fall off but I would definitely not throw myself off of it WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING. Being the hero Dad, I rushed out and whisked him out of midair, saving him from a nasty faceplant on the front sidewalk. We were off.

Walking with a 29 inch tall boy is difficult. a) you can't stand upright and still hold his hand. He is too short. b) Because he is so short, he is interested in everything on the ground. I think it is because he is so close to it. Rocks, garbage, water, mud, and individual blades of grass are all riveting. And c) small boys hate holding hands. I invented a new way to overcome this last problem. I make him hold my pointer finger, and then grab his wrist with my other 3 fingers and thumb. This way he can hold my hand if he wants to, but if he doesn't, well, he still will hold my hand.

All in all, it took approximately 15 minutes to walk with Emerson to the mailbox (alone, it would take 2 minutes maybe, if I was slow). Then he opened each large community mailbox for another 5 minutes or so (a daily tradition), and then we headed home. I let him lead, and we ended up crossing the little street between the mailbox and our house 7 1/2 times, finally coming to rest on top of the storm drain. By the way he was staring down into the dark abyss, I could see we would never make it, so I excercised my fatherly authority and picked him up. After all that exercise, he calmly looked at me and stuck his finger in his nose.

Home Improvement Love

New guest bedroom with a new twin bed. (We got rid of a lot of the junk and rearranged a lot of things.)

Our beautiful upstairs hallway of white doors and baseboards

New entryway floor

New kitchen floor

White doors, baseboards, and flooring

IT'S FINISHED! We've been doing some home improvements that we actually finished a long time ago, but I just haven't gotten around to posting pictures. Remember those pictures from a long time ago of the new bathroom floors and how we painted the baseboards white? Well, I took some friends' suggestions and tackled the whole house while I still had time to enjoy it. For like 5 or 6 weeks I painted during every one of Emerson's naps and after he went to bed at night. I knew it was a huge job, but I didn't realize how huge. I started to get a sore shoulder. :( It was crazy how much paint and primer the doors alone took! Ben helped with the painting, but laying the floor was his huge job. We did the floors with our good friends and it took a little longer than we expected to do both houses. I must say though that both of us are happy with the end result, and we finished everything before we had visitors. I don't know what to do with all the extra time and lack of paint on my hands! (Oh wait...yes I do....I have a precious little beastie named Emerson that takes up all available time.) Anyway, we really like how the white updates the house. That brown just didn't quite do it for me.

"Hoppy" Easter

Following his goldfish trail

Hooray for Easter!

All kinds of yummy treats

I know. My title is so cutesy. Well, the Easter Bunny found Emerson. And he even left age appropriate treats! What a smart rabbit. We were going to color eggs, but then we were lame and didn't this year. Oh well. (I think the real reason we didn't color eggs was that we had just had potato salad for a bbq and I couldn't stomach the idea of more hard-boiled eggs around.) I guess Emerson doesn't really know what he's missing. Plus he got to do an egg hunt at his friend's birthday party, so he probably got his fill there. Did I mention he did awesome at it even with all the bigger kids? Unfortunately we didn't have our camera. Isn't that how it always goes?

We decided...er....the Easter Bunny decided to give E a little more direction to find his basket so he left a trail of goldfish crackers for him to follow. It took a long time even though it was a very short trail. Emerson picked up each goldfish, studied it, and then sat down and bit it in half. Then he dropped them. So we paused and got him a little contained for him to drop the fish into. We didn't have enough tape to film the whole thing! He finally skipped a few and wandered into the bedroom and happened upon his basket. He was so happy when he saw it contained yogurt melts! He pulled them out and immediately shook them as his typical motion of acceptance. I think he quite enjoyed his first little Easter. Mom and Dad also enjoyed our Easter with a fabulous dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, jello, homemade rolls, and strawberry cheesecake trifle.

A Birthday Visit

After crying periodically during the day after dropping my mom at the airport, I pulled myself together enough to blog about their visit. For Emerson's birthday we were lucky enough to have Grandma J, Grandpa J, Uncle Brad, and Aunt Steph come visit. They arrived on April 1st (no joke...haha) and Grandma J stayed for a whole week, while the others had to leave on April 5th. We had such a wonderful time, it was hard to see them go!

4-1-09
My family pulled up in front of our house with a Sam's Club size bag of Cadbury eggs and Reese's peanut butter eggs (my favorite!). I knew they loved me. What a way to start out the visit. :) We started out the visit by going to German Village and eating at Schmidt's Restaurant. It was really good if you like German food....and we all do. The giant cream puffs were divine. After the restaurant we browsed around German Village and visited the Book Loft which is a bookstore that has 32 rooms of books and is a couple of blocks long. It was pretty cool and we kept worrying that we'd lose each other in all the different rooms.

Emerson and Uncle Brad at German Village

E smiling and waving at the cars driving past

4-2-09
The next morning we started the day out right by visiting the Waffle House. It's a very quality establishment, and we WILL be going there with whoever comes to visit. So buckle up. It's really quite a dive but the food is good and nothing beats the stories that the waitresses are bellowing about domestic abuse and such. It made us pretty grateful for our family situation although I did notice they are hiring so maybe that would change if I took a job there. After Waffle house we drove to Dayton to visit the Air Force Museum. There was definitely a lot to see and Ben, Grandpa, Brad, and Steph took the tour of the Air Force One hangar while Mom and I stayed with little E while he screamed his guts out battling sleepiness. He finally lost it and slept for a while in my arms (and yes, they were about ready to fall off by the end.) We saw a lot of interesting things at the museum, but we were ready to be finished by the end and I think all of our legs were throbbing from all the walking. Ben had planned ahead nicely and packed a delightful lunch for us to enjoy at the pavilion outside the museum and we tossed the frisbee around afterward while E laughed at us. Apparently frisbees are hilarious. Brad accidentally tossed the frisbee on top of the pavilion twice and Dad and Ben had to stealthily scoot the picnic table so that he could climb on top to retrieve it. It was pretty risky considering we were on a military base. We finished the night out with The Italian Job while eating Italian Ice.

E laughing at all of us throwing the frisbee

Ben and Steph

Brad and Dad

Ben and Mom

4-3-09
Little E's birthday! We decided it would be best to make sure he had a good nap before leaving on our adventures because we didn't want a repeat of the air force museum. We played The Office dvd game while waiting for Emerson to wake up from his nap. We decided to have little man open his presents in the morning since he's more of a morning person. He got so many nice presents and was thrilled in his own Emersonian way to have so many new things to play with. We spent the afternoon at COSI and Emerson enjoyed the water exhibit and the frog exhibit. We went to the Spaghetti Warehouse for E's birthday dinner and it was delicious. We came back and sang to him and watched him eat his cake. Ben and Brad stayed up in typical fashion to watch a movie until very late while the rest of us went to bed.

E having a shoulder ride while enjoying COSI

Another shot of E's bulging belly and happy face

4-4-09
We started out the morning with some gourmet baked french toast and then headed off to Amish country. It was about a 2 hour drive and it was beautiful country. Everyone loved Heini's Cheese Chalet with all of the 50 varieties of cheese to sample. We all ate a piece of colby-jack in honor of Natalie. :) We went to an Amish bakery and then ate at what we thought was an Amish restaurant. It had a lot of German food too and wasn't authentic Amish like we thought, but it was still really good. Before the boys headed off to Priesthood meeting we stopped at Al's Gourmet Popcorn and each got some delicious popcorn. They have some pretty interesting flavors and they're all really good. The girls watched a chick flick while the boys were gone.

E during his big Amish day. Of course he didn't sleep during either of the car rides.

He slept at the restaurant like this for about half an hour

After he woke up he spotted some more cake in the display case and crouched down to get a better look.

4-5-09
We had a breakfast of German pancakes and watched conference (and little e). Then, sadly, Dad and Brad and Steph had to catch their flight. It was so sad to see them go and I think E missed them and that they missed E. I was glad that Mom got to stay until Wednesday so I didn't have to be sad all at once. We watched the last session of conference together and then watched The Ultimate Gift. And, miraculously, mom and I BOTH stayed awake the whole time!

4-6-09
Sadly, Ben had to go back to school. (I guess he IS in medical school and should study sometime. :) He works so hard. ) Mom and I relaxed and were entertained by E. He had his 12 month well-child visit and got all his immunizations. The little guy is 29 inches tall (25th percentile) and weighs 19 lbs 14 oz. (10th percentile). I was surprised at his weight because he looks like such a solid little guy with all of his thigh rolls. Mom and I went to lunch at Panera and then made a trip to Babies 'R' Us to get all kinds of stuff for Emerson. I took Mom with me to get Panera bread that night because it's a once in a lifetime experience that I thought she should have. Then we watched Planet Earth and saw a spore thing grow out of the head of an ant. It was crazy.

4-7-09
Again, Ben was at school all day. Mom and I got ready for the day and conversed while getting ready in different bathrooms and laughed when we realized we both had our hair dried and were holding our respective tubes of mascara with our makeup partially done. We laughed even more when we both finished getting ready within 2 minutes of each other. What else is there to say but "like mother, like daughter"? We froze our little tushes off when the gas pipeline people came and turned off the gas while they worked without telling us and shivered as we made our oreo truffles. Then we HAD to go shopping for a new Easter dress and shopped 'til we dropped. E was such a trooper the whole time. We finished out the night with another episode of Planet Earth and went to bed.

4-8-09
Mom packed and watched E while I made a trip to the grocery store and then I had to take her to the airport. :( Emerson craned his little head to look for her as we drove away and cried the whole way home. (Well okay, both of us did. I'll admit it.) It was sad to come home to an empty house with Ben at school and me being so used to having company all day and someone to talk to. It was a great visit and we can't wait for them to come visit again. Ben, Emerson and I already miss you. You're all precious! We love you!

Thanks Uncle Scott and Aunt Ashley for the cool new shirt!

Even though we're sad you're gone we'll be ok. See? :)

Pictures of E's Birthday

Opening presents with Mom

Playing on his new castle slide

He figured out how the slide worked pretty fast and practically started throwing himself down with no one to catch him

"I don't know why I'm getting all these presents, but I LIKE it!"

We spent the day at COSI for Emerson's birthday and he especially liked the water exhibit

Playing with his Busy Ball Popper

His little birthday cake...he's not sure what's going on...

He decides he should maybe touch it...

He decides he REALLY likes it

Guzzling his milk after devouring his cake

Smiling through the chocolate mess with contentment

E's bulging belly

Emerson's birthday was a ton of fun. He was happy when he woke up and got to have his favorite thing for breakfast: yogurt. What a way to start the day! Then we decided to have him open his presents in the morning because he's generally happier in the morning. He was absolutely showered with gifts! He got a climb and slide castle, a set of animals, a mini soccer ball and a busy ball popper from mom and dad. Grandma and Grandpa J gave him some cute books, clothes, and a Fisher Price Little People Barn. Grandpa and Grandma Christensen gave him some cool Dash light-up shoes.

After presents, we had lunch and headed to COSI. Emerson was good the whole day and especially liked the water exhibit. He had a great time playing in the water and rubbing it around on his hands. We had to stop as soon as he started slurping it off his hands though.

After COSI we went to the Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. (For those of you familiar with Spaghetti Factory in Utah, it was similar, so we're not sure who copied who.) It was so good. Emerson enjoyed sharing Mom's fettuccine alfredo.

After dinner we came back to the house for Emerson to play with his new toys and of course for his birthday cake. In my family it's a tradition to make the baby their own mini cake for their first birthday and watch them eat it. I didn't even realize that a lot of people don't do this until like a few months ago. Really. I was clueless. We just always did it and loved it. And I know it's great to use natural sweeteners and stuff for their first cake and try to make it healthy, but come on...it's their birthday. If ever there was a time for them to deserve chocolate, it's on their birthday. And plus the mess shows up much better on film if it's chocolate. So I made Emerson his own little cake and I made a fudge ribbon cake for the rest of us. (Thanks Jamie for the recipe! It was so delicious for Jon's birthday we had to have it again. :) ) Emerson was a little shy about his cake for a minute or so but then he decided to go after it and he couldn't stop shoveling it in. There was even a point when he picked up the whole cake off the plate. He made it almost through the entire thing. We were amazed. He absolutely guzzled his milk down when we gave it to him. He was so dang cute.

We got laughing so hard at his big belly after he finished his cake. We had to undress him because he was such a mess and he had cake crumbs down to his belly button. He was toddling around the kitchen acting wired and showing off his belly. We thought it would be funny to see if he would go after more cake if we showed it to him and he stopped and looked down at his belly as if deciding whether or not it could hold more and decided that it could and he reached for the cake. (Don't worry, we didn't let him have any more. He had PLENTY. :) )