Baby Overload

Today I had the opportunity to help out with the Cedar Park Quintuplets. They were born to a woman named Rachelle Wilkinson who is a member of the other ward that meets in our building. They were born just two days after Emily, but are not really very close to her in size. The smallest is about the weight Emily was when she was born and the heaviest is about 3 pounds lighter than she is now. It was crazy and it made me very grateful that I just have one baby to take care of.
Yesterday Joseph and I went to the ward Trunk or Treat. Joseph dressed up in his Chinese ninja suit and Emily was a cute little Jack-O-Lantern. We found her costume at Goodwill for $1.50.

What a mother will do...

Today when I got back from Target, Emily fell asleep so I put her down on the bed. I then went to straighten up the house and noticed a little bug on the baby bag. So I went outside to the balcony to brush him off. While I was outside, the charley bar, which is attached to the wall on the side of the sliding door, swung down and locked me out! There was no one outside to call to and the balcony is made of concrete so I couldn't get the downstairs neighbor's attention by stomping. My phone, which I thought was in the baby bag with me, was actually sitting inside on the table and Joseph was away at school. I ended up having to climb down off our balcony, which is really really high and run to the office barefoot for a key to get in to Emily. I don't think she noticed I was even gone, but it was not a fun experience for me.

Here is a picture of the culprit, Mr. Charley Bar.


Here is a picture of how high our balcony is so you can appreciate how hard the climb was for me.

Family Pictures

Look at our handsome family! Today, to celebrate Emily's new dress and her 12 week birthday, we decided to take family pictures. We're standing in the area behind our apartment for this one.


Here, we're standing on our balcony. Joseph thought setting the camera timer for 2 seconds would leave him enough time to run and get in the picture. He still argues that it was plenty.

Foreign flora

Just outside of the building I work in is this neat hedge of flowers. They look like the sort of thing that surely must be able to cure cancer... or else they're from another planet.

This is the alien life that came with the flower when it was brought to our planet.

These butterflies frolic all over these flowers. I presume that the wacky caterpillars turn into these neat little guys.

Dad's Work

This is the desk space where I spend a major part of my day. Most of the surrounding desks are unoccupied. That means it can get kind of lonely, but it's good because I get a lot more done this way. The machine has a bad case of Linux, but I've been able to neutralize most of the adverse symptoms, and I like working on it now. The major breakthrough came when I learned how to change window managers. Now my desktop looks good, I can easily access all the programs I need to use, and life is happy.

Behind my workstation is this 3D capture suit area. Note the array of cameras on the ceiling. They can tell the computer where you are and in what pose. Put that together with the head-mounted display and you can live in a virtual world. The computer fiddles with the display so that in order for it to looking like you're walking in a straight line, you actually have to walk in circles. I'm not actually part of this research, but I'm looking into it.

I love babies!

Wasn't it a great idea of Heavenly Father's to send us here as miniature people?

Emily's Milestones

First rollover (back to tummy): Yesterday
First laugh: Today

One super girl

Emily is growing very quickly. She loves to chatter. She acts like she wants to be walking around. With just a little bit of support, she'll stand and jump up and down. We wish we could get our hands on one of those hanging jumpers; then again Daddy gets some good arm exercise playing with her. Emily's all about exercise. If she's not sleeping or eating, she wants to be working out.

She can roll over, but sometimes gets one arm stuck in the way. We have so much fun together. Daddy's planning to head back to Utah for a few days to finally finish defending his thesis mid-November. It'll be tough to be away from each other, but it'll be nice to have that taken care of.

Is this for real?

Joseph and I were driving to visit a ward member the other day. We were driving down an ordinary street, lined with ordinary houses. They were all very pretty, but very ordinary. That is, until we reached this one.


That'd be a pretty big effort to go through just for Halloween; it looks permanent too. But do people really live in there? I guess it would make it easy to describe which house was yours when giving directions...

Battle Wounds