Today we learn about the letter A:

 

ARIZONA

My dear, sweet baby sister took a teaching position down in a little town called Eager, Arizona. She is teaching 8th grade Language Arts and absolutely loves it! It was a hard decision to make because she had a 30 hr/wk position here in UT, and Eager is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. She felt it was where she needed to be, so on Friday, August 5th, myself, mom, dad, and Sav loaded up the vehicles and headed out to Eager! It was an early, early morning…5am to be exact; but watching the sun come up over the hills as we drove through Orderville and Kanab was absolutely breathtaking (so this picture DOES NOT do it justice, I did not have a camera so this was taken with my cheap phone):

We stopped in Page, AZ, to view the Glen Canyon Dam:

Flagstaff was our next stop and it was GORGEOUS! Again, the pics don’t do justice…but the green and the pines and the blue skies and yellow flowers were fantastic!

Then there was an 1.5 hours of Indian Reservations.  I feel badly for them…it was a complete wasteland. There were some pretty rock walls, but mostly just unending desert sand…this lasted until Holbrook, AZ, and then it was another 1.5 hours to Eager/Springerville. SOOOO PRETTY! This is the view from Savannah’s room:

Green fields, rolling green hills full of pines, and horses! I must have told her 100 times in the 24 hours we were there how jealous I was of her. Friday night we went out to eat at a little Mexican place with one of her new roommates, and Saturday was spent helping her get her school room decorated. It was so fun! It was awesome to see her with her very own room and the desks and the posters and the books and…. just everything! That night my mom, dad, and I drove to Flagstaff to spend the night. We took a different route back this time and went through Snowflake. The drive is WONDERFUL! It is soo green and there was so much wildlife! We stopped at the Snowflake temple; pure perfection in my opinion:

Sunday we kept with our taking a different route. We took highway 89 ALT; this took us up to about 8,000 ft with pines all the way up. At several points you can look over and see nothing but hill after hill after hill of dark green pine trees. I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures. I do have pics of our last stop over looking a huge gorge and a very green river underneath; and I can’t for the life of me remember where it is:

  

ART

The Wednesday after our AZ trip I was feeling a little more spunky than usual and decided to make some finger paint for Mason. He LOVED it! I get lonely for adult conversation sometimes…and Mason gets lonely for 2yr old conversation sometimes, so I decided to throw an ‘ART’ party. I invited friends with kids between the ages of 0-5; and let me tell you there are A LOT of them. At one point I think there were nine 3-6 yr old boys in our little playhouse; haha! Activities included:

• a swimming pool
• the hose (it’s more fun for little kids than you would think)
• finger paint
• the playhouse/slide (boys jumping off that thing like crazy)
• toy cars
• crayons/markers/colored pencils
• glitter
• glue
• scissors
• diamonds/stickers
• feathers
• googley eyes
• TONS of different kinds of paper
• cupcakes/popsicles/juice

I had fun! I hope the others did too. One mother told me her son told her on the way home he had a lot of fun with his new friends. I wish I were more like a child; this particular boy had never met any of the other boys who were there before, but within a couple hours…and w/o question, he had made a lot of new friends. Anyway…food for thought. Here are a few pics that one of the moms took:

And as always, thanks for stopping by!

A Comparison:

Mason and Morgan at six months.

Mason Morgan

This is more for me than anything. Today Morgan had his six month appointment. Stats were as follows:

STATS
Mason	Morgan
Height: 26.25” 42nd percentile	Height: 27” 75th percentile (3/4 of an inch makes a big difference!)
Weight: 18 lbs 1 oz 66th percentile	Weight: 17 lbs 11 oz 50th percentile
Head Circ: 89th percentile	Head Circ: 80th percentile

FOOD
Mason	Morgan
Once Mason was given fruit, the only vegetable he would eat from then on out was sweet potatoes. He preferred fruit and juices.	Morgan will tolerate pears and applesauce, but he wants nothing to do with prunes, bananas, or peaches. He loves veggies though.

SLEEP
Mason	Morgan
Mason would cry and cry when we laid him down; sometimes for upwards of two to three hours. He didn’t start to continually sleep through the night until he was about 18 months old. In addition, we had to put together a long process to get him to differentiate between going to sleep for the night, and just napping in the day.	Morgan I just swaddled when he was younger, put a bottle in his mouth, and within a week he learned the difference between night and day. I just have to feed him a little and then lay him down at night and he will fall asleep. At six months he sleeps through the night (well, til 6am) 9 times out of 10.

LARGE MOTOR SKILLS
Mason	Morgan
Mason was able to sit up by six months, and he did a little bit of rolling over, but not much at all; he was just learning at this point. He didn’t move much at all.	Morgan has been rolling for a couple of months now and has just started to scoot around backwards and even get up on his hands and knees.

EYE-HAND CORDINATION
Mason	Morgan
Mason discovered he had hands at about 3-4 months old, and once he did that was ALL he looked at. He would look at them for hours at a time. When he played with toys he thought hard about what he was doing and actually tried to interact with the toy. He could mostly hold his own bottle by this time. His movements were deliberate and controlled.	I am not sure Morgan has discovered he has hands. The only time he looks at them is when he’s trying to put them in his mouth. In fact, anything that comes in contact with him he tries to grab with his mouth or put in to his mouth. (Side note: Mason never really did do the whole “eat everything I see” thing whereas Morgan definitely is a mouth baby.)

SPEECH
Mason	Morgan
Mason never really made much noise—at all—as a baby. Now that I look back I wonder if I should have realized he would have delayed speech back then. He didn’t cry much even, and certainly didn’t babble much. At 2.25 yrs old he only says about 15 words consistently. We had his development tested and he is quite bright; his verbal speech is delayed.	Morgan I cannot get to shut-up sometimes. He squealed and chirped and talked for two hours straight in my parents' ward last week. He already makes the “da-da-da” noise and a wide, wide range of noises to let us know how he feels.

GENERAL PERSONALITY
Mason	Morgan
Mason has been a cuddle-bug from day one. He still likes to snuggle up to people. He concentrates and thinks about what he is doing…and always has. He likes to sit and have books read to him. He prefers being outside. He does not like things which include risk, and is very careful when walking down stairs, etc. He loves music and will dance and wave his arms when he hears it. He has been, for the most part, always pretty self-sufficient at entertaining himself. Mason HATES being upside-down.	Morgan does NOT like to sit still and does not cuddle much; never has. He prefers standing up and being able to see everything. He won’t snuggle you unless he is extremely tired. He can sit and jump in his ‘johnny-jumper’ for long periods of time. It is impossible (almost) to read to him because he is always wiggling. He has a very ready smile and is slightly needy. He also likes being outdoors, but really is fine wherever as long as he can see everyone. He likes to be hung upside-down, and other things which tend to frighten Mason.

How do two such very different little boys come from the same mom and dad? Chalk one up to knowing that we lived before we came here and developed personalities, likes, and dislikes long before we were born…