Isaac loves singing but has to sing things by himself. Don't you dare try to chime in with his "Book of Mormon Stories." Lately he's been switching the words to songs, just exploring words, I think, not trying to be silly. The best one so far (as we finished our run past our complex playground):

I love to see the playground
I'm going there some playground
To feel the holy playground
To listen and to playground.

He's finally started eating meat! thanks to Alexis, who brought some deli ham when she came swimming with us and Isaac wanted some "pink stuff." So now he eats "lexi's pink stuff" all the time. Daddy taught him to make eye holes.

James got an ear infection two and a half weeks ago. He refused to nurse. I tried for a whole week to get him back on, painstakingly hand-pumping in the meantime. But he is just done. It was a really miserable week but now I'm over it and James is better and I guess that made weaning really easy. It's so sad when babies grow up and we lose that little newborn bond. James is one in two weeks so I quit pumping this weekend and when I run out of formula samples, whole milk here we come.

Blake of course was on nights when the ear infection surfaced so he probably slept better during the day than I did at night! After three days of misery, finally on Sunday I had just had it--I was exhausted and so DONE with hearing James cry. He wouldn't nurse so therefore had a hard time falling asleep, because he's always been nursed to sleep. He would wake up in the middle of the night and whatever I did, end up being awake for about 2 hours. I was a bad wife and woke Blake up after only having slept 4 hours (home from a night shift) and told him I was taking Isaac to church and he could do whatever he liked with James. Let him cry, try and bounce him to sleep, get him up, either way I was out of there. Blake took over like the superman he is and I somehow was recharged by attending church with Isaac, who sat in sacrament meeting like a perfect angel, and teaching my primary class which has generally been really hard for me but that day it felt so much easier than the rest of the week had been.

Whenever Blake talks to friends/family on the phone and they ask him how internship is going, he replies, "Oh, it's going just fine." Lots of the time it is going just fine but lots of the time it is going just crappy. Blake is gone a lot. I put kids to bed alone a lot. Is it lame that I feel like a superstar when I manage to finish the week's "work" on friday and do the bathrooms and vacuuming all by myself? And think about all the laundry I did the day before and how I even managed to make it to the grocery store? I am a spoiled wife, but Blake used to help with all those things. I know, most people do all that stuff without even thinking how their husband used to clean the bathroom while you vacuumed. Last week Blake went four days without seeing the kids at all. But we're making it, and as long as it doesn't get harder than the week of the ear infection, we can handle the rest of intern year.

Now that I've finished my rant, I will get on with updates. James has started playing with things in a way other than chewing them. Today in church he sat on my lap for five minutes and put little finger puppets into an empty spice jar over and over again.

My mother came for a visit, at a perfect time when Blake was super busy in the MICU and I was needing some serious sleep catch-up.

We went to the "train park" (museum of transportation), played in the sand box,

listened to conference,


went to Suson park (has a playground, lakes, and animal farm),
and played at the rocketship park. That's Isaac's new fav. (I tried to make these pictures look better, but they are only iPod pictures, what can you do?)