August 4, 2006

Dear Everyone,
Happy Friday, the weekend is almost here! Yay. Just this weekend and next, and then school starts. Wow, the summer went by fast.
First some happy stuff. I am SO HAPPY that Chris is falling apart. The storm named Chris, for those who are confused. Looked like a hurricane possibility, but now is likely only to be a tropical depression with a bit of rain over the weekend. My prediction before this hurricane season was that it was going to be WAY less active than what all the "experts" predicted, and that we, here in Cooper City, will not have to put up our hurricane shutters this year. I hope I'm right. So far, so good!
Second, and I hope Joseph doesn't kill me when he is older and possibly reading through all my old correspondence, but I have to share this anyway because it is a big deal, Joseph is now finally 100% toilet trained!! He has been toilet/pullup trained for like 2 years now, but the poop on the potty thing has been really hard. He was scared and had a big psychological hang up about it. In fact just last week I decided I was simply not going to stress about it or say anything about it to him again, and I went out and bought a case of pullups at Sam's Club. But over the weekend, he just decided he was going to do it. And he did, and he has ever since! I figured it would happen that way anyway, and that my coaching him or pressuring him in any way probably wouldn't help him at all. He is very proud of himself, as he should be, and now my house is officially diaper/pullup free!! Amazing. Now if we can just help Joseph overcome his fear of the noise public bathroom toilets make. It is a loud and scary noise and he hates it. Whenever we have to use a public bathroom, he tells me not to flush it until he has run out of the bathroom. Which is fine and everything, but he's not going to have anyone to flush it for him at school. And lots of places have those automatic flushing toilets now, and he absolutely hates those. He will avoid those at all costs. When he tells me he needs to go to the potty and it's at a place with an automatic toilet, I know it's truly an emergency. He did actually use one at the museum yesterday, and I did manage to make it not flush by holding my hand over the motion detector thingy that triggers the flush, so that was good.
Speaking of the museum, it was really fun. We just renewed our membership and so we got some free Imax tickets. I forgot to use ours last year, so I decided we should use them right away so I wouldn't forget. We saw "Deep Sea 3D" and it was just spectacular. Just up Brigham and Joseph's alley, of course, being about animals, and the 3D made it just incredible. It was the first time the boys have seen a 3D movie, and it was really a kick to watch them react. They were reaching out in front of them to try and touch things, and were basically mesmerized the whole time. Mosey did pretty well with the 3D glasses, too, but did take them off about halfway through. He was sitting on my lap and it was pretty funny to feel him flinch and jerk when it seemed like a shark was going to come right at us or something.
Mosey is just talking so much now! Even much more than when many of you saw him just a few weeks ago. I remember when I went to visit Rosalynde after Mara was born, how well Jack was talking at the time and I was kind of despairing thinking that Mosey would no way be talking as well as Jack in another 5 months. But sure enough, his language has really exploded and I think he is just as verbal as Jack was. No match for Elena at that age, but hey, we can't all be prodigies, right? :-) It's funny, though, because whomever he is talking to, he will conclude every line with their name. So when he's talking to me (which is most of the time), he ends everything with "mom," which he says in a really funny way, kind of like a cross between "mom" and "mam."
Ok, I need your opinion on this. I really want to videotape Brigham saying a prayer sometime. He says the cutest, most thoughtful prayers ever, but I don't know if it is irreverent or inappropriate to videotape a prayer. What do you think? He spends most of the prayer saying thankyou for things, and they are always just so thoughtful and amazing (to me, at least!). And he always asks Heavenly Father to "bless the earth," which goodness knows is really needed right now.
Another positive update on Kent-- he has been moved out of the ICU and into some sort of step-down room. Not a regular hospital room yet, but not the full ICU either. No real timeline on when he will be released from the hospital to the rehab place yet, but he continues to improve. He has signed consent forms to sell his practice which I'm sure is a very hard thing to do, and yet clearly necessary.
Oh, and Ben got a call-back to fly out to Austin to interview for the chief actuary position for Texas Mutual. No, this isn't the other Texas company he interviewed with, but it is the company that his best friend works for (Eddie, the guy who also worked at Farmers when Ben was there). We don't know what Ben's chances are, since Texas Mutual is a workers comp insurance company which Ben has no experience in, and we also know they are flying out 3 other candidates, so we'll just have to wait and see. I'm absolutely not going to start thinking about and worrying about and stressing about the possibility of moving yet. I'll cross that bridge if we ever even come to it.
Have a great Friday everyone.