August Rush

The month of August is drawing to a close without much action on our blog. But don't think that's because we've just been sitting around. Oh no. We've been busy. The thought of separate posts for each "event" is too overwhelming for me right now, so here is a hodgepodge of what we've been doing lately.

Becoming an Uncle and Aunt

This didn't actually happen in August, but we haven't updated since she was born. That's right, on July 29th Carly gave birth to our first niece, Sadie. We've spent many hours this month stalking their blog, waiting for the latest updates on our little niece. I'm not sure when we will get to officially meet her, but we can't wait. She is adorable and takes the best pictures (and when I say "takes" I mean, her parents do a great job of capturing her candid moments). I only hope our son is half as entertaining and Anthony and I will be half as good parents. Congratulations, Nielsons!!

Growing

The month of August brought several milestones for me, some more fun than others. I now feel our little guy moving. All.the.time. A mover and a shaker for sure. For the most part this is very exciting. I wish he didn't press on my bladder so much, but it's not really his fault. There isn't much room in there. A less fun milestone is that my back is really starting to hurt at the end of the day. But we're all happy his growth is right on schedule.

In the first picture I am 23 weeks along and in the second I am 25 weeks.

Camping

I spent a few days early this month with our ward young women at Girl's Camp. I had a great time! Teenage girls are so fun. It was a great week--the weather was beautiful, I didn't get any headaches, and the girls from our ward have such good attitudes. My main regret is that our camera stopped working so I have no pictures. I am working to get some pictures from girls in the ward, so we'll see. Hopefully I'll get some up here at some point, but that is a big reason why I was so slow to blog this month. It feels weird to blog without pictures.

Celebrating...

three years of marital bliss. That's right, we've made it three years. We didn't do much to celebrate the day of, because our anniversary fell in the middle of the week, but here is a picture of us that night. If we look a little tired it's because we are, we helped some friends move that night, but I still wanted to take a picture to commemorate the occasion.

Sister Time

Jill and Emily came to town in mid-August so we made a weekend trip to KC. It was fun to be with all my sisters before they all start another year of school. Next time I see them I will have a baby. Crazy. It was a packed weekend. My mom organized a "family baby shower" where we got lots of clothes and a few other "essentials" for our boy toy. You know, like nursing pads and nose suckers. :o) My dad made some of his delicious apple crisp which I am still craving. We also got some family pictures taken.

Road trip '09: St. Louis

All summer we've been talking about taking some kind of trip. Being the recessionistas that we are, we decided that a weekend trip to "The 'Lou" would be the best vay-cay we could afford right now. We had a great time. We went to a Cardinals game, where Albert Pujols won the game with a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth. We went to the temple. We visited the arch. Anthony was excited because the designer of the arch, Eero Saarinen, is Finnish. He was less excited about the height, and didn't like looking out the windows. We had a lot of fun.



And now, I guess you could say, we are ready to take on the rest of 2009.

Thoughts from a Father

I am so excited to be a dad. At least I know that.

My other emotions, and there are others, are difficult to pinpoint exactly. I cannot blame an emotional, hormone-driven roller coaster like my wife can for an inability to describe the emotions that accompany our child. No. Like Ron Weasley I probably have the emotional capacity of a teaspoon.

I think I am scared as well. I am scared because I am still an idiot. I have made positive strides in my life, most of which have been accelerated forward due to the BEST decision I ever made- to marry Carrie. But I know too well my own shortcomings. I fear that my flaws will be exposed and magnified by our child. I could hurt him, and that scares me.

But I am hopeful too. I hope that my fears are in some ways similar to my fears that my actions somehow affect whether the Red Sox win or lose. While I may take a Red Sox playoff loss personally because I did not do my due dilligence (e.g., wear "winning" clothes, sport the needed rally cap, watch the game from a "winning" location) in reality I had no effect on the game. Of course my personality and parental choices will affect my son, but I believe he will come to our family with a soul or even some genetic tendencies, that I can do nothing about. I guess I am scared about his genetic endowment/soul, partly because half them genes done come from me, too. But I can't do anything about it.

But I can. I have long thought that children, while they have their own personalities, are like sponges. I do not like the blank slate analogy because that negates the individual makeup of a person that I believe we each have. And kids come to earth, and they want to learn. Like sponges, they soak up all that is around them. If parents do not work to surround their children with useful, good information to "soak in", kids will let other sources fill up their heads: TV, friends, internet, etc. that often have alterior motives. So I can have a positive influence on my son, but I guess that increases my responsibility level as well which is scary.

So at this point in my inner dialogue about my feelings I am feeling all sorts of both excited, scared, and hopeful. What is weird is that the things that sometimes help me feel at peace are sometimes the very things that intimidate me.

I think what gives me the most hope is my own parents and especially my father. I know a bit about their weaknesses, as I was a teenager once, however mild-mannered. They are not perfect. And yet I am not too crummy a person. My siblings are all reasonably well-adjusted people, outside of Meredith (a sure-fire axe-murderer/Dartmouth chainsaw massacre instigator- mark my words). I am sure that my father felt stress when I was born about his part in my life, and I turned out okay. If he can do it, I can also. In fact I think that both my father and mother did a great job, especially with my siblings besides the aforementioned future axe-murderer.

I also hope that my psychology professor at BYU was right when he told us not to over-think parenthood and that humans naturally understand how to parent their children and that children are very resilient even when you make mistakes.

And if this post is emotionally confusing, welcome to my world.

Be-LATE-d Birthday Shout Out

We owe a much belated (but not forgotten) Happy Birthday to EMILY!

I missed blogging about it last week because I was at Girl's Camp sans internet access.

But we know she likes spreading out holidays by doing things such as carving a pumpkin with a turkey in November.


Emily is the third sister in my family and always does her best to keep everyone on their toes.
She is vivacious and entertaining

and fun to be around.

Even when she tries to ruin my pictures.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Emily!!

Sunday stroll with the Johns

We've been going for more walks lately. In part because I need to get exercise so I don't balloon too much while I'm pregnant and in part because we've had decent weather here in the evenings.

Here we are at the start of our walk.


Anthony is trying to air out his latest softball injury. His team only lost their last game by 1 and Anthony went 2/3 with 2 doubles.


One of the things I love about Springfield is all the church signs and how clever they try to be. Please ignore my awkward pose, I am getting used to my bigger bod and almost instinctually cover it up with my hand these days.

Official Grown-ups

This past week has been very eventful for us. And we've had to deal with things in adult ways. We started the week without a functioning car, not knowing the gender of our baby, and without life insurance. We ended the week with answers for all these things.

First we found out our "beloved" car's (our sweet Ford Focus for those of you who don't know) latest malady was to be the end of her. Finding out your car will cost more to fix than it is worth is never fun, especially if you are an emotional pregnant woman. But Anthony handled my mood swings pretty well and we got things taken care of. We said good-bye to our Focus and bought a new car. We were really blessed to have friends let us borrow cars to get around until we found the right car for us. THANK YOU!!

Cleaning out the Focus. May she R.I.P. And check out Anthony's pout.

Our "new to us" car. It is a Kia Optima for those of you (like me) who can't tell what the make/model of a car is just by looking at it.

I still can't get over how nice it is to have air conditioning and a passenger side door that opens from the inside. It's the little things that make life great. And no, we aren't white supremacists. We just happened to buy white cars both times we've bought cars together.

Our second adult thing is that we found out the gender of our baby. Of course, we already knew I was pregnant, but there is something about knowing the gender that makes it more real. We found out we will be welcoming a handsome baby boy into our family come December! Stay tuned for "A Father's Thoughts," Anthony's feelings about having a son. Our boy will be the first grandson on both sides of the family, and the first boy born in my parents line, so obviously everyone is excited. I had never heard this "old wives tale" before, but supposedly, if you get bad acid reflux while you are pregnant it means your baby is going to be born hairy. Well, if this is true, than we should probably name our baby Esau, because lately I've been getting it every night.

This pic is a profile shot, with a fist right next to the face.

The second picture is the face at an angle. You can kind of see the eye sockets and again, a fist is on the side.

The other ultrasound pictures weren't as good this time. Apparently our boy likes to move. Anthony told me he had rhythm. Anyways, the tech wasn't able to print us a good picture to prove that he is a boy, but we both saw the evidence. It was only there for a few seconds and then he twisted away. This boy may like to give his parents a hard time.

And the third adult thing is that we got life insurance. There is just something about buying a car and a life insurance policy and knowing you are going to have a son that makes you feel like a grown up. Gone are the summer days where the main thing I saved for was clothes and tried to hit the pool as much as possible.

Check me out!

I decided that since we find out tomorrow if we're getting a boy or a girl, I should take a belly pic. I have been avoiding any profile shots lately because I feel like I just look chunky. Some girls get cute tummies, I've been getting muffin tops. However, this past week I feel like my stomach is starting to push out. So yeah, 19 weeks down. Almost half way there.

So...any guesses as to what we're having?

Ode to Alicia J. John, who is now 21 as of July 16th

Of all my sisters I have always thought that she looks the most like me. Sorry. You would think that would have nothing to do with the picture above, but you would be wrong. The side of her mouth that she has moved up is the only side of my mouth with which I can do the same thing. Coincidence? No.

Alicia can also fit her fist in her mouth. More shared genetics: smallish hands + large mouths = timeless party moment. The skill will serve her well in future primary callings or on a mission if she can't speak to children, but she can still make them laugh. It is less good on dates.

SUMMATIME!

Alicia and I share a love of what is classic, and she always makes me feel good about my musical taste.

Alicia is my only sister who has threatened me with a weapon. She brandished a knife and chased me and other sisters around the house chortling. I am sure I deserved it. You see I missed many of Alicia's birthdays being at scout camp, plus, I was a terrible older brother who plain forgot sometimes.

Alicia is probably the sister young enough to bear the scars of a lifetime of my babysitting.
Alicia has a wonderful voice- a voice she uses for music and to speak to others. Alicia challenges me. She likes to think outside of the box. She plays devil advocate and tries to stick up for people. She is like Robin Hood.

Alicia is one of the most passionate people I know. Alicia has always been one to wear her emotions on her sleeve, which I think is endearing.

I have loved watching Alicia grow into the smart, more confident woman she has become, and as her older brother I could not be more proud of her. And I really mean that.

We're preggo.

I wrote that because when I say it out loud, Carrie gags and feels nauseous. She does not like the pronoun "we" in a sentence referring to pregnancies. When the phrase is used Carrie will remind those within earshot that:

1. No one pukes along with her.
2. No one else has to wake up in the night to visit the toi-toi
3. No one else gets acid reflux every night
4. No one is extra sensitive to sun
5. No one else has to avoid the very medecines that would give relief from the extra headaches she gets
6. No one else has an overwhelming need for Cheetos
   

So, yeah. "We" are not pregnant. I would say that I live with a beautiful, pregnant woman, but I am not pregnant. I will be a dad, so that gives you doomsday people five and half months to flee the country. Our child, regardless of sex, will be forcefed Red Sox baseball, Harry Potter books, and the scriptures, not necessarily in that order. I already have daydreams of playing with our child, holiding it while I am watching March Madness, tossing our infant safely in the air to celebrate the Red Sox second straight world series victory. And don't scoff- it's my fatherly duty to teach our child to trust the unknown and feel safety with trusted others, and tossing them in the air, safely, is how I am going to do it. It's all about their emotional regulation.

Weekend with the Johns

**This post is also much overdue**

We got the chance to spend the weekend of Anthony's graduation with his parents, who were kind enough to fly out despite their packed spring schedule.


Besides attending Anthony's graduation, we hit up Branson and saw SIX perform. It was an entertaining concert and a fun way to introduce Doug and Tina to the Ozarks.

The next day we headed up to KC and hit up a Royals game. Unfortunately Anthony's rally cap didn't do the trick, but I had fun checking out the new K. The K may not have the history of Fenway, but it does have the nicest bathrooms I've ever seen at a baseball stadium.


On Sunday we went to church in Independence, toured the Independence Visitor's Center and Liberty Jail, and stopped by Far West and Adam ondi Ahman. Doug's cousin and her husband are currently serving a mission at Adam ondi Ahman and they were very gracious when we stopped to see them. We even got a behind the scenes tour. Here are Anthony and I standing on the rock--it was so green! We had a great time, our only disappointment was that we didn't get to do everything we had hoped. I guess that just means they will have to come visit us again. :) We also wanted to thank my dad for hooking us up with the Royals tickets and also for getting us rooms at the Sheraton.

School's Out!

**This post is much overdue**

To date, this year's most anticipated event (for us) has been Anthony's graduation.


It is hard to believe it has been two years since we found out we would be moving to Missouri and started making plans to get here. It was great having Anthony's parents, my parents and sister Melanie here to celebrate this greatly anticipated day with us!


The actual graduation itself was a little dry, but those of us watching still found ways to pass the time.



Melanie snapped a great shot of Anthony on the scoreboard, where the processional was broadcast for those of us who struggled to see what was going on.


Here is the graduate with his proud parents:



Graduate and proud wife:


It was a very pretty day (besides being a windy, so please excuse our hair in the pictures) so after the ceremony we walked around campus and Anthony showed off his stomping grounds.

Maybe Anthony isn't ready to leave?


Just kidding, he says. He's ready. After 20 (I think) years of school, he is ready to move on. Thank you Missouri State for being our home for the past 2 years and thank you for giving Anthony the skills he needs to rock the business world.