July

July has been a very fun and busy month!

We started off on July 3rd by having a BBQ with Mom & Dad Perkins. It was fun because when Andrea & I got there, the power had been out for an hour or so and nobody knew when it was going to turn back on. Since we had no oven to use and lots of food to cook, Dad just got the big grill going and then he pulled out this awesome little travel grill as well. We cooked the brats, tri-tip, beans, and the corn. The corn turned out very good. I have never been in charge of the grill in my life, and I didn't know what the best way to cook corn would be, so I just put it on the grill like I think I've seen them do in Brazil sometimes. While some of the kernels got quite black, it was just SO GOOD! I have never cared two cents about corn on the cob in my life, but since that fateful dinner, Andrea and I are crazy about grilled corn on the cob and we look forward to a lifetime of summers eating it as much as possible!

Hmmm, what else what else. We had planned to go camping with our dear friends Amanda and Tim, but we are very inexperienced and couldn't figure out where/how to reserve a site on the internet (it appeared that all of them were first come first serve). So we planned out how to snag a site on a friday afternoon but alas . . . they filled up too quick and we couldn't go. We had all of the food prepared though so we ended up just eating it at our apartment, and then in the morning we went over to Amanda and Tim's to have the breakfast that they had prepared. It's too bad that we didn't get to have the delicious meals at a picnic table in the woods, but we'd have a great time doing anything anywhere with Amanda and Tim.

Meanwhile in our day to day normal life, Peter has been becoming ever more mobile. It's SO fun to hear the "PAT PAT PAT" of his hands as he races across the floor! He's gotten really fast! We also enjoy his little jabbering. It's so funny, sometimes he uses what we call his "devil voice" cause he makes these low grumbling evil noises while he plays. Also Peter just keeps getting better at eating. He eats more and more all of the time and it's so fun to just shovel in as much as he can handle.

This is a picture of one of the mini bean burgers that we made one weekend. It was so good. We used my sister's french bread recipe to make buns . . . oh man. They were so good! Andrea and I have also been making sourdough bread. Can I just say I am about the luckiest guy in the world? My wife LOVES to learn how to make anything and everything from scratch and I LOVE to eat it.

Next event: the July Court Activity. Andrea and I had been helping a family move in and when we got back to our court to unload there was a court activity going on where our RA Julia had set up some water games and had pizza etc. I was so happy! Earlier that day I told Andrea "I would really like some Little Caesar's right now" and there it was waiting for us. So we ate our fill, helped move a little more, and then Andrea got Peter in his swimming duds and they went to play in the slip & slide. Peter just loved getting wet! When I got there he was just sitting still in the streams of water and enjoying the coolness. I'm glad that he loves the water, it'll be fun when he's old enough to swim.

On Monday the 18th we were able to go to the "Day's of '47 Rodeo" at the Maverick Center for really cheap due to our Stake High Councilman's involvement in it as medical staff I think. I had never been to a real rodeo and I wasn't expecting much, but it was sooo fun! They had several different events, and none of them lasted too long to get boring and the show just moved right along. We didn't get to stay the whole time but what we saw was so much fun. The most memorable event for me was when they let 6-8 dairy cows loose, and then they had about four two-man teams that had to rope the cows and then get some of their milk in a baby bottle! It was really fun to watch because the cows were obviously not inclined to help any of the cowboys out, and some of them were pretty mad and annoyed about it. One of them just sat down and wouldn't get up for anything. Hah hah!

The following Tuesday Peter had to get the two cavities in his front teeth filled. Apparently from grinding his teeth or from chipping them (who knows when that could've happened) he had worn off the enamel on the bottom edge of his teeth. Andrea and I noticed them looking greenish/brownish on the bottom so we took him in and the poor kid had cavities. It was not the funnest thing to have to go through, but they numbed him and everything so after it was over he was just fine and is happy as a clam to this day.

The following Friday, we attempted to go camping again with much greater success! Andrea will have to take it from here though.

All right, Andrea here. This past weekend was the Friday in question, and, as all the other events in this post, it was so fun! Ha ha! We were able to reserve a camping spot in Wasatch Mountain State Park, which is located by Midway and Heber. Luke and I headed up around 4pm, but due to bad directions and lack of helpful signs, we spent about three hours driving around trying to find it, only succeeding once Heidi and Devin met us with a visitor's center map, and another lost guy consulted his GPS. Once we were finally there we unloaded our gear, set the boys (Ashton, Kaden, and their friends Adam and Everett) loose for awhile, set up shop and started dinner. Being entrenched in the mountains as we were, sunset came early, and we prepared most of dinner in the dark. This was not a problem for the corn, however, which we stuck in their husks right in the fire! May I reiterate, grilled or fire-cooked corn-on-the-cob is sooooo good!

A word about camping: it's COLD at night. Always. Period. This fact has long kept me from wanting to adventure out in the wild. I have, however, finally discovered a few tips for keeping warm which I will disclose here. First, wear a hat! Peter and I slept the whole night with beanies on and couldn't have been toastier. I also made sure to wear a sweatshirt to bed so I had long sleeves, and we put Peter in footie pajamas. Luke found he was quite warm with only a sweatshirt and shorts, which I chalk up to his being able to cuddle in to his sleeping bag, while I needed to keep mine open enough to make sure Peter wasn't getting covered up. We also had two comforters on top of our sleeping bags, but I think one would have been fine, now that I know the hat and long sleeves trick. There you are.

Peter was sooo happy when he woke up in the morning and found himself in a colorful new room! Its pure delight to see how surprised and excited he his when he wakes up in a tent.

For some reason peter really liked this rock. Andrea set him down on it and then he would scream whenever she tried to take him off. Guess he likes being king of the mountain!

The next day we enjoyed a fine breakfast with everyone, then packed up and headed out. We made a pit stop at our apartment to eat lunch, during which time Ashton and Kaden and their friends spontaneously helped a new couple move into their apartment. I must say I was quite proud and impressed. That sort of thing is what gives our prophets so much confidence and hope for the youth of today, I'm sure. Awesome!

Next, we headed down to 106th South where there is a great climbing gym right next to REI called Momentum. This was only the second time Luke or I had been, and the first for all the boys! Ashton and Adam came with me and Luke to learn how to belay, since they were old enough. I admit to having been really nervous about letting them be on the saving end of the rope, but turned out to be impressed once more as they showed how well they could and would listen to directions when someone's safety is on the line. We all had a blast climbing and belaying one another, and Luke and I are already planning a time to go again.

Devin and I were matching that day. Huh.

This is me going on about the easiest wall I could find. Rock climbing is harder than it looks, and I needed a confidence builder after my first try.

Kaden, Ashton, Adam, and Everett were MADE to climb. Or maybe it's just that they are youthful and have unlimited energy. Kaden was right back up on the wall after his short rest here.

Andrea had to sit out a bit because Peter was nursing. She had fun belaying a few times though and eventually got to climb a little too.

Heidi scaling one of the many high walls at the gym.

Unfortunately, it seems like summer is running out faster than sand through a sieve. We celebrated my mom and Heidi's birthdays Saturday evening, next week we'll have a family picnic party for Peter, then we only have three weeks of August before Luke starts school again. Why does summer have to go so fast? I used to always be excited for school to start and fall to come again, but now that Luke and I have been having so much fun camping and learning to rock climb, I want more time to just play!

June

Hello everyone! It's been a while again. It seems like we rack up all of this important news that we want to put on our blog, but then we wait so long that we forget. So here's the most recent pictures and we'll see if that jogs my memory.
The picture above was taken today. We had just gotten home from Payson from Grandpa's Birthday in Payson. Peter started getting fussy so we took him to the bathroom and were going to change his diaper etc. but he was throwing such a fit so we just gave up and let him be "free" for a little while. It looked like he was wearing a little loin cloth. I took him to the bathroom a couple of times just in case he needed to go, but he didn't. Then sure enough a few minutes after I had taken him, I found a puddle over by our shoes. Thankfully our floor is just hard tile and he only got my shoe laces wet and that was all. It was interesting though because after I cleaned up the pee, the floor was exceptionally clean where it had been! you can see the area where the puddle was cause it's sparkling white. I never knew pee could clean things. Maybe we should let him go diaper free more often . . . j/k
This is Peter in his new high chair. He's started to eat food recently and it's gotten hard for us to eat dinner with him in our laps so there was a cheap high chair at wal-mart that we decided we'd try. It's awesome! We love it, he like's it too, and it collapses completely flat so that's nice.
Peter has also started pulling himself up. He loves, as any child does I'm sure, to make his rounds in the apartment making a mess wherever he goes :)
This is his favorite cupboard to get into.
I don't remember how we found out, but Peter likes apple cores. It seems like we're mistreating him or something, but he just really likes them, so oh well. I wonder if he'll always prefer our scraps . . .
We are extremely excited to have our first garden this year! We have a little plot that you can rent in the student housing complex for $5 for the summer. So we bought plants and seeds, read some books, and here's our first attempt. We don't have extremely high expectations, but we want to be master gardeners someday, so we're excited to give it our first shot and make a bunch of mistakes. After 20 or so years of this, we'll be awesome at it. That's the plan anyway.
Here again, he's getting into the cupboard.
He loved to make a mess of the cd's n'stuff until recently. We got a really perfect entertainment center at a yard sale for $3!!! It was awesome! We weren't even looking for one, we weren't even looking for anything, we were just passing through and we saw it for $5 and stopped to look for a second and the lady who was selling it said "Do you want it? Where's your apartment? I'll wheel it up there for you and everything. I'll give it to you for $3!" and she started loading it onto a dolly! I said "hold on, we've gotta go take some measurements first" so we did and it worked out and she almost ran off without her $3. She was very excited to get rid of it, and we have been equally excited to have it! It's old and scratched and stuff if you look close but it's so perfect for us in our mismatchy apartment and it's incredibly functional. We LOVE it so much and we're very thankful that we were in the right place at the right time.
Another favorite mess making spot is where we've got all of our food storage.
Peter is helping Andrea do her Pilates! I was around one morning for some reason and she started exercising and he just comes and crawls all over and around her while she's doing it. He has fun, she get's a workout!
This is a while ago. Peter's first easter egg hunt at the Wright's house.
Stretching in the morning after a good night's sleep. It's so funny and cute all of the gestures that baby's make! They're just like little adults sometimes. I love it!

This is a really cool phenomenon in our court. Somehow with the way that the drainage system works, a big water bubble can form in the lawn if it rains enough! We were at an activity talking and some of the people who've lived here longer than we have were saying "Remember that weird bubble that formed a few years ago etc. etc." and a few minutes later someone said "It's back!!!" It was so cool! Little kids were running over it and jumping on it but it didn't even break!

And this is our beautiful baby boy crawling!!! Andrea said it's just like a flip switched or something and he decided that he'll get around this way from now on!

Other than that we are enjoying our summer of a little less stress since I'm not in school. It's fun to be able to get home and just spend time with the family and not worry about H.W. We enjoy taking walks to see our garden, grocery shopping, rewatching old movies we haven't seen for a while, and reading the harry potter series. We also listened to another interesting book lately called "The China Study." My sister had read it and we wanted to see what it was about and suffice it to say that it's a very interesting book about nutrition and disease and how they are related. If you're at all interested in nutrition you'd probably enjoy the read.

Well that's that. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

April Showers

Peter loves bath time. Here he is, splashing happily.



And here are some pictures of him in the bath.



He is so curious about everything and loves to explore. Here you can just see his feet as he's getting into something that mom and dad can't see.



And now mom's catching him.


Peter had a friend over for a few hours one day, and right after I sat her down next to him he got the biggest smile on his face. Looks like someone's got a crush. Ha ha!



It didn't last long before they were both trying to take each other's toys, and Peter clamped on to a fistful of her hair. Poor dear!


Our sweet little boy isn't normally much of a cuddle-bug. He's too curious and interested in everything for that. But every once in awhile, when he's tuckered out, he'll lay his head on Luke's shoulder or just hang out quietly next to him.



One thing is certain, he loves his daddy so much! Here he is playing with him. It's hard to catch him smiling as big or laughing as hard as he does, because he hears the beep of the camera and immediately whips his head around to investigate.

Food!

1 part milk (2% or greater)
2 parts sliced frozen bananas

Blend until smooth.

Enjoy your banana treat

You're welcome.

(The above is from Luke. Please make banana treat. It will change your life. Andrea is now taking over.)

We celebrated Peter's new teeth by giving him his first taste of food: sweet potatoes! We decided to document the occasion with pictures. Here it is:

Here we have Peter all decked out in the bib I made him at the baby shower Amanda threw for me. Isn't he cute? Thank you, Amanda.


Clearly, he is extremely excited. Here comes the food!


Ugh! What? This is not what I was expecting...


Maybe it's ok?



No...NOPE! Definitely not! (As it all came spewing out with some throw-up.)

Contrary to popular belief, Peter does not want to eat our food. He merely wants to play with it! Ha ha! After trying to feed him with a spoon we decided to just let him play with it. He enjoyed himself immensely and ended up eating some anyway since he was sucking on his fists and such. It was so funny! I have heard that one thing you should do to keep your children from becoming picky eaters is to let them feed themselves, even from a very young age when they're just learning how to get whatever they pick up to their mouth. So it's all part of the plan, you see...




Along with this post's theme of food, we recently made Volkornbrot: whole rye sourdough bread. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have arrived.

Remember that post last fall where I showed the pictures of our sourdough bread and said I just needed to make rye sourdough before I would feel absolutely victorious in the bread-baking scene? Well, the day has come. And it is sweet, er, sour. :)

Here is a picture of the bread:


This is the real stuff. None of that fluffy white business here. Just dense, delectable goodness. Luke and I really like sourdough, and we really, really like this bread!

To finish off the post, here are some pictures of our wee one:



Can you see his curly Mohawk? He's just out of the bath.



Having fallen asleep in Daddy's arms.



Luke likes to capture these moments of me and Peter in the mornings. Peaceful, sleepy, bliss.
Oh! I almost forgot! I also caught some footage of Peter crawling today. Here it is:






And because I'm a proud parent, you get another one:

On the move!

Peter has started crawling! Army crawling, at least. He inches across the floor by pulling himself with his two arms. We've tried to get a video of it, but he wasn't cooperating. We'll try again soon and see if we can get it posted on here. We'll have to do it soon though, because just last night Luke got down on all fours to play doggie with him, and Peter was getting up on his knees too! It was so adorable.

Peter has also cut his first two teeth! The two bottom ones, of course. They're not really up far enough to get a picture with the camera, but that, too, should be coming soon. They decided to come in with a bang, giving Peter his first miserable cold into the bargain. Poor baby! There's nothing worse than hearing your baby cough. We went to see the doctor yesterday, and luckily he seems to be doing much better today, so hopefully he'll be over it by next week.

He managed to pass his sickness on to his mommy, and so my birthday was a quiet, stay-at-home affair. We ordered pizza, made no-bake cookies, and watched a movie. It was so nice! Luke and I need nothing more for a night of perfect bliss. :)

Now you may be wondering what the deal with the pizza was, after my last post saying Peter was sensitive to gluten. It appears I was mistaken! The weekend I took gluten out of my diet I also added several supplements and pills in, so his improvement could have been due to the pills. However, when I added gluten back in his rash flared up, so I assumed the gluten was the cause and took it out again. Over the next few weeks it kept improving, but would flare up once in a while even though I wasn't eating any gluten. So I decided to be extra-rigorous about making sure I took all the pills and gave him his vitamin D and probiotics as prescribed by the doctor. His rash started to look much better. Then I decided to test gluten again and see if it flared up again. I added it into my diet, and his rash didn't respond! I also added wheat, and nothing for that one either! Woo hoo! His rash is all but gone on his legs and it got much better on his cheek, only to flare up again with his sickness. So we're still working on it, but hopefully it will continue to go away as we keep up the pills.

Here are some pictures of our cutie-pie:



Playing with his new Valentine's Day toy from Grandma Ce Ce and Poppy:



Hanging out on the couch:

Life Changing

Luke and I have recently seen a film that has required us to take a stand and dramatically reform our lives. The film: Bag It. The reform: say no to disposable plastic. The result: an epiphanous feeling akin to the washed-clean relieving one of forgiveness. It feels so good!

But let me back up a little.

One of Luke's graphic design teachers showed Bag It to the class. Luke was so fired up that we bought it and watched it together the next Friday. And Saturday we set off on our first plastic-free grocery shopping endeavor. Not an easy thing in our world as we know it. But a necessary thing, all the same. Because animals are starting off like this:


And ending up like this:


With guts that look like this:


Because humans are fine with throwing away this:

And allowing it to end up like this:


And this:


And even if it seems overwhelming, we've got to start somewhere to start cleaning up our act. So Luke and I took the challenge and are now trying to eliminate disposable plastic from our lives. It isn't easy, and maybe wouldn't even be possible for us if we didn't have a Whole Foods Market in the vicinity. (Hooray for bulk bins!) But we're doing the best we can, and it's amazing how good it feels! Luke put it this way: "It's like I've been walking around with all this wasteful-consumerist guilt because I didn't know how to get rid of it, but now that I have, I feel great! It's like the feeling that comes after repentance!" Ha Ha Ha!

Taking the challenge has endowed us with a new gift of creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and if we don't use plastic, what will we use instead?

The laundry basket has shown its truly useful nature by doubling as a grocery transport. Here Peter is showing off its roomy interior, as he has taken to playing inside it recently while mom gets stuff done:



For produce bags we've switched over to hemp or cotton drawstring. Making some more from cheese cloth is going to be my first sewing project. Sewing intimidates the dickens out of me, but I really want to try.

We also made an interesting discovery. We've recently gathered several cleaning spray bottles that had less-than-safe chemical-laden cleaning liquids in them in an effort to begin baby-proofing the house. Peter's attempts at sitting on his own are getting better and better, which means crawling is just around the corner! Observe:





Anyway, Luke looked at the top of a glass bottle of vinegar we were throwing out (glass recycling center anyone?) and thought it looked about the same as the top of our old bottle of glass cleaner. Sure enough, when he screwed the spray-top onto the vinegar bottle it fit like a glove. Ta Da! Who knew?


And so it goes. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." So we're trying.

Other than that, not much is new. Except that our beautiful baby gets more wonderful every day! And it appears he has a gluten sensitivity. The eczema rash on his cheek and legs got better when I eliminated it from my diet, worse when I re-introduced it, and is getting better again now that it's back out. It's quite possible that he'll grow out of it, but for now at least anything with gluten is a no-go, for mom or baby. This includes such delights as wheat, rye, spelt, barley, and anything made with them. Which has been a very eye-opening thing for our family, as we realized just how much we relied on bread to keep us going. Bountiful Baskets, in addition to my exciting diet of late, has opened our eyes to the wonderful world of fruits and vegetables! And there ain't no goin' back! However, a bread-less life would by a joyless life, so I have been experimenting with rice, buckwheat, and millet flour to make pancakes, muffins, biscuits, and even some yeast bread. The pancakes, muffins, and biscuits have turned out all right, if a bit dense. The yeast bread was a gummy failure. I'll have to keep trying with that one.

It's a shame to say good-bye to glutinous products for awhile. But would you look at that baby?




Anything's possible for a boy like that. :)