New Pics

Xana is pretty much potty trained! She was probably ready for a while, but we weren’t. During the first week, she would go on the potty about half the time. Then, all of a sudden, she seems to have figured it out. She hasn’t had any accidents for several days now (knock on wood). Even in public, she lets us know and goes. We never got her any special seats or anything, she just uses it “like a big girl.” At night, we’ve been putting a diaper on, but it comes off dry every morning. Some day soon we’ll be brave enough to leave it off at night. Speaking of being a big girl, she is loving her role as the big sister. We had heard a lot about the older sibling reverting and wanting to be the baby, but that hasn’t happened with her. She has gone the opposite direction, and wants even more than ever, to be a big girl. It was cute the other day as Tina was nursing Xeke, Xana sat down next to her with a doll and pretended to feed it, just like mommy does. We pretty much think she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Xeke would be her only rival. He is growing up pretty fast. We can’t believe how much more mellow he is than she was. For the most part, he just eats and sleeps. He really isn’t that fussy of a baby. He’s gained weight like a champ, weighing in at over 11 lbs at his last appointment. He has also been sleeping better through the night. The other night he slept a 6 hour chunk, followed by a 4 hour chunk. He gorges himself enough that Tina is able to take some time between the feedings. His feedings are actually pretty funny. He is by far the loudest eater ever. Whenever Tina goes into the mother’s room, she draws a few stares. He loves to swallow a bunch of air while he eats, which results in him tooting like a champ (just like his daddy!). This week was stake conference, and she was able to leave the kids with me and go to the Saturday session alone. She said it was pretty weird, but nice to be able to just sit there, listen, and watch the other moms fuss with their babies. Xeke even had his first haircut this week. He has so much more than most, so Tina gave him a trim and lowered his ears a bit. We’re still waiting to see what color his eyes are going to be, but they are distinctly grey as of now. But our favorite thing as of late is that he is beginning to smile and respond to us (see picture). It’s pretty stinkin’ cute.

Tina is beginning to feel much better (thanks, I’m sure, to the much shortened labor). Of course she is still adjusting to being a mother of two. It is a lot different, that’s for sure. She has had about enough of bodily processes dealing with his diapers and Xana’s potty training, but she is managing it well. Tina’s sister, Diana was able to come out in mid-October to spend a few days. It was good timing, as we had our ward Halloween party while they were here. We dressed up as a crew of chefs and had some fun. Xana, of course, loved having time to spend with her cousins. For Halloween itself, we actually didn’t really go anywhere to trick-or-treat. Xana had had a couple opportunities to get candy on other days, so she and Tina dressed up and did some reverse trick-or-treating on our street. We don’t really have many families, so no one is prepared with candy. So they made treats and brought them to the neighbors to get to know them better. Even at that, most dug out some candy from their house to give to Xana, so she still ended up with another cache of candy.

As far as what I’ve been doing, you could probably guess. School is rather busy, though I have added a new element. This is the first quarter I am doing any teaching. I am a TA for the Intro to Film class, primarily grading the exams and meeting with students. I have to say, getting the first exams was shocking. I can’t believe how bad they were. There are so many students who don’t really care to try. It was painfully obvious many of them never bothered coming to class or reading the book. Yet, the weird part is, they still came to take the exam, somehow figuring they could pass. I guess they figure they understand film and could rely on past knowledge. They can’t. I had to fail over 40% of my students on the first exam. And that was being nice. I thought I would stick to a mathematical formula for awarding grades, but had I done that, almost nobody would have passed so I adjusted the grades up. It’s strange, really. The teacher even gave them the questions they would be asked ahead of time. Well, as a result, I had to meet with a gagillion students who thought they should have gotten a better grade, and I tried to help them so they could study for the next exam. I just got the second, and some have done better, some haven’t. That has taken longer than I anticipated, and I have to balance that with my normal course work. But I’m managing.

As you can imagine, October was a pretty busy month here in Ohio, politically. I think we received between 4 and 6 pieces of political mail a day, as well as many recorded phone messages. They called me for about every poll conducted, which was new. Luckily, we were able to vote early so the lines weren’t an issue for us. I feel like my vote really counted this year. In the presidential election, the margin was only about 200,000 out of several million, that’s a small margin. Our congressional race is still not decided. They are counting the thousands of provisional ballots, and the margin is only 149 right now. It’s funny how even Xana has noticed what is going on. She’s been able to pick Barack Obama out for a while now (though she calls him “rockin’ mama”). The other day we were talking about prayer, and Tina let Xana know that Jesus loves us, to which Xana appended, “…and God loves us” we said she was right, then she went on “…and rockin’ mama.” I know this election was pretty hotly contested, but we thought Tuesday was a pretty incredible day. For the first time, we didn’t feel like we were picking the lesser of two evils—we were voting for, not against somebody. I know you don’t all agree (and that’s ok), but we’re excited to witness such an historic event. Obama’s acceptance speech stirred some feelings of patriotism I haven’t had in quite a while—I’ll admit it, I was quite emotional. Hope, not hate or fear, had won the day.

I’m done with my political preaching now. On a lighter note, football season has been pretty fun. Neither of my teams (BYU or Ohio State), has done all I hoped, but its still been entertaining. As long as BYU beats Utah, and Ohio State beats Michigan, all will be right with the world.

We’ll try to update in a matter of weeks, not months next time

Xeke Video

Xeke Video

Here's a little taste of what Xeke is like. He is cute and very squeaky.

Well, it finally happened, Xeke has arrived. Tina was only in labor for 2:20 and only pushed for about 7min. He was born at 11:16am, he is 8lb 1oz and 21 inches long. Both mom and baby are doing great. Below are some images and a video of the day.

Tina's Pregnant Pics

Some of you have been requesting picture of Tina's pregnant self, so here they are.

Spring Quarter 2008--Oh the Fun I Had!

Because this quarter was the last one for my Master’s Degrees, it got pretty out of hand. Things were actually going very well for the first half, and I was actually ahead of schedule on everything. Then it all fell apart. About a month before my thesis defense was scheduled, my advisor came back and said she wanted to squeeze in another revision (surprise!). I needed to have the thing in my committee’s hand at least two weeks ahead of time so that they would have enough time to review it, so I had two weeks to overhaul my thesis yet again. I put off all my course work and concentrated almost solely on that. Well, I got it in one time, and expected fairly smooth sailing. A couple of days later I took my exams. That consists of going into a room with an empty laptop and answering two questions for three hours. I did pretty well on that, and spent the next two weeks trying to get some of my course work done. Finally the day for my defense came, and I sat in a room with four professors and got grilled for a couple hours about my thesis and my exam answers. All in all it went pretty well, and they suggested a few revisions before it was completed. They all signed the forms except my advisor who was to make sure I got those revisions done. Again I put off all of my course work and worked only on my thesis, and got it turned around in five days. That’s when my advisor decided to surprise me yet again with another revision. The reason this upset me so much is it made me miss the deadline for submitting the thesis for graduation in the spring quarter. Needless to say I was extremely upset. I know my thesis was at least as good or better than many that had been approved and signed off on by my colleagues. Additionally, my parents were flying out to see my graduation, and by missing the deadline, I was not allowed to walk. By now I had to get to all the coursework because the quarter was over, and I had a lecture I was giving at the library I had to prepare for. So I didn’t get to her “final” revisions for a week or so. There was a loophole that still allowed me to turn in my thesis during spring quarter, but they wouldn’t process it and let me walk until summer. This was crucial because I didn’t have funding lined up for the summer and in order to graduate otherwise, I would have had to register for classes which would have cost more than I could have hoped to pay. I did, however, get her revisions done and turned it back into her several days early, but instead of signing off, guess what—she wanted more revisions (we’ve now gone through about 9 revisions or so). This left me one day to make all her revisions and print it out, get it approved with the graduate school, and get her to sign it. She did sign it eventually, and I got the thesis turned in 45 minutes before the deadline—talk about cutting it close! As you can see, the process was absolutely no fun. Tina’s parents were kind enough to fly her and Xana home during much of this process, which was good because I was working 14 hours a day for over a month to make sure this happened. The good news is I’m done. I have now completed both Master’s Degrees—one in the History of Art, and one in Slavic and East European Studies. This should make me a little more employable when all is said and done. As all of this came to a close my parent’s did come out which was great. I loved being able to just hang out and play for a week after all of that. Of course, Xana loved having grandma and grandpa here to play with the whole time, and still asks us to drive over to their hotel to play. Thanks mom and dad. I’ll try to post the thesis on line once I get it converted to pdf if anyone (probably not) is interested.

Let's start from the beginning

So, we decided to set up an actual blog now, though it will be more of a vlog, plog, clog, flog, and whatever other cool buzzwords I can come up with. We thought we'd start with the basics, so in case you forgot how it goes, here's the abcs for you...