afterparty

this post is brought to you by the color gray. and by the number 3.
today we went to our ward halloween party. there were gunny-sack races, ball tosses, a cake walk, and donut-eating contests. maybe i'm just a sore loser, but i like watching these games much more than i ever liked playing them. except the cake walk, cause i like cake.
jeff and i went as starving college students, but paige, who was having a sad day, actually had a costume:

oh, some animal died.

unfortunately, during the party, jeff made the mistake of making fun of her mom for dressing a baby all in gray. baby smack down!

make sure to check the link if you don't know who she is. no, she's not a sock head.

there's a sock on my head? get it off, get it off, get it off!

away in a carseat

the first two nights we were here, paige was supposed to sleep in a tent. instead, she cried herself in circles the whole night(literally, she kicks and thrashes enough that she turns like a clock). she slept a whole lot better in the carseat though, and that's where she's been ever since. the only problem (aside from being kind of ghetto) is that she swings her legs up over the side of the seat and wiggles down until she's sideways in the seat with her feet in the air. but no more! because this came in the mail today:



there is just enough room in our apartment for it. it makes me so happy. i've been giddy all day. five months later, we're finally in a situation stable enough to have a real crib! ah...home, sweet, home.
the company even makes me happy. it makes me sing 60's songs to the baby.



as for the baby herself, she's not quite sure what she thinks yet. i guess we'll see tonight.

a day out

so, two weeks into london and all we'd really seen was school and the grocery store. oh, and the library! yay library! we're going back for singing time next week!
anyway, today we finally got a chance to spend a day doing the tourist thing. paige was so excited! she looks so cute in her hat.



tangent: yesterday as i was walking to the store, i passed a little girl who started to sing, "little baby in a green hat! little baby in a green HAT!" as she danced down the sidewalk next to her mum. that's what i think of whenever i put this hat on her now.





back to today. first stop was Buckingham Palace. we live only a little ways from here. one day we'll come at like, 3 in the morning so we can beat the crowd and actually see the changing of the guards. curse these short legs!





there are a lot of embassies in london. we passed a lot of them on the way to see jeff's school. this was my favorite.






on the way home we walked by big ben and then westminster abbey. you can't really see it in this picture though. this random couple and their baby got in the way.


and this last picture is partly to document for myself that the sun really does shine in england. it's kind of a pretty place when it's not so gloomy.

Playing Catch Up

It's Sunday, so let's be honest with one another. If you're looking at this blog it is probably for one of three reasons:

1) You're a record promoter who recognizes me from my brief stint as the lead singer for Van Halen in 1984 , and you're finally going to offer me my rightful place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

2) Your name is Jeff or Rebecca and you're updating the blog because the Holy Ghost told you during General Conference that you're supposed to.

3) You want to look at pictures of our cute baby.


It will be decided that Pi is a rational number before a two year old gets his due in the music industry, and I only talk to myself in the bathroom - so, excluding the minute possibility of quantum tunneling, you are almost certainly here for the baby. Can't say I blame you.

Ah, and here she comes now - confident, alert, with a predatory air of barely restrained ferocity:


You will note the dimpled lower lip, the button nose, the slightly pointed chin and the ever-so-outwardly-turned ears. Yes, indeed she is a fine example of what we in the field call a 'decora puella,' or 'beautiful girl.'

As with most members of the Hominidae family, the young female exhibits remarkably acute motor skills, performing feats of muscle control scarce fathomed by less-dexterous species:



Uniquely, even among creatures as self-aware as these, the young child has displayed an superior capacity to manipulate the behavior of the adult members of her species. Consider the comments of a British Airlines Stewardess, who, upon having to endure 7 hours of contact with the quietly sleeping baby (interspersed with frequent and disarming smiles), declared, somewhat abashedly, "You're such a darling little angel! You're starting to make me broody!"

Even more incredibly, the child has recently engaged in behavior which has previously only been documented among French specimens of Rattus rattus, wherein she positions herself near the cranium of an adult male and actually controls the motions of the man's body by manipulating the hairs on his head!


Perhaps most astoundingly, the girls possesses a skill which defies the imagination...namely, the ability to reverse the polarity of gravity. Rather that being attracted to more massive bodies Paige appears to be able to attract large bodies to her. Thus, the child is often seen in the company of the grandest members of her family.



The precise mechanism of this phenomenon has escaped even the most capable minds, but physicists speculate that is has something with that elusive quantum property known as 'charm.'

Unfortunately, her patience has its limits, and Paige often rebuffs repeated attempts to document her behavior.



I suppose even celebrities are entitled to their privacy.

Some of my favorite things:

1) Camembert cheese on a freshly baked baguette
2) Good book + bad weather + firelight + warm blanket + hot chocolate = happy
3) The sound of babies laughing

-Jeff

day 1

somehow in the midst of preparing to move, i forgot that babies get jetlag. paige slept really well on the airplane, but would not fall asleep last night. she stayed up until nearly 3. i really hope our neighbors don't hate us.
as for today, my first day in london made me a little nervous jeff went to school and i've been puttering around trying to figure out exactly what's going on. after cleaning up a little, we walked around until we found the tesco (a grocery store). it was a harder trip than i thought it would be. i couldn't find the rice or salt until i asked someone, and i had to come home and look up what the differences were in laundry detergert. i'm still kind of confused. there are biological and non-biological detergents. biological detergent apparently has enzymes in it to help break down stains and odors. in addition, there are regular and colour detergents(is regular only for whites?). oh yeah, and there's hand-wash detergent. i'm not sure if they mix and match. i didn't see any biological colour detergent, or biological handwash but the pictures on the back all had coloured clothes. all four kinds come in powder, liquid, caplets, and gel packs. i'm pretty sure i stood there for at least a half hour before i grabbed the one that said it was half price today.
anyway, as i was checking out, the cashier put all my groceries into three little bags, then looked at me and asked if i was sure i could carry all of this. i live a block away from the store. i thought about grocery shopping in utah or maryland and walked out of the store laughing.
one thing i couldn't find at the store was a plunger. i just looked up where i could find one, and it turns out, you can only really get a plunger from a plumbing or hardware store. plungers are pretty rare here. why, you ask? (at least i did) don't people poop here? more research revealed that, in fact, british pipes are bigger, so clogs are less common. i'm still suspicious.
this post is getting really long.
we still need to drop by the furniture store to see about a crib, figure out where the trash (sorry, rubbish) goes, and how to work the doorbell, but the baby's napping and i need some food. *sigh*