The past few weeks have been truly amazing ones. Rawley had his baby blessing on Sunday (Sept. 11) and we had a ton of family come in for it. It was awesome to see everyone and spend time with them. The baby blessing happened in church and was beautiful - Paul blessed Rawley with a desire to be a missionary throughout his life and that he'd be a special good example in his family and love his parents (and be a special blessing for me, his mother.) The following are some of the pictures we took with family while everyone was in town visiting. We had a fun pot-luck dinner after church that was also enjoyed by all. We rigged up a camera we had checked out from the BYU library to take these.
All the blessing attendees (except for my cousin Rachelle - we feel so bad, she wasn't able to find us after the blessing!)
A family photo... Rawley was not impressed.
A 4 generation picture of Hill decendents (and one bonus Larsen decendent.)
4 generations of Larsens (although technically with two Risks.)
All the great grandparents!
Hills decendents all together.
Rawley (A.K.A. Paul IV) with Paul II and Rosalie Risk
We had such a good time having family in, and letting them get a chance to hold Rawley. Generally, Rawley seemed to enjoy it too. As far as we can tell, he does quite well with strangers so far. We've also been highly impressed that out of the 3 times he's been to church so far, he has not had to be taken out of a meeting for crying yet (and LDS church lasts 3 hours.) He's gotten a little fussy at times, but by simply bouncing him or feeding him with a bottle he's been happy enough. We're very glad he's so generally happy (when we're holding him, at least.)
Paul Herald Risk II and IV
With the Risk grandparents while we interviewed Grandpa Risk about his family history.
Rawley with Paul's mom Suzanne, who kindly watched him a few times for us while we went on dates.
My dad with Rawley - we're so glad he was able to fly in for the weekend.
My mom was out here with us since Rawley was born (so quite a good chunk of time!) but my dad only flew in for the weekend. We went to a fancy restaurant at Utah Valley University where their culinary students practice cooking cuisine from all over the world. They serve it in a very fancy 5 course meal, and this night they were doing all "Asian Pacific" food. The courses consisted of soup (mine was coconut milk based) and bread (including some bread that was like a Filipino rice cake called puto, one of my very favorite things), an appetizer (Paul got mussels, I had a weird omelet thing), salad (the best one was called "beef waterfall" - normally I don't think of beef on salad but this was super tasty beef), the main dish (I had curried beef and rice), and some really fun desserts. The tiny servings were pretty entertaining, but we liked it and it was a fun experience to go somewhere fancy and exclusive with the family.
The menu at "The Forte" restaurant at UVU. They had a few options for each course and we each got to order which one looked best to us. (That's huckleberry soda, by the way, not wine!)
Paul's fancy mussel appetizer (yes, this place was legit so the servings were of course tiny.)
Paul's "salad" was literally some french-fried shaped papaya slices, a few peanuts, and like 3 green beans. He was not super impressed with that one, but it was certainly "fancy."
This was Paul's dessert. It was a doughnut made from some sort of asian squash - but we referred to it as the "roadkill doughnut" although it was indeed beautifully presented. It also tasted a lot like a pumpkin spice
I had three sorbets that were really good - a guava one, a passion fruit one, and a coconut one. I thought they were super delicious!
Rawley has been making a lot of progress - some real smiles with increasing frequency and some new noises and coos. He's also becoming more content for longer with not being held, which he was unable to do very well previously. He loves bath time quite a bit as well now - Paul saw him smile for the first time after giving him a bath this week. He's come a long way from the screaming he used to do when we first gave him baths!
Happy after bath time!
A not very good picture of Rawley being happy in the morning, which is generally his favorite part of the day it seems. He likes to dance to music, and particularly likes this song (and other swing related songs) it seems:
"Tummy time" for both Pauls.
This past Saturday we went to another event at UVU, called the "electric maze." I found discount tickets for it online and it turned out to be interesting, but not exactly a "maze." It was really just a bunch of paths that were all lit up in various ways with some interesting music throughout. There were inflatables I suppose it was supposed to be an art piece of some sort since it was sponsored by the art department at the college. Interesting, but probably not something we'll be doing again.
Paul and Rawley in one of the lit up tunnels at the maze.
Near one of the light displays with Rawley.
Naturally, he slept through the whole thing even though half the reason we went is because we thought he's like the lights!
Here's some bloopers from the family photo shoot:
Rawley enjoys wriggling around - he's earned himself a number of nicknames. The Squiggler, Lil' Bub, and Munchie are a few of them.
Classic!
Rawley quickly decided he was pretty done taking pictures that day, and apparently Paul wanted to imitate his disgruntledness.
We had so much fun with family, and we're looking forward to going back to Virginia around Christmas to see the rest of Paul's family and let them meet Rawley. We're having fun with our little guy, in spite of the sleepless nights, and look forward to more adventures with him.
We suspect Rawley has reddish highlighted hair, which can be seen in certain pictures and sunlight. Here, he's very surprised that I'm able to fit my wedding ring again since the swelling's gone down.
Rawley's been out in the real world for 4 weeks now, and we're pretty impressed with his progress and new skills. At this point, he's begun to seriously grasp things with some degree of intent, although he still wildly flails his arms around and has very little control of them in general still. We like to refer to him as a "curmudgeon," the definition of which means, "a bad-tempered or surly person." He just entertains us by growling a lot, making somewhat surly faces (of course accompanied by really cute, nice ones too), and in general having an air of a grumpy old man whenever he hasn't been fed or is getting tired. We also refer to him as a "squiggler," because it seems like he's always wriggling around now and trying to move.
The squiggler himself. He has a very large belly which takes down about 6 ounces of milk at each feeding now. I love his red-tinted hair and how he's half bald in the front - I told Paul it's because he has my family's super bald baby genes and his super hairy baby genes mixed together. This is a good example of a "curmudgeon" expression as well.
Previous to this week, he's been pretty simple to understand - if he's been awake for more than an hour to an hour and a half, he's crying because he's tired. If he's crying after (or while) eating, he probably needs to be burped. And if he is crying when he wakes up, it's almost always because he's hungry. So, we followed that formula pretty solidly, but this week he's been staying up for longer stretches of time, and sometimes it would appear that he starts crying simply because he's bored or we're not holding him. It's a little bit hard to find ways to stimulate a baby who can't even control his limbs yet, but he does seem to like looking at light and going outside, as well as just being bounced, rocked, and held.
He likes to be held up sometimes too - all his limbs and neck are getting stronger every day. We do actually clothe him on occasion.
We noticed after his umbilical cord fell off that he seemed to have a very "outie" belly button, and my mom said it was possibly he had a slight hernia. After a trip to the pediatrician, he sure enough does, but apparently belly button hernias are pretty common in little babies and will go away eventually on their own and are harmless. So, for now, our little chunky baby has a very big old belly button. He gained a whole pound in the past two weeks, making him 10.5 pounds now. He has a huuuge belly and kind of skinny little legs with beefy arms. His proportions are quite adorable in our opinion.
One day Rawley will realize just how silly his dad is!
Rawley had his first grand adventure this week. We've been keeping him out of public places so far to try and avoid his getting sick (newborns are particularly susceptible to everything), but yesterday my mom, sister, and I went with Rawley to Thanksgiving point to look at the gardens. Rawley was covered up most of the time in his stroller to protect him from the sunlight and mosquitoes, but he LOVED the massaging effect of the cobblestone path that we pushed him over throughout most of the garden. When we stopped pushing him, he'd immediately wake up and start kicking and bemoaning his situation to us.
Although he doesn't know how to smile yet to tell us he's happy, moments like these are pretty rewarding.
We also got him some really cute, "hip" baby clothes at the Carter's store in the Tangier Outlets mall near Thanksgiving Point. Paul tells me he doesn't Rawley to become TOO hip, which I think we can avoid, but I do get pretty excited when I see little boy clothes that are actually cute and tasteful since they seem to be very few and far in between.
When no milk is available, Dad's hairy leg will do. Paul's a stupendous dad, and I'm pretty sure Rawley agrees with me.
This week and last week have officially been nap weeks. We've all been trying to catch Z's when we can, especially myself and Paul. School started this week for Paul, and I just finished up my job/internship with the library. A lot of sleeping in various places happens, at pretty much all times of the day. Thankfully, Rawley slept for a full 5 hours straight last night after our long adventure, probably because we thoroughly tuckered him out.
Adventures take a lot of concentration and a pacifier. Much sleeping was caught up on this week. Naps outside...
Naps inside... Leg naps... Back naps...
Milk-drunk naps... Snuggle naps... Frog naps?
SOLDIER HOLLOW CLASSIC HERDING COMPETITION / SWISS DAYS
Sheepherding competition!
This weekend, we had the awesome opportunity to go to the Soldier Hollow Classic sheepdog herding competition as well as Midway's "Swiss Days," which is essentially a craft fair with a few Swiss-like things thrown in.
Sometimes ya gotta feed the mushroom-hatted baby, but the sheep herding is also intense!
It was really fun to go to the sheepherding competition. Of course, all the dogs we saw competing were border collies. Paul grew up having two border collies that were brothers, and is very partial towards the breed. I was five when we had a border collie puppy, and it would constantly nip rather painfully at my heels, so I've never had a good impression of the breed. After watching the competition and observing the dogs, though, it's very obvious how intelligent they are. Probably a little too high-energy for a first dog for us, but somewhere down the line we'll probably get a border collie or a dog related to one.
A few seconds of sheepherding.
The way the competition worked was first, the dogs were told (by their masters' whistles) to run all the way up a hill to go and find a group of five sheep. They then were directed by whistle to go through a series of gates, then do a "split" where the sheep were in two separate and distinct groups, then the dogs were directed to herd the sheep into a small gate where their owner would close the sheep in and their run would be over. Now, we watched about 5 runs or so, and each run took around 7 to 10 minutes.
Honestly, from our assessment, it seems like sheep herding with the dogs is actually not that efficient (Paul: "Why don't they just get some land rovers to do this? The dogs aren't very good at it.") Admittedly, what they were able to do was still very impressive, but there were quite a few runs where the dogs weren't even able to finish in the allotted time limit because they weren't very good at herding the sheep. Even so, it was very cool to watch as the dogs did what they could to bring the sheep through the gates. Some of the dogs were very obedient to their masters, which made for great runs. The dogs really depended on being able to hear their owners' whistles though, and since it was quite windy a lot of them got confused when they weren't able to hear. The owners with the loudest whistles were often the most successful.
Bagpipes - I love the huge mallets for the drum.
They also had bagpipes there, a frisbee catching dog show, an obstacle/agility course show, and a wild animal show. The bagpipes were legit - Paul wants to learn how to play them since he has a mouthpiece for one somewhere - and are tied to his Scottish heritage. I told him next summer we should go to the Scottish Heritage Festival they have around here in Utah.
Frisbee dog show.
Agility show - this dog has won championships.
Perhaps my favorite event there - the "Splash Dogs" competition where regular people brought in their dogs to see which ones could jump the farthest into the water.
Anyway, the shows were pretty cool but not extremely impressive. What was extremely impressive was the GIANT RABBIT they had out where you could pet it after the wild animal show. Called a "Flemish Giant," they can weigh up to 50 pounds and be 4 feet long. Now, I've never in my life wanted a rabbit as a pet, although I do think they're cute. But this thing is awesome. I'd keep one as a pet anytime. It was huge and fluffy - two characteristics that are hard to beat.
My phone camera's not good, but here's the rabbit at the event. He was so fluffy!
Some random dude showing off a huge Flemish Giant. Aw, look - I want them both! "Wait - you can't bring a rabbit bigger than me in to the apartment!"
We also went to "Swiss Days" in Midway, Utah at my sister Brooke's suggestion (she went with us to both events.) Rawley got a little more upset at this point of the trip, since he had been happily snuggled up to Paul's chest the whole time we were at the sheepherding competition by a harness. We put him in the stroller for Swiss Days though, and he did not take as kindly to that. He did end up sleeping most of the day, though, so it wasn't too hard to convince him to stop crying with some jostling and bouncing.
Some of the booths as well as the town hall at Swiss Days. The town hall was built in 1940 so it's not exactly super historic, but they had this cute dancing wooden doll display that opened up above their clock. They had an antique shop there, and we saw this eagle with lederhosen draped on it. Paul thinks it's someone's Nazi heirloom they wanted to get rid of to avoid a record of their ties to the regime.
Swiss Days was interesting - the town was mostly founded by Swiss settlers it seems, and they've tried to hold on to that heritage over the years. Although the festival itself wasn't all that interesting - mostly just a craft fair, and Paul and I aren't too likely at this point to spend money on random crafts - they did have some really tasty pie and ice cream there, which we indulged in. They also had a mother's lounge and diaper station set up there, which was SUCH a Utah thing to do (it was sponsored by the health department.) I took advantage of the mothers' lounge for a bit, but it was weird because there was totally a dude in there. He was trying to help his wife wrap a baby wrap correctly, but I couldn't figure out why they couldn't just do that outside. Mothers' lounges are not for dudes except in emergencies, ya'll.
The tasty pie! Paul obviously loves crafts.
The traffic to leave at 5:00 when we headed out was very awful. We figured it was so bad because two festivals were within a few miles of each other (the sheep herding and Swiss Days fests were very close together), but eventually we got to an area where a large moving truck had apparently somehow grazed some rocks on the side of the canyon. There was stuff from the moving truck scattered on the side of the highway, and it was clear that the truck was completely out of commission as well. We think that was probably a strong contributor to the road block since it looked like it had just happened.
Overall, we had a lot of fun at both of the festivals, and it's always fun to hang out with my sister as well (although we missed having my mom along because she was a little sick and didn't want to be around Rawley with his still developing immune system.) Someday we're going to have to go back to Midway because it was such a cute little town. There's not very many places in Utah I could see myself living happily (too dry, kind of ugly, and dusty looking), but Midway seemed a lot more like Missouri where I used to live or even Virginia.
We went to Bridal Veil falls again because it's such a nice park - this time with a baby! Don't worry, we had the breaks on! We found these weird white berries? Anyone able to identify them? The base of the falls. This needs to be the image accompanying some super deep poem about fatherhood.
Today we took Rawley to church for the first time. Our pediatrician told us that probably at around 4 or 5 weeks old he would be okay to go out in public if we were careful about keeping him away from sick people and shielding him. He started to think about crying during sacrament meeting, but this kid is obsessed with motion. As soon as we start rocking or bobbing him, he suddenly decides he's not sad anymore and stops crying, pretty much no matter how sad/screamy he was seconds before. In some ways this is good, because it means we can almost always stop him from crying (unless he's really really hungry), but it also means we were sitting there rocking him with rather large motions for half of sacrament meeting until he fell asleep. We also find that these days, when putting him to sleep, if we lay him down he often wakes up a bit and starts to wiggle around and threaten to cry. However, if we keep our hands on him for 20 seconds or so while he's lying in the crib before walking away, he often stops wriggling and will go to sleep. Paul likened this to how we feel sometimes - although we can't see God there with us, we need to feel his presence in our everyday life to feel happy in this life.
First Sunday at church, and we put him in some overalls since he doesn't really have pants that fit him currently (they're all too big.)
It's been fascinating to see Rawley develop these past few weeks (he's a month old today!) He's really starting to depend on us and trust us. He's developing patterns with us, and realizes important things - like A. "I'm being held by mom or dad, so I can stop crying or not cry as much now," B. "I can tell food is about to come from that bottle or from mom and I'm definitely looking forward to it," C. "Mom or Dad is far away from me and not holding me anymore, so I'm gonna cry," and D. "I'm outside or somewhere interesting, so I'm either going to sleep or be happy about it because this is cool." Those are just some of the developmental steps we've been seeing in him. It's been fun to take him out this week and do things - he's already a little charmer. At least 4 middle aged ladies have approached us or seen him and told us just how adorable he is and asked his age, etc. He's definitely a keeper, and we sure love him (even when he's waking up 3 times a night!)
