Clyde William Hanks was born early Halloween morning. He was a week late. He weighed 7lbs 10 oz and was 21 inches. He is doing great. He is such a good baby. For the most part he is awake in the morning sleeps several hours in the middle of the day is awake in the evening and then sleeps most of the night. The rest of the night he eats. It is nice though because he just sleeps next to me. He only gets fussy if he is hungry, messy, uncomfortable, or if I eat chocolate or a lot of garlic. But he is a good sleeper. Zina had a couple rough nights where she kept us up, but now she is also back to sleeping through the night. It took a couple weeks to get used to having two kids. It was a little bit harder of a recovery with Clyde than Zina, but that could be because with her I was supposed to be on bedrest for 6 weeks after she was born. With Clyde I wanted to just get back up and doing immediately. Now I am feeling great and things are feeling more normal.

Zina loves her little brother! The trick is keeping her from loving him too much! We were concerned about her being jealous if grandpa held the baby (she loves her Grandpa hanks more than anything else!) but the first time she saw the baby she pushed him toward grandpa to hold and then brought him a blanket, her bottle, and her breakfast. Now when the baby cries she gets very upset if we don’t immediately give the baby to Grandpa.

I was a little concerned that Clyde might not be getting enough to eat because he only snacks for a few minutes at a time and the couple times I tried pumping milk for church I only got an ounce. Well, at his 2 week appointment I found out he’d gained 2 pounds. He left the hospital at about 7lb 4oz and was up to 9lbs 4oz. So he is getting plenty! He has got some very cute chubby cheeks and a double chin. It is quite a different experience than Zina! She was nearly 3 lbs lighter 3 inches shorter and born 4 weeks earlier. She was just skin and bones for so long and I don’t think she hit 10 lbs till she was around 3 months.

For the longest time Zina wasn’t even on the charts of kids average growth. Except her head circumference and it was in the 50^th percentile. Clyde is 60^th percentile in height and weight and 25^th in head circumference. He is also a very strong baby. He raised his head the day he was born and can now hold it up for several minutes at a time.

On Thanksgiving day he gave us his first real smile. Grandma was holding him and talking in a deep voice (Grandpa’s voice soothes Clyde) and Clyde started grinning at Grandma. I love my little kids so much!

Zina Stories

January 2009

We were eating spaghetti and Jacob was holding Zina on his lap and feeding her. I noticed that she had dripped a little bit of sauce on his arm so I took a cloth and wiped it up for him. Zina looked up and me and then very deliberately slapped her sauce drenched hand down on his arm and began to rub it up and down. That’ll teach me to clean up her daddy before dinner is over!

February 2009

Zina is so good at sharing. At dinner she spends half her time feeding her Grandpa Jim. He is so good natured about it that he will even eat the broccoli that she feeds him! He fondly refers to it as hay. The other morning Zina was eating grapes so I sat down next to her and opened my mouth and she obligingly popped one in for me. She then proceeded to alternate between eating a grape and feeding me a grape. Then she got to her last one. She held it for a while looked at me then grinned and ripped it in half. One for each of us. Ah I love being a mom.

February 2009

I passed Zina to Jacob, leaned in to smell her bottom and got whacked in the head as his arm came around to secure her. He felt bad for it, but told me that it was silly of me to try to smell her while she was being transferred. While he was explaining my folly she reached for grandpa so Jacob turned and passed her over. As he did I heard a “Whack” and saw Jacob staggering back holding his face. Jacob had thoughtfully realized that I probably hadn’t had much of a chance to check if she smelled and leaned in as Grandpa reached to take her. He was right; that is a bad time for a smell check! He got a great big grandpa arm in the face for his pains. We laughed so hard it took several minutes before any of us got enough breath back to actually do that smell check. She passed.

February 2009

I was sitting in the kitchen with Zina when she glimpsed a bag of frozen peas on the counter. She darted right under them and reached up and pointed insistently babbling the whole time. I wondered why in the world frozen peas would seem so desirable. I gave her a handful and she ate a few before turning away and going off to do something else. Then it dawned on me that the peas came in a purple and white bag. Exactly the same color as the bag of marshmallows. Zina loves marshmallows. She had obviously associated a purple and white bag with a yummy treat! Smart girl. I wonder if she will grow up liking the color purple? 

May 9, 2009

Jacob and I watched our niece and nephew for several hours so their mom and dad could go on a date. They dropped the kids off with a large pizza about noon at the field where we were playing soccer with several friends. Zina was very intrigued by  the pizza and sat there on the grass holding the box open and picking off bits of pizza to eat. At a break in the game I announced that there was still plenty of pizza and anyone who wanted some was welcome to it.

I turned to pick up the box and Zina slammed it closed and dove across the top of it. She lay there holding it closed and started hollering when I tried to pull her off. Evidently she figured out what I had just said and she did not want to share her pizza!

May 2009

Zina is a little chair thief. If you leave the room she will get up from what she is doing and insert herself wherever you had been sitting. Sometimes she will even splay herself across the couch to try to take up as much room as she can. I guess she hopes that this will force people to pick her up!

Zina especially likes the big blue chair in the living room. The other day she woke up from a nap and she cried and walked right past me and climbed up into the blue chair and right into Luke’s lap. Luke picked her up and handed her over to me. Zina immediately wiggled back out of my lap and crawled right back up into Luke’s. I really don’t think she was quite awake because she has never gone to him before. Luke then picked her up again and carried her over to Grandpa in the other room. I think she then became a little more coherent because this time she stayed. 

 

  

Genes

For our relief society activity this last month they asked each of the ladies to bring in a baby picture ahead of time. They then scanned them in and had a slideshow of them playing on a large screen while we had goodies dipped in chocolate fondue. The object of the pictures was to guess as many correctly as you could. My problem with this is even if they lined up all the sisters in the ward and had me write down their names I would have a very low score! I recognize people, but not by name! The funny thing is that I recognized a lot of the baby pictures... because I am a chorister in the primary. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of the kids names either. 

A couple people came up to me and said, "Oh I know exactly which one is yours." I hadn't realized it was so obvious. Then they went through each picture individually and let us yell out our guesses. They got to the picture of my mother-in-law Rosemary and a bunch of people said, "That is Rachel! It looks just like Zina!" but, I shook my head. It wasn't too hard for them to realize that if it wasn't me it must be Zina's grandma. When they did finally get to my picture no one guessed it, but someone said it was a young movie star. So it was a fun night! 

Pictures top LR (Zina, Grandma Rosie, Zina) 

                                                                        Me!

 

Mesquite Retreat

I won a hotel package to the CasaBlanca in Mesquite, NV.  A two night stay at the hotel, $70 spa treatment, and $100 at their nice restaurant. I won it by signing up for their email offers. Jacob and I had been thinking about going there and I was looking for good deals! Well I got one!

We left on our anniversary, Feb 16, and spent the day with our friend, Lem Harsh, and his wife in Cedar City. He and Jacob get along so well. We stayed up late that night playing along with games on the game show network. It was a riot listening to them. The next day we headed to St George and went to lunch with Katie Dueck and surprised her with our new baby news! It was hilarious to see her face, because she certainly wasn’t expecting that!

When we got to Mesquite we checked in to our hotel on the 8^th floor. I was grateful that Jacob asked for a room as high up as possible. It got us away from the extremely smoky lobby/casino. It was awful to walk through. Thankfully the weather was gorgeous and I was able to spend a lot of time outside. The first night we went to walmart and bought a couple different bottles of juices. They were delicious!

We had planned to use our $70 towards a $35 half hour massage for each of, but then found out that it had to be used all on one treatment. I decided to send Jacob to use the spa and mineral pools and get an hour long massage because he has been having back problems, I can’t go in a hot tub since I am pregnant, I would enjoy a walk, and I didn’t think Zina would be very happy being away from me for that long. Yes, we took Zina with us and she was having a rather fussy, needy week! She has several teeth coming in on the top.

I did really enjoy my walk even though I spent half of it holding Zina while pushing the stroller, but the weather made it worth it. We stopped at a fountain out front and watched the ducks swimming. Several came right up on shore and waddled towards us. I looked in my bag for something I could throw to them and all I came up with was a little bag of jelly bellys. I tossed one right in front of the stroller and the ducks came right up by Zina’s toes pecking at it. She was so fascinated! I did find out that ducks can’t eat jelly beans. They pick them up in their beaks and try to swallow and always drop them again. Oh well I just wanted the ducks to come closer to Zina and it worked. Jacob ended up at the spa for 3 hours. He said he liked the hot tubs and sauna more than the massage. I am glad that he enjoyed it!

That evening we went to the restaurant and prayed that Zina would cooperate. She didn’t. By the time we had received our appetizers and ordered our entrees I had already been out in the hall with her several times. It was very stressful! We asked our waiter if he could just put all our stuff in a box so we could eat in our room. We managed to spend $95.72 of our $100 gift certificate and we had food for a couple of days! We got two appetizers, 2 entrees, 4 sides, and 3 desserts. The funny thing is that we went to a fancy restaurant and ordered linguine alfredo with chicken. The easiest thing to make! Almost everything else on the entire menu was seafood of some sort and I am not a fan. Eating in our hotel room was so much more enjoyable! Even though (or maybe especially since) we forgot to get any utensils to eat with.

At night we tried really hard to make sure Zina was quiet so we didn’t wake up anyone in the rooms next to us. We were doing a great job of it and then the last morning we were there at 7am the guy in the room next to us starting talking on his phone at the top of his voice! He wasn’t yelling, he was just one of those people that have no concept of volume control. I lay there thinking, “If Zina wakes up I am going to just let her holler! Maybe then he will realize that these walls are thin!” Of course Zina woke up just after he finished. Thankfully she was happy.

We stayed at Lem’s house again on the way home and played cranium. I think staying at Lem’s house was my favorite part of our vacation! It is nice to be home again and getting settle back into a good schedule.

Shoe Snuggling

Jacob, Zina, and I were walking around DI looking for stuff we didn’t know we needed. Zina picked up a soft teddy bear and hugged and loved it while I carried her around the store. We didn’t find anything worth buying and were about to walk out the door when I realized Zina still had the bear. I was about to take it out of her arms and leave it on a shelf, but then I felt heartless! The teddy bear was only a dollar and Zina loved it!  She was hugging it so sweetly. She needed that bear! Then I came to my senses and remembered how many, many toys she already had at home. So I set her down in front of a rack of shoes and held one up for her to look at. I carefully held onto the Teddy Bear so she would have to let go of it to grab the shoe. The second she did I handed it off to Jacob who escorted it to some dark corner of the DI. Zina picked up the shoe and hugged and snuggled it just as happily as she had done the teddy bear. So much for needing the bear!  I didn’t feel nearly as bad taking the shoe away before we left the store. 

Snow Buddies

One day I just felt like crocheting something so Jacob asked me to make him a hat with ear flaps. I have never followed a pattern before (not that I don't need to, but because I have never taken the time to learn how) so I experimented and came up with a hat for him. My wonderful husband declared that he loved it and was so excited that he wanted Zina to match him. Sometimes she even keeps hers on for a minute or two at a time! Just long enough to get a picture.

Zina Funnies

Zina has been playing peek-a-boo for a while now. Anything she can get her hands on she holds in front of her eyes. She is still a little mixed up in the order though. She hides and then says boo while still hidden. Most of the time she waits almost a minute before popping her head out!