Nursery Here We Come!

Today was a big day for the Merkley family because today our first child attended nursery. Our ward lets 16 month children attend nursery with a parent to acclimate to the children and nursery leaders before the 18th month mark. Since Camille is involved with teaching primary I have had the responsibility of having Christian with me for the past four months during Sunday School and Primary. He is generally really good, but as he became more comfortable with his mobility it has been hard to get him to sit through Sunday School. So today I took Christian to nursery and he absolutely loved it! He was shy for about 2 minutes and then he couldn't cared if I was in the same room with him or not. He played well with the other kids and loved snack time. He colored a watch and a bird. The picture shows him holding up his bird glued to a stick. He loved the bird and held it up with pride. When I asked him if his birdie flew he reared back and chucked it into the air, unfortunately the bird did not take flight. We stayed for just an hour of nursery and then I had to go to young mens.












(This is not what he wore to church, he is in his jammies.)

Proud Mommy Moment

Yesterday Christian was playing outside with his friend Anya and they were both carrying around a sippy cup of water. Anya was clutching onto hers and drinking it, while Christian kept dropping his, distracted by sticks and other fascinating outside things. After dropping it for the tenth time, Anya picked it up and handed it to him. And here is the proud mommy moment... Without any prompting from me, Christian took it from her and said "Thank you" in his one-year-old version. I was a proud mommy.

16 Month Photoshoot

Christian is 16 months old today and I can't believe how fast he is growing. This past week I've felt like he grows up a little more every day! He's learning new words, new tricks, and keeping Jake and I constantly laughing.

Here is a little glimpse of what Christian does, loves, and gets away with:

Christian loves to be outside. This morning he was fussy, so we headed outside, Christian found a stick, and all was well. He loves to ride in the stroller, feel the trees as we go by, and eat rocks (we're still working on that one). And he loves sticks--digging with them, banging them on the cement, sticking them in holes, or just carrying them around. Sticks are fascinating!

Christian loves to be silly. Lately he loves to shake his head really fast, which wiggles his body, makes him dizzy, and often he ends up on the floor. Then he gets up and does it all over again. He thinks it's so funny! He really has a great sense of humor and I love hearing him laugh, whether at me, Daddy or himself.

Christian is a little stinker. He has entered a hitting stage, which I'm not excited about, and doesn't listen when we tell him "no," "that hurts, don't do that," or other forms of distraction. He has learned to say no himself and does it by shaking his head and saying "nah, nah." And when he does this, he thinks it's the ultimatum--Christian thinks his no can trump Mommy and Daddy's yes any day. Last night Jake was chasing Christian, who was running away, laughing. Halfway through the kitchen he decided he didn't want to be chased anymore, turned around and started shaking his head and telling Daddy "nah, nah." Then he proceeded to walk toward Daddy, confident that his no would protect him from being captured. What a funny little guy!

Christian is fascinated with trucks and loud noises outside. There has been an extensive amount of exterior improvement going on at our complex and Christian spends a good part of the day at the window, mesmerized by the trucks, tractors, tree choppers, and leaf blowers.

Christian is such a sweet little boy. He loves to give hugs and has been giving them so often this past week. He's also been giving such sweet kisses, which I can never have too many of.

Christian loves books. This, I am so grateful for. I love to sit on the chair, the floor, or the couch and have Christian bring me books to read him. This activity can last for quite awhile and we both love it. He also loves to pull books out and read to himself, which is one of my favorite scenes to stumble upon--Christian in a mound of books, quietly flipping through each one.

Christian loves airplanes. He can always hear them, whether we're indoors or out, and he loves to find them in the sky. He also makes their sound, which sounds like, "ssshhhhh."

Christian loves balls, balls, and more balls. He still loves his basketball hoop and likes to say "swish" and go shoot his ball, but his latest thing is a bat. It's his newest word and he gets so excited when he sees one in a book he has. It was his numbers book, but now it's his "bat" book. He loves to watch the video of himself doing the bat and ball from Easter weekend. I think it's time we get him his own bat and ball.

Although at times Christian is getting to be a little stinker, we cannot help but adore him. Our lives would be so empty without him. Oh how we love our Christian!

Guest Marta Moment

I have a friend, John, who lives across the street and we take the MARTA in the morning to work/school. On his blog he post funny stories that have happened to him on the MARTA and he is a very good writer. I have been waiting for something funny to happen while I am on the MARTA and my wish was granted last Friday on my way home from work. It all started out when I entered the train heading northbound at the Arts Center station. The train car was pretty packed and there was a "large" lady sitting down talking/yelling on the phone to someone on the other end. She was talking SO loud that everybody felt like she was yelling in their ear. We went in a tunnel and the next thing you hear is HELLO???? HELLO? I thought well I don't think there is anybody on the line anymore because no one gets cell phone reception when the train heads through tunnels in ATL. Well a guy standing next to me couldn't take the constant shouting of "HELLO" so he yelled back at her "Yes we all can hear you loud and clear." Everybody was chuckling. She finally hung up and then started talking to her friend sitting next to her. A couple of stops later we arrived at the stop for the Mall, which is where usually 1/3 to 1/2 of the people get out and upon arriving our train car doors didn't open. All the other people in cars adjacent to ours where exiting, however our doors would not budge. Now this in no way affected my travel because I still had two stops left, but it did effect many people on the train including the loud talking lady. She was irate! She was giving orders to people on what they should do like "go push the intercom button" or "somebody go through the doors connecting the cars together." Her commands however were given too late and the train continued on to the next station with everybody in our car either mad or laughing. The next station came and the doors opened promptly. What a good way to end the work week!

Well there you have it, my first Marta post. I hope that I will have more experiences to share with you, but we will have to see. If you want to check out other Marta moments go to blogaslovenia.blogspot.com.

Unique or Not?

Obviously this website is wrong...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I actually know someone with my exact name, and she just happens to be my sister-in-law. Happy Thursday to the other "me!"

FYI: Blog Book

For anyone who is interested, I just received my first blog book yesterday and it turned out great! The quality is good and now I have our family in 2007 in a hardback book. It's great!

I printed it at blurb.com (thanks Rosanna) and it's easy to use and reasonably priced. In fact, it's much cheaper than printing a photo book at any other photo website. I printed an 80-page hardback book for $34.95, plus shipping. Not too bad.

I didn't have enough blog entries from 2007 to fill that many pages, so I decided to add in more pictures, our family Christmas letter, and other journaling I had been saving on the computer. I am quite pleased with how the whole book turned out. I could have added color and such to the backgrounds and fancy borders to pictures, but I didn't want to spend any more time on it. But you can do that on yours if you want. One cool feature it has is a personalized cover for your book that you design, including the flaps. Kind of fun!

As far as user-friendly, the program was very easy to use, but I did spend quite a bit of time getting each page formatted the way I wanted it. It inserts your blog entries with the text in the main part of the page and the pictures as little thumbnails on the side. My book was also going to be our family photo album, so I wanted my pictures big and I wanted to save pages by combining small entries together on a page. But it was still easy to change, once I figured out the tricks. You can also insert each entry individually and put it in your own format, but I thought that was more tedious.

So now that I've probably given you more than you wanted to know, here are some photos of mine for you to see how it turned out. Good luck with yours! Call me if you want more tips. :)

Bell's Palsy Anniversary

Last week marked the three month anniversary of Jake's Bell's Palsy, and we are happy to announce that it has (mostly) recovered, just like the books said. I think his smile has a little more to go, but for the most part his face is back to normal.

This picture is evidence of his improvement--

blowing bubbles used to be an impossible task for him.

Frog Legs...blah!

I took this picture of Christian a couple weeks ago and intended on having a video to post with it, but I never got the video, so here's the picture. Apparently Christian likes to eat frog legs, a delicacy I have never tasted. But his favorite thing is when the frog on his Baby Einstein video sticks out its tongue and says, "blah!" So if you ask Christian what a frog says, that's exactly what he does.

The Art of Chewing

For anyone who was wondering why I have neglected this blog for over a week now, we weren't on vacation and I haven't exactly been sick. Last week I had to get some minor surgery in my mouth to fix one of my molars that I broke back in October. After twenty shots of Novocaine and enduring the pain anyway, I survived and left the dentist office with a mouth full of puddy. So for the past week I have not been able to eat normal, chewing only on one side of my mouth and still being very careful. Did you know that food does not taste as good when you can't use your full chewing capacity? It doesn't. I have really taken for granted the art of chewing, but never will after this. So for those of you who chew normal every meal of every day, enjoy your food!

Needless to say, instead of being productive last week, I napped when Christian did and spent very little time on the computer. But I'm doing much better and I think my mouth is healing just fine, so don't worry about me. :)

New and Improved B-Ball

Christian invented a new game this morning and entertained himself for quite awhile! First he put in the paper, which got stuck. Then he shot the basketball and they both came out! How fun!

Tricks and Trouble

Yesterday Christian learned a new trick...he can climb onto our kitchen chairs all by himself! And once he discovered this, he spent the rest of the afternoon practicing. With this new trick, Christian has now doubled his height. Watch out, here comes trouble! (Hopefully it will take him a LONG time to figure out he can push the chairs around too...it probably won't.)

The Zoo...Achoo!

Christian and I went to the zoo on Tuesday with a few other moms in our ward and had a great time, except for all the sneezing I endured because of it. As a result we have spent the rest of the week indoors, trying not to inhale the smoke of pollen that is everywhere outside. (and I'm not exaggerating) The spring here is beautiful, but this year I'm thinking twice about how much I really like it. My allergies were bad in Utah, but they are much worse here! Imagine a layer of yellow-green dust all over everything outside...that's what it looks like here. And it's not dust, it's pollen! The sidewalks are green, the cars are green, our shoes are green, the roads are green; it's an allergy nightmare. You know it's bad when they report that an extremely high pollen count is above 200, and our pollen count is 2,089! And then to add to whole situation, the leaf blowers came by yesterday morning and blew it all around! To say the least, poor Christian has only been playing inside this week. We're definitely praying for rain!
But the zoo was still really fun! And the neatest thing was seeing the lion standing and roaring and the tigers play fighting on their two hind legs. It's cool to actually see the animals come alive! Oh yeah, and we got to see the new exhibit...the naked mole rats! Pretty gross.

Little Moments

Lately I have been counting my blessings that I am able to stay home with Christian and then this past weekend as I listened to Elder Ballard's inspiring talk in general conference about mothers I felt especially grateful for all the little moments I witness each day. This past week the little moments have put me in awe:

Watching Christian's face as he worked to put a piece into his shape sorter he was so focused, but what I loved most was his pursed lips and little tongue sticking out. (I think he got that from me. I remember as a first grader staying in from recess to get my cutting done--because I was an overachiever, not because I was in trouble--and my teacher made a comment to me about how I stuck out my tongue when I was concentrating real hard. That's embarrassing to a first grader!)

Yesterday he built the tallest tower he has built with his blocks and he was SO excited! I guess I actually built most of the tower, but he put the top THREE blocks on all by himself without knocking it over. That is an accomplishment. He was so excited he even did a little dance!
We really enjoyed general conference this past weekend and are so grateful to have a living prophet on the earth today. I know President Thomas S. Monson was called by God and I loved hearing his words of wisdom and encouragement during conference. I think even Christian was listening during conference because yesterday he came over and gave me lots of hugs, out of the blue. That is one of those little moments.

Nashville

This past week we took a quick trip to Nashville, Tennessee so that Jake could attend a steel conference for his work and more importantly so Christian could see his Grandma and Papa. (And some of you might also suspect it was to see Meliss...unfortunately, our paths didn't cross.) Wednesday morning Christian and I packed up the car, picked Jake up from work just after noon, and made the four hour drive with no stops. Christian did great! (although he was definitely ready to get out by the end!) Tennessee is a gorgeous place and it was a beautiful drive! Although it was short, we had a nice time and some good laughs. Here are some highlights:

When we first arrived at our hotel we decided to throw our swimming suits on and head to the pool, "the only guitar shaped pool in Nashville," so the advertisement said. We were all dressed and geared up for a nice swim, took a few pictures on our way to the pool, and then to our disappointment, it was filled with bugs--gross!! A huge letdown! Needless to say, we didn't do any swimming on this trip and Christian was quite disappointed (almost as much as me).

Besides the pool, we were also disappointed in their free continental breakfast they advertised. The first morning Jake went down to bring back food and all he came back with was a yogurt for Christian. We were all hungry. And then the bathrooms were so small there was NO WAY we could put a pack and play in there so after Christian went to bed we watched the American Idol results on mute. But we still figured out who was voted off. : ) Needless to say, we had some great laughs and got what we paid for, right? (I don't think we'll ever stay in a Ramada again...)

Can't you see the excitement in Christian's face?

Cool pool, huh? It would have been very fun to swim in! We were quite disappointed.

So instead of swimming we decided to head downtown and check out Nashville.

In Christian's opinion, the greatest thing about the city was definitely the buses! He could usually spot a bus in at least one direction at any given moment, which kept him quite entertained.

We even got to ride on one.

Thursday morning Grandma, Christian and I got to go on a tour called "Mansions of the South." We toured two different mansions and learned some neat history about that part of the country. Christian was quite the trooper through all four hours of it and then zonked out on the bus ride back.

This was the first mansion called Cheekwood, which has been turned into a gallery. A few of its displays included art from "The Eight" (early rebel painters), some raw limestone sculptures done by a former slave (Williams?...I can't remember), and three of the very famous Fabergé eggs, which were quite incredible! Christian was a little disappointed at the lack of balls, buses, and planes in all the artwork, but at least we managed to find one dog in a painting. Unfortunately it was raining and we weren't able to walk through the gardens of the mansion. They sure looked pretty from what we saw though!

This is the second mansion we toured called Belle Meade. It was the home to three generations of a family who raised all kinds of live stock, especially racing horses. Inside the home were actual furnishings, clothes and different belongings to the family. My favorite room was the children's room, complete with a child-size canopy bed, a crib, and a buggy, all from the late 1800's. I would love a crib like that. Our tour guide was great: she told us lots of interesting facts and had lots of patience for Christian. For that, I was very grateful!
And after a long morning of being "culturalized," Christian was exhausted! He fell asleep on the bus ride back, but the only way I could get him to go back to sleep (because of course he woke up when we got to the hotel) was to push him around in the stroller for a long time.

Eventually he ended up on Grandma and Papa's comfy hotel bed and slept for two hours, until he was woken up. I'm pretty sure he would've slept all night! (Who wouldn't on such a comfy bed?) Note: this was NOT our hotel...we only wish we were sleeping on a bed like that.

Friday morning after Jake and Papa finished their class, we all headed to the Grand Ole Opry before departing our separate ways. We took a tour of the Opry house and it was really neat! I only wish we could have seen a live show. For those of you who are like me and don't know what the Grand Ole Opry is, I'll give you a quick summary. The Grand Ole Opry is the longest running live radio program in history. If you go to a live show, you really are watching a radio program, including commercial breaks and the whole bit. They bring in all kinds of famous country singers from the old to the new. I think it would be so fun to see! Maybe next time we're in Nashville...

We got to tour the dressing rooms that the performers use and this is the room that Ron Huff used when he was alive. (I don't know who that is, but supposedly that's really cool.)

Standing on the stage

I love this picture because of Christian's face. I think this perfectly describes what was most likely going through his mind through all of this..."Oh no!, Not another tour!" He really was so well behaved through all this and rarely had this look on his face.
Someday Jake would like to play on the Grand Ole Opry stage.

A view from the audience

On stage, ready to perform our family trio...

Christian is ready to run...
(Note: look at Jake's Bell's palsy...it's almost gone! Yay!)

Our little cowboy! (The Opry Shop was full of western gear!)

Grandma and Christian...it's raining (still)!

Christian with Papa and Grandma

We dropped Jake's parents off at the airport then decided to go to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch. We went there on our honeymoon in San Francisco and thought Christian would love all the animals that come alive. He really loved the aquarium of fish!

And he like the life-size animals as well, until they came alive. Then they were a little too loud and a little too scary! It didn't help that we were seated right next to the elephants and Christian was ready for a nap.

But we made it through lunch, took a picture by the hippo, and then packed back into the car to make the drive home.

The drive home, however, didn't go as fast and smooth as the drive there. Unfortunately it poured that southern rain the entire drive home, pounding on the car and working the windshield wipers to death (fortunately, not quite to death). I really think Jake felt sorry for them. He kept saying that "these poor guys need a rest!" After so many hours of that rain, Jake was going crazy and said, "I feel like I've been driving through a three-hour car wash!" And then in looking over at a trucker next to us driving through all that rain said, "I'd rather be a garbage man than a trucker!" We'll remember that next time he changes professions. But in the end we were very blessed with safety as we traveled home and Christian slept through much of the drive.

Although it was a short visit, we had a great trip and enjoyed seeing family. Thanks to Jake's parents for spending time with us!