"oh yeah"

Oscar has been really into saying "oh wow" and "oh yeah" lately. The other day I put him down for a nap and he played and bounced in his crib a while as he usually does. Except this time he started chanting "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah," over and over again to the rhythm of his own bouncing on the crib mattress.

it's a LONG summer

It's been at least 110 degrees for weeks now, if not 116 degrees. 15 minute hose time is all we get everyday for outside time. It's sounds short, but it's a very long time in the heat. Here's Oscar discovering how fun it is to wet his own face with the hose.

signs of a toddler

-The bathrooms are on lock down. At any moment I can find my son dipping his hands in the toilet bowl, trying to put his head in the toilet bowl, walking around with the toilet plunger or toilet cleaning brush if Nate or I forget to lock the bathroom door. And I mean lock because Oscar can open all of our doors.
-Anything foamy or spongey needs to be hidden. Oscar likes to find the sponges I clean the bathroom with and eat them as if they were food. His foam balls are hidden too until he can learn to stop eating foam and start eating vegetables.
-There are yellow painted hand prints on my newly painted (not yellow) doors. I walked into my bedroom after a few minutes of letting Oscar roam free in our "baby-proofed" house and found a sealed can of paint had been somehow opened by the little He-Man. There was paint EVERYWHERE. It was in a puddle all over the floor, on the doors, the cabinets, a chair, the walls, on Oscar's hands which he was sucking on, his lips, his legs, his whole body really. I had to leave the yellow hand prints on the door for a 5 minutes,(just long enough for them to dry) wile I scurried to get the paint out of his mouth and off his hands.
-I find most things I'm looking for either in a trash can or in a kitchen drawer. I've gotten used to digging through gross trash to get out my measuring spoons and pot lids that Oscar loves to throw in our kitchen trash. And if we're looking for Nate's cell phone, we're sure to find it in Oscar's favorite kitchen drawer.
-The caps lock button will always be on if I leave the laptop open and within Oscar's reach. He loves to copy me by hitting all of the buttons he possibly can on the keyboard.

traveling talking man

We went to San Diego last weekend to visit my grandparents and Oscar had a blast. He's become such a good little traveler. We brought him to the beach kind of for his first beach experience. His official first beach experience was in Rio de Janeiro, but I don't think it counts because he didn't get to go in the water. Here he is fearlessly RUNNING for the water for the first time. He didn't even stop when he hit deep water, he just kept trying to keep going.



He had so much fun running away from the little ankle waves. He also got to go on his first bike ride. My grandpa fixed up the tubes on our bike tires and we got a baby bike seat and headed straight for Mission Bay. He had a blast looking everywhere. Here he is on his pre-beach test ride..



Oscar's really been increasing his vocabulary at a fast pace since he started walking, and simultaneously turning into a parrot. I don't know if the two developments go hand in hand, but he's picking up words as fast as he's learning to run and he's become our little echo. He truly repeats EVERYTHING we say or do and it's pretty funny and scary at the same time. A list of his words so far..

No no no
baby
ball
cheese
dada
mama
please
hi
bye bye
oh wow
whats that
woof woof
apple
poop
boat
really (sounds nothing like the word really)
papa (for my grandpa)
night night
uh oh

oscar and cousin julianna

Here are some pictures that my mother in law caught of Oscar and his cousin Julianna spending so much time together on our trip.

the boy's life progress

-he started walking at 13 months old, right around or on June 30th
-he walks around with a tissue making a sound that sounds like he's blowing his nose, or walks around with anything held up to his ear whilst having a baby conversation with himself
-he waves hello and goodbye by holding his arm out to you in the air and rubbing his index finger and thumb together. It looks like the unofficial sign language for money.
-He has added the word "hi" to his vocabulary, and he says it so clearly
-walking has set him free from us and made him independent so he's learned to whine when he can't do what he wants. we rarely hear oscar cry and if he whines it's always been because he's either tired, hungry, sick, or in need of a diaper change. The whining is a very new adventure for us and I feel like it's my first real taste of parenting
-since the whining has begun, the discipline has begun and instead of laughing in my face when i say "no," he now sheds lots of tears, seems VERY hurt, and sticks his bottom lip out to pout as far as he can get it
-for the most part he's really eating adult food. he usually gets a modified, less salted, less sugared, less greased up version of what we eat
-he's recently moved on from a love affair with apples to his new found love-grapes.
-he seems to prefer his left hand to to most things, we might have a lefty on our hands
-he's learned how to give kisses on demand and bite out of frustration
-he still is obsessed with climbing up the stairs, but does not know how to get down
-his dancing keeps getting better and better, and his rhythm only improves with every song he dances to. he should have some signature moves down by next year
-he loves to point and say "oh ssat," (translation: "oh what's that?") to his picture of Jesus above his bed and to his new mobile when he wakes up from a nap
-he says "meh men" (tanslation: "amen")after a prayer
-he still takes two naps a day for a total of 2-3 hours and sleeps about 13 hrs at night-7pm-8am
-he weighs somewhere between 27 and 28 pounds
-he doesn't have his molars yet
-he loves his cousins
-his favorite person is his daddy
- he can open the doors to bedrooms and bathrooms inside of our house
-he doesn't like sippy cups, he loves water and prefers to drink it from an adult cup or water bottle


Sorry so boring, this blog has really just become some kind of documentation since I don't write anything else down.

south america trip

-We leave the U.S.A. and fly from Phoenix to LA. We then get on a plane and fly from LA to Lima. Plane stops in Lima, we wait on plane, then we fly to Santiago, Chile, which is way too far south of our ultimate destination Rio de Janeiro. We land in Santiago, Chile. We change planes, we wait, then we fly to Sau Paulo, Brazil. We land in Sau Paulo, Brazil, we wait on the plane then eventually take off to Rio de Janeiro. We land in Rio. Assigned taxi driver waiting for us refuses to take us because we have 6 bags. We wait on the curb at the airport for an hour while she argues on the phone in Portuguese. She finally takes us to our hotel. 27 hours later, we arrive at our hotel in Rio. Poor little Oscar did amazing, barely even cried.

-Rio was super cool, we were alone just us 3. Oscar spent his 1st birthday in Rio being sung to by complete strangers in Portuguese on the tram down from the Cristo. We saw Christo Redentor, Pao de Azucar, and Ipanema beach. We were there for 3 nights.









-We fly from Rio to Porto Alegre, Nate's Mission. Only a 3 hour flight. We arrive and his friends (a family that took great care of him) Gu and Elisandra pick us up and we spend lots of time with them. They don't have kids yet so they were IN HEAVEN with Oscar. I don't think I held him once while we were with them. They held the little 27 pounder in their arms at all times, saying "que lindo!!!"

-We rented a car and drove around visiting people from 3 of Nate's areas. We stayed the night in each area and I LOVED everyone I met. All his loved ones I met, I now consider my friends and loved ones. Everyone that was special to him is now so special to me. Every area's landscape was super different too, Brazil is so cool. We were in Porto Alegre for 6 days. Nate turned 24 in Porto Alegre and we had a cake for him and spent the day (Sunday) with friends at Gu and Elisandra's house. We're so sad because we don't have any pictures of Michaelangelo and Lillian. Nate got to teach Lillian and she was baptized by him too. Her and her husband have since been married in the temple and had a little girl. The pictures of them were on our camera that was stolen so all we have are pictures of their daughter Julia and Oscar playing together so happily.




Gu and Elisandra. They are like family to me now.




That's Lilian holding Oscar. She's the coolest convert. She's a biker chick with a tattoo and she loves hard metal and progressive rock. She seriously used to work at a motorcycle shop. Now she loves teaching Julia about Jesus and she loves church, but don't worry she still loves her heavy metal.




-We leave Porto Alegre, sadly, and fly back to Rio in order to catch a plane to Iguazu falls. Only a 2 hr flight, at this point anything under 27 hrs is cake to us.

- We spent 2 days and 3 nights at Iguazu falls. We saw both the Brazilian side and the Argentine side. It was INCREDIBLE.











-We fly from Iguazu falls to Buenos Aires, maybe like a 2 hr flight. We stay in Buenos Aires for 4 days doing the tourist thing and getting our camera stolen by a professional pick pocketing woman. I still get emotional thinking about it. It's the most frustrating experience to be intentionally confused by someone so that they can distract you and take your bag from you without you even realizing. So basically we don't have any good pictures of Argentina. I mean we have some, but they're from my cell phone and I was just sulking too much about the stolen camera to get motivated to take a picture with my cell phone.

-Day 4 in Argentina we rent a car to drive up to my mission, Rosario. There was a huge rental car fiasco, but long story short, the fiasco put us behind schedule by 6 hours. So we had so much less time to do visits then we had thought. We went to 3 of my areas and 2 of my companions from Argentina came with us. I LOVED seeing everyone and getting to spend more than 20 min with them. I wish I could have visited more people, but I guess there's always skype. It was such a cool experience to see everyone's progress, whether they were friends, companions, or converts, everyone was such an inspiration.







-Drive back to Buenos Aires and spend time with my companion and her family before leaving. Here's Oscar being taught to be "despacito" with their super old and blind dog that he had just man handled and lifted 2 ft. into the air.




-Fly back to U.S., only a 14 hour flight thank goodness.


We had an amazing time. Wish I could tell everything but no one has the patience for that. But it was so worth everything and we're so happy we did it. Oscar was such a good boy and we couldn't have asked for a better little trooper. I truly only remember him actually crying twice on the whole trip from being tired. Other than that he was as happy as can be, dancing as much as he possibly could. I'll blog about Oscar soon, he's changing so much. We're glad to be home.

P.S. sorry about the confusing mixed present and past tenses. i'm too lazy to go back and fix them now.