Friday, June 27, 2008

...Continued


Sleeping...again, originally uploaded by Ryan and Cecilia.

Bring on the summer! “Severe weather warnings” usually anticipate tornados and flooding. A similar warning would be courteous before temperatures in the nineties combined with eighty percent humidity. Our little window air conditioner sweats as much as we do. It’s not even July yet!

The humidity has wreaked havoc on Cecilia’s tresses since day one in this state, but she found the solution- Chi. The name sounds like an ancient Chinese secret something, but it’s a really expensive flatiron. Her old one didn’t straighten her hair in the Utah desert let alone in Kansas, and it shorted out on her first day here. At first we balked at the price of the Chi, but Celia declared she wouldn’t do her hair until she got one. Ryan decided it was worth it. Now Celia’s hair is sleeker than ever, even with eighty percent humidity.

Celia’s hair isn’t the only thing getting whipped into shape these days. She took the advice of her favorite aerobics instructor sister-in-law and added the “All Body Attack” workout DVD to her post-partum fitness plan. Celia is now suffering symptoms similar to train wreck victims. Someday she hopes to be able to do more than half the video and add the step bench and weights you are supposed to use.

Ryan however is suffering symptoms similar to new mothers. He is just finishing his first class in the MPA program. Five hour classes twice a week for four weeks + working more than thirty hours a week + actually doing his homework = stress, sleep deprivation and a sore butt. He has maintained a Polly Anna type disposition throughout the ordeal. “It’s the most enjoyment I’ve ever had doing a twenty hour assignment,” Celia heard him say.

Last Friday Ryan took a break from his rigorous schedule and went to Quinn Benion’s house (Quinn is the KU grad that let Ryan stay with him when he came to tour the campus last year) to enjoy dinner with Celia, Bella and Quinn’s family. After dinner Quinn took us on a tour of Kansas City. City managers make wonderful tour guides. He knew all the numbers for renovation budgets, property values and construction projects.

On Saturday we went to an authentic Mexican Fiesta, sponsored by the local Catholic School. Enchildadas, tostadas, burritos and taco salad were available and your choice of beverage, lemonaid or beer. Bella’s nap wasn’t even interrupted by the mariachi band or their ten foot speakers.

Our flatulent Princess has been getting much better at sleeping, which her mother appreciates. She can sleep for more than eight hours at night now. She can’t speak English yet but she does grunt and squeak fluently. She has also discovered two things she really enjoys sucking on, her fist and her tongue. Hopefully she’ll be able to stop sucking her fist before toddler-hood, but I hear tongue sucking can continue into adulthood.

More of the Ryan-Celia-Bella-Kansas Saga coming soon!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Settling in

Kansas has much to offer, despite the common notion that corn is the only thing in this state. Campus is packed with woodland creatures such as chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, fireflies and beetles the size of a silver dollar.

About the latter, Ryan came home the other night with one on his back. From where Cecilia was standing it looked like something much worse, a cockroach. She screamed a warning to Ryan and then retreated to the corner to cry. Ryan danced around hitting himself without successfully removing the beast. He asked for his wife’s help as it crawled up his neck, but she won’t go near a cockroach with a ten-foot pole, plus she was dry-heaving. After Ryan swiped it off and stepped on it, we noticed that it wasn’t a cockroach, but an enormous beetle. If Celia would have known it was just a beetle she would have helped her husband.

Ryan has been getting practice stomping on other bugs too, but the cricket has proved more illusive. A certain cricket has taken up camp outside our bedroom window. Ryan went out at one o’clock in the morning and stamped every inch of grass within a ten foot radius of our window, twice. It wasn’t until we turned the lights out and got into bed that the cricket started chirping again. Ryan got dressed and went out again, this time he didn’t just stomp. He jumped up and down on every inch of grass. The cricket didn’t chirp after that.

Since Ryan started his internship on Monday, Cecilia has found more time to develop her homemaking skills. She has made dinner four days in a row. No, we aren’t talking about frozen meals folks. Celia was sweating in the kitchen over a gas stove, and made dinner. She also put up the decorations and picture frames we brought from Ogden. Our apartment is officially twice as decorative as our other apartment was in the year and a half that we lived there. Now she just needs to put pictures in the frames.

Now that the house is unpacked, decorated and clean, Celia has started reading the books she was supposed to read for her literature classes. The first one she read was The Great Gatsby. I know what you are thinking. Can you really graduate Magna Cum Laude, in English, without ever reading The Great Gatsby? Only if your professors don’t know. She has also read the first two books in The Chronicles of Narnia series, even though they weren’t on her syllabus. Someone should’ve reminded her that they were written for children before she read them.

Bella’s neck is getting much stronger. She looks less and less like a bobble head figurine every day. She loves smiling at Mommy and Daddy after she does something naughty, like pooping on her clothes, or spitting up down their fronts. It’s a defense mechanism, and it works. She has almost slept seven hours straight, two times in the past week. We hope that becomes a habit. I put a ton of pictures of her up on the blog, in case anyone wants to see how big she is getting.

We love you all and miss you! We would like to hear from you!


Love,

Ryan, Celia and Bella

Hello from KU


Isabella Cecilia Harvey, originally uploaded by ryanandcecilia.

We have survived our first week in Kansas. We didn’t realize what a feat this was until Thursday night. We watched game 1 of the NBA finals and it almost felt like we were back in Utah. The Tornado warnings interrupted the game often enough to remind us that we are now in the Midwest. Who knows how many tornado warnings we missed the four days before we had the TV plugged in?

Since we’ve been here for a week now, and our list of belongings is short, we now have the disaster area in our apartment organized. To celebrate having a designated room for sleeping, we broke out our unused baby monitors. Ryan is also celebrating by sleeping through the night since Bella can be fed and changed in the front room.

Our ward meets in the world’s smallest institute building. It’s not a young-single-adult ward. It’s not a young-marrieds ward either. It’s the University of Kansas Young-Adult ward. We felt like we were hunting the meat market all over again, but this time we were looking for a couple we might be compatible with. A woman with a healthy appetite for the best books and literature, and a talented-sports-spectator man shouldn’t be too hard to find, should it? There are a few candidates that might prove suitable.

Ryan is doing a budgeting class right now. He almost has as much fun doing his homework as he did looking at NBA.com stats during the playoffs this year, no joke. Fortunately, interviews are in full swing for the part time internships the students will be working at for the next year. The city of Ottawa has asked for a second interview. We hope that means he has a job, because we get to go to Sheridan’s Frozen Custards to celebrate when he gets one, plus we’ll have money for food during the next year.

Isabella is learning more every day. She now knows when Mommy and Daddy forget to put her on a changing pad or use a burp cloth. The couch, the table cloth and our clothes bear the stains of her gentle reminders. She also knows the difference between her car seat and her parent’s arms, even with her eyes closed.

Cecilia is beginning to show the effects of no internet access. No internet, in conjunction with late nights with Bella, is making the twitch worse. She has enjoyed putting the house together and running errands with her husband and taking advantage of his time before he gets a job. Wal-mart is way more fun with Ryan. There probably won’t be much of that once his school and internship get into full swing.

Well those are a few highlights from our week in Kansas. We would love to hear from you. Tell us what’s going on back in Utah! We love you all!

Ryan, Cecilia and Isabella