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

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