I guess this answers the question of what happens when two Computer Science majors get married.

I wondered if the bugs were on red alert and there was some sort of alarm going off at a decibel only they can hear warning one another to evacuate. I was taking their weed habitat like the miners tried to take Hometree in the movie Avatar. What an awful person I was to weed my garden!

Last weekend we had our friends Becca, Ryan and their daughter Gracyn over for dinner. Gracyn and Belén are both in the “ones” class at daycare so they know each other and our “friends,” but at this age, they don’t really play with each other so much as around one another. After we were finished eating dinner Belén and Gracyn started “playing” which consisted of some sort of activity where one would play with a toy that would then in turn make the other one want to play with that toy and then the adults stepping in encouraging them to share with each other. After getting tired of the one year-old drama, we directed them towards an activity they could both partake in and enjoy.

When I look at our answers which I will get to in a second, I realize they have changed a lot over the years. When we used to have our meals delivered when we were first married, it would have likely been breakfast items like oatmeal or bread of beverages such as milk. Certainly when I was breastfeeding it would have been milk storage bags and then when Belén first started eating solids, things like avocados and bananas would have done the trick.

After two wonderful weeks in Nuevo/Puerto Vallarta, we are back home. We have a lot of stories and pictures to share, which we will…but right now, as you can imagine, we are unpacking, laundering, meal planning, organizing, grocery shopping, planting a garden and getting ready for work tomorrow. I can hardly wait to delve into my 1300 emails.

John, Andy’s old manager and now a manager in my lab at work, has taken me on as a project. Nope, nothing related to work. He is a master gardener and he does not understand how I can be such a bad gardener. He has so much intrinsic knowledge and spends so much of his spare time at this hobby, I can see what it makes no sense to him why I don’t understand why planting lettuce in July doesn’t work since that worked better for my schedule. He also doesn’t seem to think that the pretty flowers that spring from my lettuce are an acceptable outcome and he calls this harsh words such as bolting.

There are two things I know without a doubt Andy is not going to willingly do….yard work and playing games. He despises both of them with a passion and tries to avoid them like the plague. In fact, I am surprised we don’t live in a condo by now because we really are not good at nor enjoy taking care of our lawn.

It has been a heck of a year. 2009 started with wedding festivities for my sister, Anna and her now husband, Derik. On April 28, 2009, Belén Rose entered our lives and changed them forever! I cannot believe so much wonderful change can happen in one year.

I shocked Andy by making dinner tonight. Since we have been watching Mad Men, he keeps trying to say things like “When you go to the store, you can get X.” or “Why don’t you go upstairs and get me a drink.” and “What are we having for dinner?” mostly just to see my reaction. I was so inspired by the organized kitchen that I whipped up a dinner out of items in the freezer and some bell peppers that were close to going bad. It was by no means because of his 1960s era suggestions.

I made her some mashed potatoes while she fed herself organic puffs and talked to me, “blah blah blah, da gah, blah.” It dawned on me that she has sort of said her first word, even though it is not clear to me she is trying to say anything in particular. Are you supposed to count the first word as the first time they try and say something they are clearly associating with something/someone, or just the first speech patterns they make? If it is the latter, that line is going to be a question mark in the baby book.