2007 Family Christmas Letter

Greetings from the Land of Corn and Soybeans --
With cheerful smiles and a twinkle in the eye, we hereby bring you our 2007 Annual Christmas Letter and Stanfill Family News Update.
My, my, how things have changed for the Stanfill family this past twelve months. The obvious and by far most momentous event of our year was, of course, the propagation of our own kind. Or in other words, we have been blessed with our firstborn baby boy, Perry Jed Stanfill. He arrived, most obligingly, at exactly midnight between February 1st and 2nd, the two disputed dates upon which he was "due." As planned, he was born in the living room of our cozy cottage Orem home where his Daddy Michael caught the baby and was the first to discover that he was a boy! Everything was perfect and Jed, as we call him, has remained perfect from that day forward. I call him my "Happy-Maker" because wherever he goes he is followed by a sea of adoring gazes and enchanted smiles.
Jed started out looking just like his dad, and I mean a freaky clone-like similarity with Michael's baby photos. As he gets older and his cheeks get fatter and fatter, however, people have started to comment that he looks just like his mommy. Gosh, thanks! Fat cheeks must be a Dowdle trait. Seriously, though, to be compared to anything so cute is incredibly flattering. In build, however, he still looks just like his father with a lean-mean-boy-machine body that's already wearing 18-month overalls at 10 months old. You could fit in three of him across, but they are just the right length. He pulled himself into a standing position for the very first time this last week while feeling ignored in the bathtub. Boy, did that wobbly and naked, but proudly standing little body get his parents' attention! He army-crawls with surprising quickness and agility. Also, the "go-go-gadget-arm" gets longer every day and has done everything from yanking the tablecloth and all the dishes on the floor to grabbing off dad's glasses while tossed in mid-flight and upside down. What a boy! Can't wait to see what he does NEXT year! He is the best toy I ever got for my birthday, and a continual source of hilarity and delight.
Michael decided that now he was a daddy it was high time to be done with his college years and move on to his "I actually make money now" years. After an internship with a fantastic photographer in Park City for the winter semester, he graduated in April, only 9 years after his entrance to BYU in 1998, with a B.F.A. in Photography and a minor in Business. Baby Jed wore a matching graduation cap and they made, hands down, the cutest pair in town.
Settling down as photographer, at-home-wife and gurgling baby in Happy Valley, Utah, however, proved not to be our lot in life. After lightning struck in the form of an unexpected "Business Analyst" job offer in Evansville, Indiana, we dug up our roots, threw our belongings into miscellaneous boxes, and ten days later we were off for a new life in Indiana. After a brief stint as Business Analyst, Michael was offered a different position more suited to his creative talents in the eBusiness department, where he is a front-end web developer (technically "Applications Analyst".) I've learned that this means he decides how the web site is supposed to look and work, and then he turns it over to a programmer in India who does all the hard programming. He likes this job, partly because he works with nerds and partly because they only require forty hours of work for forty hours of pay, unlike his last position.
Meanwhile, baby and I have set up house in a little two-bedroom townhome in an area of Newburgh, Indiana named, most aptly, "Paradise." Lovely fields and roads over-arched with thick, luxurious trees surrounded our quiet little neighborhood. Apparently, we live in the "Ohio River Valley," as we are a stone's throw away from the Ohio River. I laughed out loud the first time I heard this, since I had always assumed that a "valley" required the existence of mountains somewhere within a ten gazillion mile radius. Apparently not, and I offended the locals. We also live close to both the Kentucky border AND the state of Illinois, which means we officially live in the absolute middle of nowhere (more miffed locals at that, I thought very funny, observation.) I am throwing myself into the local culture and plan to cultivate a southern accent as soon as possible. After all, we live almost precisely on the Mason-Dixon line and our town was the very first to fall to the Confederacy back in the day (without a shot or a whimper, embarrassingly enough, but we were called "Sprinklesville" back then so there wasn't much honor to defend.)
As for Vanessa, I keep busy chasing my little diapered friend around. I also do laundry and feed my boys three solid meals and numberless baby nursings a day. I also serve in the Nursery on Sunday doing more chasing and feeding. I never knew that there would be so much chasing and feeding of men involved in my life, but I find it remarkably enjoyable and fulfilling. After all, they're so cute. What woman could resist the overwhelming primal urge to feed them? My understanding of womanhood is so much more full now that I have hungry mouths to fill!
Well, that's the news. Wishing you and your family the most delightful of years and the happiest of Christmas seasons. We pray that the light of Christ and the warmth of his love may fill your home and stay there forever. With hugs of love and friendship from our home to yours -

Vanessa and Michael and Perry Jed Stanfill
Christmas 2007

Early Morning Men

Baby and I awoke early and took his bath. I brought him down to Dad while I got dressed, and when I came down the stairs this is what I found:
Now I understand why cherubs are always little rosy-cheeked boys.

Standing Up

I DID IT!

Jed, as proud as can be, because he just pulled himself up in the bathtub, all the way up standing by himself for the first time.


Baby's got new "skillz."

Playin' it cool for Mom. After the first standing up, he fell down on his bum and proceeded to repeat the process about 25 times until he nearly fell asleep half draped over the bath. What excitement!

This particular attempt was, well, "less successful." Notice the wet forehead and reddened eye, yet the steely look of determination.

New Harmony

On a whim, Michael, Baby and I dropped our chores amid a long day of cleaning and organizing (oh, the moving will never end!) and took off for Christmas in New Harmony, Indiana. New Harmony is a little historical town about 45 minutes away that once served as the home for a communal society and later a haven for 19th century artists and intellectuals. We only had 2 hours there, but that was enough time for me to fall wholly and passionately in LOVE. Adorable, friendly, sophisticated, and gorgeous, it is like little-town-heaven-on-earth! I can't wait to go back and actually see the sites and take a tour. As it is, we wandered through the bazaars and artisan shows, listened to real bluegrass complete with hairy old men playing the mouth harp and washtub, and discovered a tiny little museum of contemporary art that housed a real Andy Warhol installment called "Silver Clouds." The exhibit was an empty wood-floored room filled with fans and floating silver cellophane clouds. I'm not usually a real installment art fan, but this was utterly captivating. Wandering around through the silver clouds, laughing and tossing and twirling... like a mini-wonderland!
Unfortunately, Jed doesn't think much of modern art. He bawled through the whole thing, those big silver pillows were SCARY! Here's a photo, you can see him in the baby carrier with a thrilled look upon his face.

We saw just enough of the town to know we can't wait to go back.

Uh oh

Jed has started pulling himself up on the furniture. Uh Oh! Here comes trouble!

Thanksgiving Travels

Baby and I are home from our vacation! We were gone for twelve days, and number which I am very precise about since certainly people whom I love and adore have a tendency toward exaggeration and claim, variously, that it was "only a week" (Mom) or "two whole weeks" (Michael.) No, it was the perfect length of exactly twelve days.

I chose to haul my teething, cold-recovering child across four time zones and back during those 12 days. The flight there was one long blurry memory of dirty diapers in enclosed areas and snot everywhere, coating all sorts of surfaces which snot has never been before. We made it to Utah, by some miracle, and spent several days basking in the glow of parental and grand-parental spoiling. Man, no one knows how to spoil like a mom. Or a grandma. MmmMmm! Long luxurious baths, sleeping in, favorite foods, and cute new clothes! I'm a spoiled brat, and so is Jed!

I have mentally prepared myself for a barrage of emails about to flood my box, shouting "WHAT!!!!??? YOU WERE IN UTAH AND YOU DIDN'T COME VISIT ME???" and all I can say is I was so busy being spoiled that very little time was left for visiting. And I'm not one to hazard the wrath of Mom for being gone with baby while she's home with spoiling activities prepared. Sorry, really, I wish we could have visited everyone. Maybe next trip, promise!

After a few days of recovery from the snot-trip, we loaded up the van for another 11 hours of cross-country travel to visit Mom's family in Sacramento for Thanksgiving. The rest of the week was one giant fete with too much food and baby and I both rolled home, having doubled our body weight with delicious treats. The highlight of the trip was probably visiting with Jed's 95-year-old Great-great-grandma Teresa. We finally got our five generation photo!



Somehow Jed escaped the family tradition and turned out male.

Baby also got his second tooth over a game of pinochle, and cousin Don came to spend the week with us anyway, thereby raising the testosterone quotient for the gathering. Dad and Jed were exceedingly grateful. We made cool birdhouses and watched the BYU/UT football game. Mom's family decided to go with that "other" team and showed up in red. Decked out in our blue regalia, we showed Don and his adopted UT fan friends up, big time. HA, TAKE THAT, SUCKERS!

Back across two time zones, one more day at home in UT, then back across two more time zones, eventually crossing back into Indiana and home again, home again, jiggidy jig. Jed and I are two very fat little pigs.

Happy holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving!

So yes, things have changed just a little bit since we got here. We are getting more and more comfy in our little apartment every day. I did get a new job. Vanessa got everything right. They had a web developer position open up that required some adobe suite skills, and knew that I had a little and so offered me that position. They said it had nothing to do with my project management skills, which I guess I believe, but between you and me, I was complete rubbish at it. There is a very fundamental difference between doing, making, and creating, and getting someone else to do, make, or create something. That something was usually a really convoluted report. This new job is much better for me, and I've already been able to learn a whole bunch and have actually felt useful. That's really nice.

So on the whole, Indiana has been pretty nice. It's still in the 60's here most of the time which is lovely, and the leaves are changing now. My office building is right on the shore of the Ohio river, and it can be a spectacular view, to the point of distraction. I still get distracted by the leviathan river barges as they push their load upstream and downstream. If I catch one in the corner of my eye, I immediately turn into a 5 year old boy, totally incapable of focusing on the matter at hand, generally a meeting or discussion that I'm suppose to be leading. The birds are fun here too. They are flying south for the winter, and some of the flocks are so large, you cannot see the ending or the beginning of them. They literally stretch for miles. I've been trying to capture how cool that is with my camera, but have failed to do so so far.

Anyway, enough blabbing. Here are some pictures that I just processed for your viewing pleasure. The stacks and pipes are actually the steam stacks of the power plants that my company owns and operates. It's my silly attempt to be a little bit like Michael Kenna.

Gobble Gobble

Baby Jed and Mom are leaving town to go visit Jed's great- great- grandma for Thanksgiving.
Poor Daddy has to stay home alone. If you have a moment, take pity and send him a email (www.michaelstanfill.com) or comment to brighten his lonely 12 days!
We'll be back the 27th.

Michael's Bored

Well, we've been here in Indiana for a month and a half now. We've moved twice already. We bought a new car, a new washer, and have a brand new baby. Well, it seems like he's a new one every day because he shore the heck ain't the same baby I had last month! We've had a haircut or two and, well, Michael decided he was bored. Our life is in such a rut. After all, we've had this couch for four days now. He needed something to spice things up.

So he got a new job.

Yes, that would be a DIFFERENT new job than the new job he started last month.

We get bored easily around here.

He's been offered a position as an "Applications Analyst" which he was informed can mean whatever you want on a resume, but in this particular instance he will be a web manager. Rumor got around Vectren (the utility company where he's been working all along) that Michael has mad Photoshop skills, and so when one of the web managers up and quit they offered M the position. He will be a "front end developer," which means he won't be doing the heavy programming but instead will be managing their web user interface, graphic design, data flow, color, online promotion, e-business, etc. So, essentially, it is PERFECT for my computer and technology loving artistic genius. Same pay, same benes, same promise of an MBA, just that now it's a job that I think he's gonna love!

I actually promised Michael he could put this post up but I was in the mood for posting and I don't have anything else to talk about (more snot, more dishes, more diapers, ho hum) so, um, here is a special space for him to clarify and correct everything I said wrong:

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OK that's enough. :c)

He starts the new job this week though they will be phasing him out of his old job for the next month. Kudos to my studmuffin spouse who is SO DESIRABLE that the departments of Vectren are fighting over him. What a man!

Settling In

Well, we're settling into our little townhouse at last. It is small, and ghetto, but everything is covered with a nice layer of fresh paint so you can really hardly tell except for the vague musty smell and the upstairs toilet that doesn't flush anything more dense than three squares of paper... Along with the apartment, however, has come a whole host of exciting changes. I shall list them for you, for ease of access and consumption.


EXCITING CHANGE #1
We bought a washer! Yes, as part of my sacrifice in giving up my long-cherished dreams for a dishwasher, we settled for an apartment with washer/dryer hookups (apparently in Indiana it is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to find the two washing utilities in the same space. I was told by more than one older, balding apartment manager, "Well, don't you think any woman would prefer the cabinet space to a dishwasher? I know I would." Obviously these men have been married for more than 25 years and haven't touched a sink since college. I almost snorted my glass of water the first time I heard this line.)

But I digress. So, I have my very own SPACE SHIP WASHING MACHINE to match my new space ship car. I am so modern! So spoiled! So hip! We decided since I am probably going to use this washing machine almost every day for the next 25 years it was worth investing a little extra moolah for something that actually cleans clothes, in contrast to washers I have used in the past. So, we bought this one:
We have been known to sit and watch the spin cycle as a family, jaws dropped in awe. Did I mention we don't have a TV? All the sudden the other appliances in the house have become so much more thrilling.

EXCITING EVENT #2
We borrowed a couch from Michael's parents. Well, it's a loveseat. With a blue slip cover. But it fits perfectly in our tiny little living room. I rearranged everything yesterday and it looks simply lovely placed diagonal against the corner with my huge green fern behind it.

EXCITING HOME ACTIVITY #3
I painted a bookshelf. Inspired by my RS Enrichment "Home Decorating" group, I decided to paint our nauseating rose bookshelves. Michael wasn't with me, so with my mother's sage interior design advice ringing in my ears ("Just buy whatever you like and when you put it all together it will always look good."), I bought a bright blue Montana Summer Sky color and painted my bookshelf the next day. Since my kitchen has nowhere near the storage capacity required for my daily cooking rituals, the bookshelf has been transformed into a food storage shelf. Yes, it's garishly bright. Yes, it matches nothing else in our home. But looking at that shelf makes me happy every day. Here's a really bad photo taken with my grimy cell phone:
Doesn't nearly do it justice. These shelves GLOW.

EXCITING CHILD UPDATE #4
Jed himself deserves at least a dozen updates. He changes EVERY DAY. Astonishing! Yesterday, he couldn't play the little tikes piano because the keys were too small. He woke up today and started banging on it like a pro (future pianist!) He crawls. Yesterday he started following me around the house. I'd put him in the bedroom while I put on my makeup. I can easily see him from the bathroom, but I looked down for a moment and when I looked up again... he was gone! My heart lurched and I did a wild glance around. And then, a touch on my foot. I looked down and there he was smiling up at me proudly, sharp tooth gleaming from his drooling mouth. Yes, a tooth. And another on the way! He rolls! He pulls himself up on the edge of his crib! He makes all sorts of consonant and vowel sounds! He laughs and sings to himself and smiles all the day long. He's huge. I can't even begin to describe how much he has changed in the last month. We have photos and videos on the way when we get our computer stuff hooked up. Here is a grimy cell-phone photo of him proudly getting up in his play-pen bassinet and smiling at his mother's chagrin.


THRILLING UPDATE #5
I do pushups almost every day and I am happy to announce that my ugly post-preganancy arm flab has completely disappeared. It even appears that I may be developing an ARM MUSCLE. I know, I know, try to hide your gasps of astonishment.

FUN EVENT #6
Michael and I taught Institute the last few weeks. We were only substitutes but oh, how I'm going to miss it! Such fun! We taught the Old Testament and much to my surprise, Leviticus and Numbers are far more fascinating now than when I was 14, the last time I bothered to read them. Our students were hilarious and smart and delightful in every way. I am jealous of their new teacher. Apparently, however, we don't have the requisite "maturity" necessary for a full-time Institute teacher. Oh well. Maybe in ten years we'll be old enough. It is kind of weird to teach students older than us.

SORROWFUL OCCURENCE #7
Baby Jed and I are sick. And he's teething. So pretty much life has been one whiny, snotty, drool-drenched round of nursing and sleeping. Hopefully all will be well soon. We have been to bed at 9 PM every day this week, which explains all those unreturned phone calls. (Difficult when you're asleep before your free minutes kick in!) We'll return to real life soon.

Well, I think that's enough titillation for one blog entry. Hope you can all calm your racing hearts and muffle your cheers. It's nice to be back online. More (quality and non-grimy) photos and updates coming soon, promise.

Happy Halloween!

Baby's first words?!?!