Wesley and I are still in Iowa. Wes has been playing a lot, and smiling a lot.

Wes has been playing lots with his cousin Savannah. She’s 18 months old, ten months older than he is.

They get along very nicely.

Today he got to try out the swing with his grandpa Holt.

On Friday I went with my sister to our old high school where we thoroughly embarrassed our seventeen-year-old brother by conspicuously carrying our kids through the halls and pausing to exclaim at all the photos of the former academic and sports award winners that we used to know. He walked twenty feet in front of us, trying to pretend he didn’t know why these two girls with babes in arms were following him around and occasionally calling out, “Hey Matt, when’d they change this?” But we very sneakily stashed our camera in the diaper bag and pulled it out when no one was looking.

On Sunday my little bro graduated from high school.

Here’s Wes, watching the ceremony intently on my dad’s lap.

Wes and I are in Iowa this week to see my parents. Here are a few of our adventures so far.

My dad gave Wes a tour of the farm:

And my mom took him on a grander tour on the “Terminator”:

Yesterday we drove 3 1/2 hours south to Nauvoo, IL. The weather was beautiful when we left Dubuque, but turned cold and rainy by the time we reached Nauvoo. We ate lunch at the Nauvoo Mill & Bakery, bought a souvenir T-shirt (courtesy of Grandma Holt) for Wes, and walked around the Nauvoo Temple grounds. I had Wes in the Baby Bjorn with a couple blankets wrapped around him and a hat on his head to try to keep him warm. More pictures of our Nauvoo and Iowa adventures to come.

Me, Wesley, and my niece Savannah

Our baby Wes is generally pretty good-natured. He doesn’t cry a lot, but he’ll get fussy if if 1) he’s tired, 2) he’s hungry, or 3) he’s bored. And he’ll full-on wail if he’s hurt, but it (thankfully) doesn’t last long.

Recently my two nephews were visiting, and we put Wes next to his five-week-old cousin Ethan.

Wes is a little bigger at six months old, but not by much.

Ethan quickly grew tired of lying next to his cousin Wesley and started to cry.

It didn’t seem to faze Wes in the least.

Then we put Ethan’s big brother Logan on the other side of Wes, and all chaos ensued.

I don’t think Wesley noticed a thing.

Here’s my mom holding Wes.

And John holding him.

John and I were married in the Nauvoo Temple on the first day it opened in 2002. I got caught up in some memories of it today while I was writing a letter to the Hancock County Clerk’s office in Carthage, IL, to request copies of our marriage certificate.

When we were preparing to get married, the letter we received from temple officials told us we needed to acquire a marriage license from the county courthouse in Carthage. We got an idea of how small Carthage is when the letter gave no address for the courthouse but directed us to “look for the largest building in the center of town.”

We were a little nervous we wouldn’t find it, but the letter’s directions were exactly on. Carthage is pretty compact (it’s so small that on Google Maps you can’t zoom in close enough to see residential street names–not even when the distance legend is in increments of 2000 feet). The courthouse would have been hard to miss unless we were blind.

Today when I was making calls and filling out paperwork to get copies of our marriage certificate the city’s smallness was reiterated when I saw that the P0 box for the county clerk’s office is PO Box 39 (have you ever seen such a low box number?), and again when I called the courthouse to ask a question. There was no automated menu; I got to talk to a real person right away!

Sometimes smaller is better, don’t you think?

This week I took Wesley swimming for his first time ever at my parent’s hotel when they were in town. We got him spruced up in Finding Nemo swim diapers that were much too large for his little hips but managed to stay on anyway.

The water was a little tepid at first, so I think Wesley’s first impression of the pool was, “What’s with the cold bathwater, mom?!” He seemed to be shivering slightly when only his legs were in the water, so I dunked him all the way to his shoulders and he appeared to warm up.

First I had him in sitting position so his head was upright. He seemed fine in the water. Here he is with me, and my nephew with my dad.

Wes didn’t seem to much care what was going on, as long as he could still suck on his fingers.

Then I put his back down like he was doing a back float. I expected him to try to pull up to sitting position again, but he didn’t resist. He actually waved his arms around in the water beside his head and kicked his legs. I’m guessing those movements were instinctive forms of self-defense, but it looked like he was swimming!

Afterward we headed back to my parent’s hotel room and my dad (bless him) propped up my two-year-old nephew and Wes against pillows to watch TV while we changed clothes. Television junkies already!

The other day I decided by George, I was going to cook dinner. Like, actually cook dinner. Not just reheat something.

You cooks out there may be scoffing, but this was major for me. One of my goals since becoming a full-time domestic engineer has been to, well, become domestic. I’ve always fixed dinner for the two of us, but more often than not that entails simple actions like boiling hot dogs, toasting cheese on bread, pulling a pizza from its plastic wrapper and popping it in the oven. Simple stuff.

So the other day I selected a recipe from a cookbook and planned to make it. I was going to make corn bacon chowder. I went to the grocery store and bought supplies we normally don’t have lying around, like onions and potatoes and garlic, and that night I went to work. I started slicing and sauteeing at 5 p.m. I realized I didn’t really know how to slice an onion. Then I realized I didn’t know how to choose the right size cutting board, because the stuff I cut up kept spilling over the edge before I was done. And it turns out I’m completely clueless about garlic. Well, I got everything in the pot in the right amounts and simmering away. The baby woke up in the middle of this and I had to put dinner on hold while I fed and changed him. Then I put him in the Baby Bjorn while I finished putting the soup together and pureeing it all in the blender. By the time the chowder was ready to eat it was past 7:30! I was worn out and starving. Then came the cleanup that, in between tending the little guy, took until 9:45.

My question to all you real cooks out there is this: IS IT WORTH IT? I got to the end of the day and seriously asked myself what I had been thinking when I opened my cookbook and set out for the grocery store. The worst thing was, after all that work, John didn’t even care for the chowder all that much. I liked it, though, and had lots of leftovers for days. But I still wonder if cooking’s worth it. Am I aiming too high? Does anyone have any good or bad stories about cooking for their family?