Park Pictures!

Jordon's first reaction to seeing the park!

Jordon getting ready to get out of his stroller, oh so excited to play!

He doesn't quite know about the slides yet, he mostly just likes to sit and play around it yet, not slide with daddy. It goes too fast for him.

He's a natural drummer already!

Daddy and I on the swings!

Our Weekend

What a great weekend!

It was Megan and Kirsten's Dance Recital over at Round rock Chapel in Plano. Chris and I decided that we would like to go see their dances instead of me going to the Relief Society function that morning. Chris has been able to go to Megan's choir concerts this year but i haven't been able to make it since Jordon's bed time was usually the same time as the concert. It was at 10 AM and we actually got a bit lost going there so we were a half hour late but we were still able to see both of them perform. The only sad thing was that since we got lost Jordon was in the car for quite a while and 5 minutes before we got to the chapel he fell asleep in the car and made it inside the chapel asleep until the cultural hall where everything was happening. It was a rough busy day for him, we enjoyed the concert and had his lunch there, and when we drove back home around 12:00 or so he fell asleep in the car again.

We sure enjoyed watching all the wonderful dances and their were so many kids there from age 3 and up. I'm sure Laura will be posting a blog about it too, so i don't want to spoil anything! :) But Kirsten was very cute when she introduced herself at the end!

That afternoon we got ready for the Spaghetti Dinner for the youth fundraiser for camp that we were going to attend and for Bill Bartlett's Birthday Party. Jordon was able to play with some kids at the party and play with new toys! The Spaghetti Dinner went great, we were able to mingle with other ward members and be able to support the youth of the ward. The dinner was great, Jordon sure enjoyed the spaghetti, of course he was topless, you all know how bad spaghetti stains are, we didn't want to risk it. He got pretty hyper over there, i swear he needs more sleep but we do the best that we can. We left early to get him to bed since sundays are always rough. He's now asleep since he woke up before 6 this morning and i'd rather have a happy baby at church than a cranky one, i don't know if he'll get an afternoon nap or not. Time will tell.

Yesterday morning we also went to the park and took some pictures. Jordon and I like to go around 7:30 in the morning since it's nice and cool and he's still awake to play around. I'll post pictures in the next blog.

We have also figured out something cool about Jordon, actually Chris kindof figured it out, I think he needs to be a child psychologist or something. Everytime Jordon goes to bed he rubs his sheets over and over again and we thought it was awfully funny how he'd do that and than lay his head down over and over again until he'd fall asleep. Chris said it's probably because I rub his back every night to help relax him and he's just mimicking what I do. He's a smart cookie! He likes to imitate us a lot, especially during meal times too, he'll drink milk or water whenever we put our cup to our mouth. I think he's growing up too fast! :(

Last Night

i couldn't believe how much he slept last night. I was afraid he would wake up at 4 ready to go, but he slept straight til 6:30 this morning. that's right, 13 hours of night sleep. he's still sleeping right now, it took a while, and a bit of stubborness on his part, i guess that's both of Chris and I's genes coming through. But today he's on 1 nap. So I'm hoping he does well tonight too. I'm going to a Relief Society function over in Frisco tomorrow and Chris will be handling Jordon all morning until I get back around 1:30. We'll see how things go. Jordon is quite stubborn with me, but worse with Chris, so if all else fails, I told Chris to put him in a stroller to get him down for a nap. That little boy is very cute, but very stubborn sometimes. Oh well, we can't all be perfect all the time! :)

Well, gotta get things ready to go to Walmart before inker dinkers wakes up! We are switching to Vonage and our phones just arrived for pickup today. We were thinking about cell phones but my family doesn't have the same phone company to help us all stay connected without fees, so we're planning to do Vonage now and keep our tracfone for emergencies and vacations and later on we'll drop that and get cell phones probably. I'm excited to have local and long distance for only 25 a month. It's nice to find a good deal. Thanks Laura and Jeremy for all the good talk about Vonage!

Thanks for all the comments, I sure appreciate them.

The Dillema still continues!

So I don't know what i am doing, if anyone has any advice on how to transition from 2 naps to 1, that would be most appreciated. Yesterday Jordon acted so tired, he took 3 1/2 hours of napping but wouldn't really go to bed until about 8:15 which isn't bad, but he woke up at1:30, and i am doing the dr. sears method now, so i went in to comfort and to help him go back to sleep mostly, but after 15 minutes of it, i was able to leave him without him noticing even though he wasn't asleep yet, he eventually went back to sleep, but woke up at 5:30 ready to go for the day after only sleeping barely 8 hours for the night. He went down great this morning and slept almost 2 hours before we went to our dentist appointment. But when it came to a second nap, he refused at 1:30, 2, and 3:15 i gave up completely and decided to put him to bed early. He was falling asleep at his dinner around 5 and since he almost bit off his soft sippy cup spout, i just gave him a bottle tonight, and yes he fell asleep on the bottle, which i hate when that happens. So please cross your fingers for us that he sleeps all the way through until at least 5 in the morning to give him a good 11 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm getting kindof exhausted here. It's just very frustrating, because i think i'm pushing him into 1 nap a day too early cause a lot of those days he does cuddle on the floor quite a bit acting tired and ready for sleep, but when he naps he either naps great or only wants to do a morning nap and won't do the afternoon one. But then when i give him great naps in the day, he doesn't sleep good at night, it's like he needs to be completely worn out in order to sleep well! So that is my dillema for the week. I think tomorrow i'm going to do 1 nap, see if he wakes up at 5 and see if i can push his nap time until 10:30-12:30/1. Wish us luck, and please don't hesitate to give any advice. I look up tons of stuff online but family advice is always much better. Thanks for all your support!

Jordon's Progress

It's been a little while since i have posted anything, Chris is actually doing better at the blogging these days, he seems to be so much more creative in his writing, but i do try my best.

Jordon is still working on sleep training, the cry it out method isn't working for us, he'll cry for hours on end if i train him that way and plus he ends up puking too. Some kids seem to do ok with that method but not Jordon. I recently saw an article about the man who set up the idea of the cry it out method and he actually had to tell the public that his method is only for some kids and if you do let them cry it out too much it actually will cause more harm than good with lack of oxygen to their brain and their feeling of abandonment. For those of you that this method does work, that is great, but it seems like the more and more i push it with Jordon the more and more agitated and frustrated he gets and after his nap sometimes he won't even let me hug him or look at him. He wants down and won't look at me for a while until he's willing to forgive me. So after a week of that torture on him and me we have a different method that seems to work pretty good.

He is officially on 1 nap a day now, mostly due to him not willing to take 2 naps. So i feed him lunch around 11 and give him his sippy cup of milk off and on until about 12:15, then we read stories, snuggle, and he lays on my lap and once he starts to drift off quite a bit and can't keep his eyes open and isn't wiggling all over, which is usually until about 12:25 i put him in his crib and put a blanket around him and pat his back until he's pretty much out and singing him songs. The same thing goes with the night routine, but he usually gets a bath or a stroller ride before bedtime to help him setting the mood for him. I know this doesn't seem that right but it is what works for right now and once he's out he's out, he might cry off and on but he usually settles back down. He takes anywhere from a 2-3 hour nap in the day and at night he's out until morning, occasionally i'll hear a wimper but that's about it and at night time he'll usually let you do laundry and other things as long as it's reasonably quiet.

He is just a very active boy, from the time he wakes up it's usually about 5 1/2 hours until he'll go down for his nap. And at bedtime he's usually in bed at 7:30, but nothing later than 8. I like to stay consistent. Most nights he'll get 11 hours of sleep, sometimes 11 1/2 if he's tired at 7:30 he'll go to bed then and wake up around 7. I think he's sleeping better because he's eating more solids and i took away his bottle completely. This is the third day without it and he hasn't complained for it yet. I guess he's the type that change doesn't effect him too much(except sleep training :)) I should've known it would be easy. When i nursed and stopped nursing all of a sudden and put him on a bottle, he took right to it, and now i took away his bottle and he took right to the sippy cup.

He is cruising really good these days and his favorite thing to do is to stand and push anything that will move. I give him another month and he might be starting to be brave and take his first steps. He is also learning to put objects in the shape sorter toys and using his toys the right way instead of just taking them apart. Another great achievement is that on last Sunday he actually slept at church, miracles of miracles! I should have thought of it sooner. Usually the best way to get Jordon to sleep is to give him a big bear hug and not let go. So i brought our baby bjorn on Sunday and once it hit 12:00 i put it on and around 12:30 he was out and slept til church was done. I was quite proud of him, he hasn't slept at church since he was 6 months old! Go Jordon!

We are going to start play dates this week since Jordon has been getting a little cranky and bored with his toys and it's just the two of us and he always wants my attention, so we are going to start doing play dates at least once a week. I'm going to try to set up something for tomorrow if i can.

Here is a cute picture of Jordon, he likes to cuddle with blankets!

We will do a blog of our trip to Scarborough Fair shortly. We have a lot of pictures to sort through. Nothing else is really happening, we are busy in our callings and with work and taking care of Jordon. We are making plans with my family of what to do for the Montana trip. We are so excited, Jordon will be able to meet his Grandma and Grandpa Gallis and Bear dog! It'll be great to have everyone get together, my sisters haven't seen Jordon since he was a week or two old, they'll be very suprised with how big he is now. We hope everyone is doing well, and we love to read everyone's blogs, keep up the blogging power!

Fathers and Sons Campout at Camp Tsungoni

I don’t know if I should start this by ….

It’s raining, it’s pouring… probably not.

Or a begining of "Hello Mother, Hello Everybody, here we are at Camp Tsungoni!" No that's not right.

Or a modified line from one of Jordon’s books. “My daddy and I have the greatest of times; we go to campouts, and with lightening and rains.” What a campout it was! I left a little early from work so I could get home by 5:30pm, spend a little time with Darlene and Jordon, then rush out the door to Dad’s. I brought a backpack with clothes and supplies for the night, my Bar-B Que grill, and a nice rain coat. I meet Dad at his house; we packed and blazed the trail to the event.

The place we went to is called Camp Tsungoni by Lake Lewisville. When we arrived, we set up camp with The Colony 2nd Ward and near The Colony 1st Ward right near the entrance of the camp. Of course there were big, fancy houses just a quarter of a mile away from the camping area, and we found out that our “neighbors” weren’t too happy for the visit. For dinner we had some wonderful steaks and vegetables in tin foil. Dad got the wise idea to precook the vegetable before we got there in tin foil. I don’t know how much of that idea was either Mom’s or Dad’s, but it was delicious!

After that two families asked to use the grill. The camp/ city of Highland Park have a burn ban, like everywhere else here in Texas. The only fires could be in grills or fire pits that were already there. While we were eating, a police officer came up to the camp asking for a Mr. Alleman. I instinctively pointed to Dad. It’s so hard to imagine that I’m a old enough to be called Mr. Alleman. The police officer came to talk to the person in charge, which wasn’t me! Dad talked and found out that the neighbors were afraid of fires spreading around. Dad had to get a couple of groups to put out their fires, or fire starting because of that. Boy Scouts do love to make fires. I wonder if most of the pyromaniacs were scouts when growing up, because these boys had their fires going pretty fast. The officer actually came a second time before we finished eating. This time there were two of them. They were pleasant and very understanding. They just wanted to make sure we kept the fires under control. By that time the area was crowded with people from the stake. The last estimate I heard was the three to four hundred people at the event last night. Dad and the officer exchanged cell phone numbers just to be on the safe side. In case they needed to contact Dad of any trouble, or visa versa.

After dinner Dad and I went walking around. I went wondering around to some friend that I knew, and crowds of people came up to Dad. It’s great to see him having fun with the many different brothers in the stake. Dad had some very nice long talks with many people, so it took us a while to walk all the way to the other side of camp. It was then that I realize that the camp was a Day Camp for youth. It had a swimming area, sand volleyball pit, the works. The rest rooms were a mess, and that’s messy since I’m saying it.

The skits from the different wards were fun, and the cobbler and ice cream finished the night out very well. At the end the first police officer came back asking about our fire pit, and the noise from the sound system. The crazy thing was I was the one that found her, and was able to get her over to Dad. Why am I always able to find a cop when I don’t need one, and can never find one when I do need one? (Those are some long stories that I might share at another time.) Dad was able to settle the worries by showing the great fire pit. It was controlled and elevated. I’m quite impressed by the planning of the stake leaders. Everything seemed so organized. The noise was resolved since the program was over, and the sound system was turned off. She was offered some dessert for the third or fourth time, since that’s probably how many times she was there. She kindly refused and left, but not for the last time. Everyone left and went for camp. Dad and I stopped by some Colony 2nd warders and talked about the past times and current times. Then we went to sleep.

At 2:30am a storm came from the north east and the wind because really strong! The police officer came one last time to tell us that everyone should probably go home. Dad and I zipped up the tent flaps and were ready to weather it through, when someone came and told us that many of the campers were leaving. Dad checked out his Blackberry and noticed that the storm was actually going straight for us, but the Lord was blessing us that night. The storm was strong for any hour but there was a calm spot right in the middle of the storm coming right toward us. I asked Dad if that calm spot wasn’t a potentially tornado coming our way. I can deal with rain and some thunder, but a tornado is past my tolerance level of camping. I hear any warning or watch of tornados and I rush for shelter. Luckily the storm didn’t have any warnings or watches for tornados.

There might have been a flash flood watch, because our tent was flooded and we were drenched. After Dad realized that the weather wasn’t a threat, he knelt and prayed for the safety of everyone there. I knew he was worried for every single person there. We saw many people driving away, and many members helped each other take down their tents and put everything away. After that Dad and I slept through the storm. It must be something in the Alleman family that helps us sleep even in an old tent during a big storm. That morning the only people left for our ward was us and the Matsuda Family. The first ward only had the Richins Family. In all there were only 35 cars left, with an estimated 60 to 70 left. Dad and the stake leaders made breakfast that morning, and I went to round up everyone that could hear my voice or whoever I could see sleeping in a car. Everyone had plenty to eat since the stake was planning for a lot more people to hang around. We packed up the food, supplies and everything. Drove to The Colony, and helped Marty Miller put the big grill back in the storage shed. Then we picked up the extra food from someone and put the tent, sleeping bags, cots, and everything out to dry. Darlene and I are taking care of some of the extra food in the freezer. We did get a few eggs and a pack of broken cookies out of the deal. Girls Camp is a few weeks away, and the cookies, honey buns, and maybe the ice cream will be used that week. So that was our Fathers and Sons campout. We had fun, meet some nice cops, and had some really good cobbler and ice!

P.S. Pictures will be posted soon and the next post will tell of our times at Scarbough Fair!

As promised the pictures of the exciting and damp evening. The three boys were doing their own type of gallon challenge. Each one drank the last of the gallon from the carton. Good thing their mother wasn't there. :-)

Hurrah for Peer Presure!!!

I know some peer pressure can be awful, and degrading, but in some cases it can help someone or some group to do something better than without that influence. This may be a silly thing for Darlene and I, but since we decided to do the crazy, zany thing and decablize (the act of canceling the satellite/cable subscription) we have been watching a few "network television shows." I know the networks haven't been doing so well with the insane elevation of reality TV show. (No offense to the those shows. I happen to like many of them. Extreme Home Makeover, a little bit of American Idol, and Apprentice when they actually happen business people in real life situations.) Darlene and I started using the free Internet streaming website HULU. It has minimum commercial breaks, and Darlene and I can use it as our own little "DVR" system. Letting us watch something whenever we want, until the show it deleted from the website. Hulu.com is contracted with NBC and FOX. It does have some small agreements with other TV broadcast companies, like USA Network sends select old and has new episodes of Monk and Pysch for a determined amount of time. SciFi Channel has some of their shows too for the same agreement.

The thing that I like about peer pressure is that our favorite show current, second to "Monk". (Please don't send the hate mail family, we do like Monk too). The show "Chuck" has signed on for another season. We just found out about it on the 2nd season, and the network has decided to have a 3rd season. The next season will be really interesting. The series starts out as a ordinary single guy named Chuck, that works in a dead end job at a electronic store named "Buy More" and he works as a computer technician for the "Nerd Herd." Yeah its probably similar to another electronics store that is nationally know. One day an old college friend sends he an email that flashed many images that contains intelligence from all the government agency such as CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. I don't know how that truly works, but whenever Chuck sees some related to the intelligence Chuck sees "flashes" of pictures and is able to know and identify key people, events, and items that are shared among the government. Thus becoming a "human intersect" for the government.

It is filled with plenty of 1980's references, nerd jokes, and spy zany adventures and references too. I hear that it mentions to Bond and other spy shows or something. I must admit that I haven't been able to watch too many of those. I feel like such a nerd because of that, but oh well. I must include a WARNING, that like most television shows, this does include some people scantily dressed every few episodes. Plus a weird coworker at the "Buy More" named Jeff, that adds a nice feel to working at a retail store. Jeff is weird because of the off the wall statement that he say, and his unkempt hair, clothes, and probably teeth too. Luckily TV hasn't become smellovision, because he looks smelly enough to knock out Oscar the Grouch. The show has product placement that I didn't even notice they were doing it tell later, but I did crave a $5 foot long after they had it on a episode once. Celebrity appearances which include Chevy Chase and Scott Bakula from "Quantum Leap" and many more.

I've probably written too much already, but it short Darlene and I are so excited that Chuck was renewed. And one of the big reasons they did was because "Dollhouse" by Joss Whedon was continued on Fox. Hehehe. Plus many fans went out to a big sponser (Subway) of "Chuck" and bought a $5 foot long. Thank goodness for the free market, because if one channel does something, the other channels can be influence the same way too.

Crazy times at work!

Sorry about having the deluge of post, but the first half of the month is the busiest time for accounting. Alison understands what I’m talking about. This past month has been quite an interesting bit of investigating and plain out worry about the numbers. TM Advertising has been holding its breath since November of 2008 and lost a client just recently.

Edit:

Due to an email I just recently got. There are some things that need to be "adjusted" to protect the client that we used to deal with. Everyone here is going through their own form of grief, and moving on through this transition. TM Advertising has been working with "this client" for the past 10 years. Everything here is calm so far, and the leadership is quite optimistic. I’m just crossing my fingers and keeping busy in the accounting department. From what I heard we gave it our best shot and there was nothing more we could have done. Just wanted to spread the news about our current status, and hoping everyone is doing well. Be sure to read the past few posts, our adventures have been intense with fences braking down, Jordon’s separation anxiety tantrums, and much more.

Love y’all!

Chris

P.S. For a more detailed description of this event please call me. The internet is watched all the time, and the conspiracy theorist in me gets a little antsy sharing too much online.

Helpful "Lawn Gnomes” fix our fence!

Part two on our struggle in maintaining peace in the neighborhood of Crawford Drive. Last month the squirrels attacked our fence and getting the destruction mended took a while. We consulted the birds and other animals in the area, but they would flee the moment they saw Jordon’s big teeth. Have you seen those molars coming through? If Jordon had those during the attack, there would have been more casualties on the squirrel side! Then one day the “Lawn Gnomes” came to our rescues! They were lead by the guardian Gnome in the front of the house. I still haven’t caught the name of that kind Gnome, but we sure are grateful. Now the fence is back together and hopeful those squirrels will think twice before messing with the Allemans!

Moment of Truth:
This might actually be funnier than the made up story. Well the recycling/ waste company wasn’t contacting us about a time to look at the damage, and I had to move the rumble away from the grass. I didn’t want to have dead grass and a broken fence. Darlene called daily and most of the time the she didn’t even talk to a human being. Well I emailed the City Manager (which happens to be the Second Councilor in the Bishopric he he he) and told him about the delay. That same day we got a response from the offending company and the fence repair company and BAM, the fence was fixed in a few days! Darlene’s work got most of the attention, but every little thing help in getting something fixed. Like the old saying goes, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Isn’t it great to have friends in local government?

Runner's Log (Chris' hopeful journey)

I'm making progress, but the run at the fouth of July weekend is coming up real quick. I've reached 1.5 miles so far. I'm running, well it's more like a slow jog. I'm still out of shape, but I'm feeling grrrrrrrrrrrrreat! Hehehe I thought I'd put in a Tony the Tiger line and make "a funny."

Massive Sleep Training

So for all of you lucky parents that haven't had to do too much sleep training, i am jealous. This is our 5th? attempt at sleep training Jordon. He was sleep trained at 4 months when he was still sleeping on his back and then you know what happened after his 6 month checkup, chiropractic appointments for his flat head. I never realized how hard it would be to get him sleep trained again. After 4 months or so of rocking him to sleep and holding him until i got done with his head massage treatment, he became so used to it and very spoiled, not that we didn't enjoy the cuggle time but it was getting out of hand, now he didn't know how to fall asleep by himself anymore.

After his chiropractic treatments were done, that's when we started to do our first attempt, each time he'd do ok at night but not during the day. He would scream til he puked. And every time he'd teeth and get a cold i'd get soft on him and hold him a bit since he couldn't breathe that well, and wasn't feeling good. My bad, even sometimes he'd come to bed with us after i'd give up in the middle of the night with him screaming for over a half hour.

Now he's almost 14 months old and still not sleep trained. We put up dark curtains and always have his fan on and music playing. This week i started real sleep training. Before i'd hold him til he fell asleep during the day naps, and sleep train him at night. He got confused with why i wouldn't hold him before bed too, so i said that's it, time to make him know how to do everything himself with sleeping.

Sunday night was bad, we both had to hold him down in his crib with our hands on his back and bum singing him songs, reading him stories, telling him everything would be ok, he wouldn't let us leave until he was asleep with us still there. Monday was first day of nap training, he cried and babbled in his crib for over an hour in the morning, still wouldn't sleep, and then after lunch we tried again, he screamed for a half hour and finally fell asleep at 12 but woke up at 2 cranky with a BM. That night we put him down at 7, since he was acting tired, cried for 20 minutes puked up all of dinner. Changed everything and got new jammies on him and calmed him down a little, still had to hold him down in his crib and sang more songs. finally asleep by 8:15. Woke up 11 hours later with a few cries in the night. Tuesday he did better, he cried for about 15 minutes for his naptime at 12 and went down last night at 8:00 and slept straight til 6:45 this morning with no sounds at all at night. He cried for about 15 minutes and he was out. Today hasn't gone so well, he wouldn't take a morning nap and at 11:30 i put him in his crib and he cried for a half hour, had a BM, i put him back in his crib and he freaked out crying until finally he fell asleep at 12:30. I'm hoping in a weeks time he'll be trained before i pull out my hair. Sleep training has definitely put a toll on me, i even have a pimple to prove it!

So I hope Jordon will forgive me for all of this, i keep on reminding myself that this is for his own good, he needs to learn how to do it. I might need earplugs though, cause it's pretty tough on the Mommy! Next will be taking away his bottle. He's very attached to it. I figure we took away his binky and he's ok now, give him another week and he'll be sleep trained, and then we'll start with slowly taking away the baba's. Right now I'm trying to just morning and night bottles. Wish me luck and if any advice let me know!