Sawyers' Adventures: March 2013

It's been a while since my last blog post. We're doing good! We've been teased with a couple of warm days, but it's still cold here :). Mark just finished his second year of Medical school! Woohoo!!! I can't believe that he has done all the book work already! I'm so proud of him! If you haven't already heard, his PhD program lost its funding. That means, we can take out loans the next 5 years, or we can forget it. Well, we decided that Mark was going to forego the PhD and start his 3rd year of Medical school in July! All of a sudden, we only have two more years of Medical school left! Starting out in the PhD program was definitely not a waste of time, and Mark learned a lot from it, but it's a relief to see a slightly brighter light at the end of the tunnel! Mark is going to be a lot busier from here on out, but it'll be worth it!

What have we been up to? Well, like I said Mark finished his second year of school! He's been studying hard! On top of studying, making time for Joshua and me, and fulfilling his church calling Mark even finds time to continue the research he accomplished over the summer! He is such a statistics wiz....it seriously amazes me! Stats is my least favorite branch of mathematics, so I'm glad he's great at it! He submitted his abstract of his research to the medical school, and got chosen to present his research! (There are some pictures of that among many others down below). He even got a money reward for it! His research team also submitted their abstract on a national level and were chosen to present at a national pediatric conference in May! It's exciting! Don't worry, Mark still finds time to play :)

J is a little over 14 months! He's growing up! He is a huge ball of energy! I love it! He climbs up on everything and loves to run around! He is learning words and says Dada, no-no, ba (for ball), moo (cow) and sometimes mama. He has been beginning to repeat a lot of sounds, so soon he'll be talking! We've been working on some baby sign language and he can tell us more, all done, milk, thank you, and diaper. He also leads us in singing by waving his arms, he waves bye and hello, he bows for the Korean salutations, he dances like crazy, he gives hugs and kisses and brushes his teeth. He loves to point at things and can point out his nose, head and sometimes his belly button. He figured out that he can hold our hand and take us places, and so we can never sit in the same spot for very long. He is loud loud loud, and we cannot sit through any meetings because he just wants to yell the whole time, not out of anger, but because it's fun. He likes to cuddle when sleepy and he still sucks his thumb. He likes to show off his toys and looooves attention. I cannot hold other children without him totally losing it! He loves to laugh and is developing a really good fake laugh too! He likes to explore and get into everything! He loves "reading" his books and loves it when Mommy and Daddy sing on specific pages. He will mimic whatever Daddy does and he looks for him all day! His favorite thing to do is run around outside and he loves his banana and almond butter sandwiches!....yeah, he's a typical toddler.

Here is a random collection of pictures from the last month!