Smythe update

No picts today - just an update. A week or so ago, we found out that we can't stay in our rental house past mid December, so that's lit a huge fire under us to find a house. Seth took off work last Thursday, his mom (a realtor) drove to Portland and we looked at houses all day long. We came out with 4 possibilities. We eliminated the first one pretty quick - the owners were being relocated and the relocation company was going to pay them more for their house than we could. We then made an offer on our second choice on Monday. We offered quite a bit less than they were asking. They countered and we re-countered. We are waiting to hear if they accept our final offer. We should know sometime on Thursday. If they don't take it, we'll move on to our third choice and then finally our fourth (which we know we can get - but it's much smaller than the others!) Regardless, we should be in a new place by Christmas. It will be a wonderful Christmas gift. I told Seth that if we move in right before Christmas and then spend the holidays in Utah, I will probably leave all of our decorations up until February - just so i can have Christmas in my OWN house. I'm a little giddy at the thought.
That is what is keeping us really busy. Seth still works pretty long hours, but isn't coming home past midnight lately. I'm continuing to work 10-15 hours a week for myself and that has been working out really well. I love the interaction and the extra money is nice too.
Jimmy is signing like crazy, he actually signs that he wants to watch his sign language videos and heaven help you if you put in something else, he throws a fit. He also has some sign language books, I am amazed at him because he looks at the pictures, hears me say the word and tries to figure out the sign from the photos. It completely cracks me up. I am always going on line to figure out new signs for him. He signs "signing time," the name of his videos, "giraffe, sleep, mom, dad, dog, cat, sit, car, bike, hat, eat, cracker, drink, more, soap, toothbrush, frog, bus, train, bird, squirrel" and a few things where I know he's saying something, but I haven't matched it up to a word. He is also starting to talk. Yesterday he told us he was "silly". So now he says "silly" and "movie". If you only say two words other than mom and dad I guess those are good ones.
His favorite food is oatmeal. He had it three times today. He calls it "oh-ee, oh-ee, oh-ee/beep, beep, beep" because the microwave beeps three times when it's done. It took us forever to figure out what that was. Then one day we were heating something else and when he heard the microwave, he imitated it perfectly, "beep-beep-beep" and when we took out our food he started crying because it wasn't oatmeal. He wants everything that comes out of the microwave to be oatmeal. He life is full of disappointments.
He loves shoes, socks, frogs and buses. And his giraffes. Tonight he went to bed with his big giraffe "Dad Giraffe", Mr. giraffe, his blue hound dog, Boone, a train, 3 binkies, a frog and a pair of Mom's socks on over his footed pajamas. We aren't sure how much longer there will be room in his bed for himself if he keeps accruing nighttime friends and accessories.
I love all the new postings and Halloween costumes. We were sick for Halloween, so we turned off our lights and hid. Jimmy was a porcupine for the ward party - I'll have to find some picts of that and post it.