Growing Up

Don't they look like they're whispering about something?

Sophie had her two-month check up and is growing well. She's in the 65th percentile for weight, 81st percentile for height, and 100th percentile for head size. Yup, she's just like the other three in that regard.

The doctor was lucky to get a glimpse of Sophie. Phoebe was with us and spent most of her time giving Sophie hugs and kisses, which made it hard to see Sophie behind all that love.

She got three shots and has spent the day slightly feverish, a little grumpy, and very clingy.

The doctor reminded me that I should be putting her to sleep while she's still awake. I understand this, but I have a terrible time doing it. I love snuggling my babies and sometimes that means I hold them until they're asleep. I'm sure in a few months time I'll be writing about how tired I am and bemoaning the fact that my children don't sleep, but for now I'm happy to just hold her.

Of course, right now I can't complain about her sleep because last night she slept for eight hours in a row! And I slept for seven!

Phoebe Funnies

Whenever I talk to my grandma she asks for funny things that Phoebe has recently said. These aren't all funny, but they certainly are memorable. And we did apologize for the second one on the list.

• "I wish the whole world was made of chocolate. I just love chocolate," said during a lunch void of chocolate.
• "I'm tired of you being here. Can you go home now?" said to friends who had come over to play.
• "I can't be in my room! I hate my room!" said after she was told to go play with the toys in her room.
• "I hate this dinner! This dinner is dumb," said during a meal of pasta and cheese, one of her favorites.
• "Let's play house. I'm the mom and you're the big sister. But you do all the big stuff like make food and drive the car because I'm a little mom." said multiple times every single day.
• "Here's the cute girl you married," said while handing Bryan an old picture of me.

Pajama Time

Phoebe has recently outgrown most of her pajamas. We were at Walmart last week and saw that the jammies were on clearance. That's when this little number caught her eye.

She loves nightgowns, and we all know about her affinity for the princesses. I tried to find a pair of pajamas with pants, but things in the needed size were in short supply. Much to her delight, we bought the nightdress. She's worn it at least four times since then, which is unusual since she likes to have clean clothes each night.

Yesterday while she was getting ready for bed I remembered something. My mom likes nightgowns; so did my great-grandma Lucy. I'm more of a pants and shirt kind of girl; so is my grandma Bonnie. I remember my grandma telling me once that she didn't understand why the others liked nightgowns so much and that the love of that item must skip a generation.

Phoebe is right on schedule to love nightgowns. I guess that means that my grandchildren will prefer pajama pants?

One Lives at Our House

Found here.

All Dolled Up

I have favorite baby outfits. This dress that my sister-in-law Amanda sent to us when we were expecting Phoebe is still one of my favorites. I make a point of taking pictures of those special items of clothing in use, just so I can remember how adorable my children were while wearing them.

Does anyone else do that?

Walk-a-Thon

The kids have been begging to walk to school, but between rain, snow, and cold, I haven't wanted to take Sophie out. But today was dry. It was still chilly, though not really cold. So the girls and I bundled up and we loaded the double stroller for a walk.

Due to a late start. we briskly walked the mile to the school. The boys were thrilled that we were walking back home. We even stopped at the park for ten minutes until Sophie started to fuss.

I'm glad that we ventured outside, we all need the vitamin D. Two miles on my first walk in several months may have been a little ambitious though. I'm not sure how well I'll be moving tomorrow...

Beware the Fish

Between the recent snow days and some scheduled days off, the boys have been home more than usual. We've played UNO and Memory and Candyland. We've started reading Mary Poppins, which the boys love and Phoebe isn't as excited about. We've also done some baking.

We keep some of our baking ingredients in large buckets. We made Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies (because one child wanted pumpkin cookies, one wanted oatmeal cookies, and one wanted chocolate cookies) which required two of our bucket items: flour and oats.

I measured, Cooper and Phoebe poured in ingredients, and Peter read the recipe to us. He was sitting on the closed bucket of oats with his feet propped on the closed bucket of flour. That's when he asked, "Why does it say they can't catch fish is these?"

I looked at him, trying to figure out what in the world he was talking about. That's when I saw one of these labels on the side of the bucket he was looking at.

No no Peter, not catching fish.

Cuz

Want an excellent way to waste time? Or need something to keep yourself occupied while you stare at a bright screen to stay awake in the middle of the night? Well sir, I have just the thing for you!

My friend's husband's uncle (that makes this sound fake) created a website where you can see what famous people you're related to. The program uses Family Search, so if you have an lds.org log in you can find your relatives. It's fun. And also addicting.

And it looks like, if you go back far enough, everyone is your cousin.

Begat and Begat and Begat

I recently finished reading the Book of Mormon again. In contemplating what I should study next, I decided to read one chapter a day from it, them spend the rest of my scripture time on the Bible. It's been a few years since I read the Bible cover to cover.

It occurred to me as I've been making my way through Genesis that reading the Bible is kind of like visiting an elderly relative. They talk about a lot of people you don't know or can't remember. And they expect that you totally know who they're talking about.

My Grandma doesn't do this, in case you were wondering. But the book of Genesis does.

Bright Eyed

This sweet girl got six straight hours of sleep on Saturday night and eight straight hours on Sunday night! Maybe that's why she looks so happy.

And her mom got six straight hours of sleep on both nights! She's feeling pretty happy too.

Gifts of the Heart

Last night I realized that today was Valentine's Day. That's a misleading statement, I knew that it was Valentine's Day because the boys had prepared and taken valentines for their classmates (no school today, so all parties were yesterday). And I had seen the calendar and knew what day it was. But it wasn't until last night that it hit me that it was Valentine's Day, and I hadn't done anything to prepare.

In the last eight weeks the only store I've been in was Payless to buy Phoebe some new shoes. I haven't been grocery shopping, I haven't been to Costco or Walmart, I haven't seen displays reminding me that I need to do something special for those I love. Nope, I've been in a new-baby cocoon.

And really, it wouldn't have been a big deal, except that last year I had Valentine bags waiting for the kids when thy got up. And Peter remembered. He told me he was so excited for the bags because he had goodies for everyone (leftovers from what he'd done for his class) that he wanted to add to the bags. Now I felt pressure. And some guilt. This thing that I did once had the potential to turn into a tradition. I love family traditions and I feel like we have so few of them. But I had dropped the ball.

As soon as I put Sophie down for the night, I scrambled. I scoured Pinterest looking for things we could make at home with items we already had. It was already late and every time I found something that I thought might work, I did the math and figured how much sleep I would have to give up to execute it. I kept coming up empty.

Bryan was watching it get later and me get more stressed. He encouraged me to sleep, telling me that we could figure it out in the morning. I followed his advice, but I told him I felt like I was letting people down in so many areas right now (him, the kids, family and friends who I've needed to talk to but can only find time in the middle of the night to call, the women I should be visiting teaching, I could go on) and that nothing for Valentine's Day felt like one more item to add to my list of fails. He tried to comfort me and I finally fell asleep.

I got up a few times in the night with Sophie. The second time was at 5AM. I saw that Bryan was up and I figured that he'd checked on the kids. Turns out I was right, kind of: Phoebe woke up and got herself dressed for the day at 4:30AM and Bryan had gotten up to see to her. But that's not all. I watched as he worked at the desk in our room. When I saw the brown paper sacks, I figured out what he was doing.

He was saving our tradition.

Before the sun came up this morning, Bryan put together Valentine's for the three big kids. Then, many hours later and after I had gotten a nap, he made giant heart-shaped pancakes and homemade strawberry syrup for brunch. Our successful day was made possible because Bryan made it so.

He doesn't like praise, this is one major difference between us. But he gave me a wonderful Valentine this year, the gift of time as a family and of traditions fulfilled and of delighted children, and for that I must say thank you.

I Need a Nap

Sophie slept for six hours in a row last night. That's the longest she's slept. I was asleep for half of that.

I'm hoping that she'll repeat that awesomeness tonight. And, if she does, I hope I can be a asleep for longer as well.

1300

This is my 1300th post.

That's right, in not quite six years of trying to be clever, I've found 1300 items that I thought were worth preserving electronically. And, really, there have been several more that never made it to the screen.

Today is also the 13th anniversary of Bryan proposing. We celebrated by saying "Happy engagement anniversary" and carrying on with the day. That's how celebrations go for the sleep deprived.

I've been watching my number of blog posts rise slowly, so I knew that 1300 was coming, but it was only a few days ago that I realized I would hit that number on our 13th engagement anniversary. I think the collision of those two events is kind of awesome.

Let the Music Move You

Everything Is Awesome

We had another snow day today. Or rather, we had a snow-now-covered-in-freezing-rain-which-has-created-an-ice-skating-rink-of-the-streets day. Church was even canceled yesterday. Instead, we watched past General Conference talks at home and stayed warm. Things have begun to thaw and life will return to normal tomorrow.

On Saturday morning, after the snow and before the freezing rain, Bryan and the boys made the normally six minute (now twenty minute) drive to the movie theater and partook of the great father-son bonding that is The Lego Movie.

The girls and I stayed home. For the record, Phoebe did not stay home because she is a girl, she stayed home because she refused to do the few chores required to get her to the movie. She was invited to go, just like the boys were. Also for the record, she really didn't care that she missed it.

All three of the boys loved it. They've been talking about it ever since they got back. And they've all been singing the theme song.

The movie fun on Saturday has led to even more Lego play than usual. Peter took this picture to document the ship he built. Awesome.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Wednesday night I got a Winter Storm Warning alert on my phone. It's only snowed once since we've been here, and there wasn't much of the white stuff. I didn't worry a great deal.

Thursday morning I had another warning pop-up on my phone and I realized it would be snowing during our drive to and from Kung Fu. I don't love that drive in good weather, so I started debating if we would go or not.

Then, as I dropped the boys off at school, I got a call telling me that Kung Fu would be canceled for that night. Excellent, they made the choice for me. Less than an hour after getting home from the morning drop off, I got a call telling me that school would be letting out three hours early and that all evening activities in the district were canceled.

And then I got an email from Phoebe's dance studio telling me that all classes were canceled for the day.

It felt like the whole town was shutting down.

Bryan called and told me he would watch the weather and the traffic and might come home early. He did, as did many of his co-workers. 

Why the huge reaction to the estimated four to eight inches of snow? In Utah life would continue uninterrupted with that much snowfall. Snowplows really do make a difference. So does having a driving population that knows how to handle snowy conditions. The lack of both make travel treacherous here. Bryan said he saw fifteen or twenty people that had slid off the road during his drive home and at least two accidents.

I wasn't surprised when school was cancelled for today as well.

This is what our backyard looked like today. See that wide span of largely untouched snow on the other side of the fence? There's a road under that. According to Bryan (who braved the roads to go to Costco and Walmart, both of which are two minutes from our house), all of the roads looked like that.

I was content to stay in our warm house, out of the cold.

Improvising

We wouldn't buy him electronics, so he made some of his own.

You're looking at two laptops (he made one for a friend), a mouse, and a cell phone. He actually spent time sitting at them and typing. He told me he left the screens blank because they were "imagination computers."

Look, They're Not Quite as Blurry This Time!

Taming the Beast

The laundry was growing unruly. The piles were reaching such heights I feared we might lose something important in them, like a shoe or a child. But between the hours spent feeding Sophie and the (much fewer) hours spent sleeping, I had lost hope of conquering the clothing.

Then I had an epiphany. In a short forty-minute period I had the laundry taken care of and the loft free of the offending material. What was my amazing solution, you ask? It's quite simple actually.

I didn't fold anything.

I sorted the clothes based on who they belonged to, put each person's clothing in their own laundry basket, and instructed them to put away their own stuff. Everything gets unfolded when small hands put it away in drawers, so why not save a step?

When Peter came for his basket he paused and asked, 'Um Mom, you know you forgot to fold this, right?"

Focus

My phone has been taking lousy pictures lately, so I asked Bryan to take a look at it and see if he could fix the problem. I handed it to him for repair yesterday after church. A few minutes ago I was looking through my pictures, searching for something to post tonight. I found this.

I regularly find surprise pictures because Peter has whisked away my phone without my knowledge. It's not often that Bryan is the man behind the camera.

What you can't see is that I'm holding her hand.