David, Melissa, and Co.

Chloe’s newborn pics 7-5-2014

2014-07-30T21:45:00.001-07:00

These were taken a week after she was born.

Shayla loves to hold, kiss, and touch Chloe (especially while I’m trying to feed her).

Easton did not want to have his picture taken.

Chloe’s Birth Story

2014-07-27T15:07:00.001-07:00

I don’t know if it’s being a couple years older, having 2 other small children to take care of, or just a different pregnancy, but this pregnancy was challenging for me. The first trimester I had some nausea (though not as bad as with Shayla), but more than anything I was tired and just had no motivation. Even when I felt ok, I just did not want to do anything. I started getting out of that around 20 weeks, but then I got a cold and sore throat that lasted well over a week. Then came the afternoon headaches that had me wanting to lay down and rest instead of make dinner. I thought maybe I wasn’t getting enough protein or water, so I tried increasing both of those which didn’t help. My midwife suggested Emergen-C and coconut water, and I tell you what…I didn’t have one more headache the rest of the pregnancy. At that point I had only about 6-8 weeks left, and was finally feeling like I had the energy to “nest” and work on some of the major house cleaning projects that had been on my list forever. Then I got struck with another cold that just knocked me out flat for almost 2 weeks. It was really just one thing after another with this pregnancy. When that finally let up, I started getting pubic symphisis pain, which made it hurt to walk, sit, change positions, etc. so again I had a hard time getting anything done. I was so frustrated with being pregnant, but also frustrated with the constant fighting and whining of my other two children that I really was starting to wonder why in the world I wanted another child.

Then at my 36 week appointment, my midwife said that my belly measurement was way behind. It didn’t really concern me since I have always measured small, but still had normal sized babies. She wanted me to get an ultrasound to make sure that the baby was still growing properly and that there was enough fluid. A couple days later, we went for the ultrasound and to my dismay found out that this baby was breech. I had just asked at my appointment the week before when we needed to start worrying about a breech baby and she told me (this was the Dr. and not the midwife): “your baby is head down, we can tell by the sound of the heartbeat.” I’m pretty sure she was wrong, because I really don’t think she moved in that week. So, finding out my baby was breech with only 4 weeks to go was kind of a big (and very emotional) deal for me. After 2 unmedicated and uncomplicated deliveries at a hospital I really wanted to have a more relaxing (if you can call it that when you’re in labor) experience at a birth center. It is out of network, so we opted for the cheaper high-deductible insurance plan since we would be paying for most of it out of pocket anyway. Well, the news of a breech baby meant that unless she turned, I would not be having her in the birth center. So I started trying to do everything I could to turn her: chiropractic, acupuncture, handstands in the swimming pool, but she wasn’t budging. I had an appointment with a doctor that will do breech deliveries (and works closely with the birth center) at the end of the following week. I was now 37 weeks. I had David (and the kids since I couldn’t find a babysitter) come with me, so that he could be there when the Dr. gave us our options. We did know that my fluid was starting to get on the low side from the ultrasound the week before but that was less concerning to me than the fact that she was breech. After waiting in the waiting room for an hour, we finally got to meet with Dr. Medchill. This was on a Friday morning. He explained the 3 options: first try an external cephalic version to see if he can manually rotate her, or he will do vaginal breech deliveries, but they are highly monitored and done in an OR at the hospital, or C-section. I did not want the latter 2 options, so I was really hoping he could turn her. He pulled out a small ultrasound machine and confirmed that she was still breech, and fluid was still low, but he thought there was enough fluid and that she was small enough that he would be able to turn her. So right there in his office, he started pushing on my belly trying to see how easily she would move. Holy moly it was not comfortable, and I was very tender for several days afterwards. He was able to get her to move a little ways, so he says “It’s my lunch break right now, go check in at the hospital and I’ll meet you right over there.” Whoot?? I knew it had to be done in the hospital, so I expected we’d have to schedule it for another day. If there were any complications with the procedure it would mean an emergency C-section, and I wasn’t mentally prepared for that possibility right then and there. That and David had the kids to take care of, so he wouldn’t even be able to be with me when it was done. I check into OB Triage and they get me on the monitors. It is weird being in triage when you’re not actually in labor. He eventually came in, they gave me a shot of something that relaxes the uterus (and makes your heart race), he checked her on the ultrasound again, and then slowly began to rotate her around counter-clockwise. It was definitely still uncomfortable and I had to practice my deep breathing, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as when I was in his office. It probably only took about 5 minutes, and BOOM, she was head down. They had to monitor her for about 20 minutes afterward to make sure everything was still ok, and then I would be free to go. The 20 minutes passed and all was well, but I was still waiting for them to get me a binder (which you wrap around your waist tightly to keep her from rotating back). While waiting for another 30 minutes or so, her heart rate dipped a couple of times (I’m pretty sure it was just because she or I moved), so then they decided that we needed to do an ultrasound to make sure she wasn’t on the cord or anything. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I waited for 2 hours for them to take me back for the ultrasound. I was fine (although getting bored), but I knew David was battling the kids who he had been trying to entertain since 10:30 that morning at the Dr’s office, and it was now like 2 pm. He took them to get lunch in the cafeteria, and they found a room that had a computer, so they sat and played games forever. The lady that did the ultrasound was Japanese (I think) and it was really hard to understand her. All I got was that my fluid was getting lower. We finally got home about 5:30 that night. It was a crazy long day, but I was relieved to know that I could still have the labor that I wanted at the birth center.

I went back in for another appointment on Wednesday, and since my fluid level had gone from an 8 to a 6.2 in a week, she wanted me to keep getting ultrasounds once a week to make sure it didn’t get too low. I was doing everything I could to keep it up: baths daily, drinking lots of water, etc. My ultrasound was on Thursday. I’m barely 38 weeks. They did a biophysical profile which has several different tests that baby has to pass within a certain time frame (a pocket of fluid that was a certain amount, so many movements, practice breathing, etc). She passed all those, but my fluid measurements were all really low, and averaged out to just under 5. I knew this was pretty much the borderline number before they get really concerned. The Dr. at the ultrasound place said to just keep at it and come back in a week. Friday morning at 8:00, I get a call from my midwife. She sounds pretty frantic and says that I need to get to the hospital right away to be induced because my fluid is getting dangerously low. She said I have time to pack bags, etc. but to get over as soon as possible. I called David and told him to come back home (and saved him from being late to a meeting he forgot about). I call my mom and see if they are ok to have the kids for the next couple of days, and then I got in the shower and cried. This was not what I wanted. Not only do I not get to have the birth center birth that I wanted, but being induced (I thought) meant pitocin, which would make having a natural delivery much more difficult, and I was worried about how we were going to pay for it all. It took us a couple hours to feed everyone breakfast, finish packing up, and get out the door.

David dropped me off at the hospital and then went to drop the kids off at my parents’. (Since we know how long hospitals take, I knew he wouldn’t be missing anything). Just as I’m starting to check in, I get another call from my midwife. She apologizes and says that she misread the report, and that my fluid is still right on the border, but not quite as dangerously low as she thought. She said to hold off for a bit and wait to see what Dr. Medchill thinks we should do. At this point, I’m really not sure what I wanted to hear. I was finally mentally starting to come to terms with having my baby that day even though it wouldn’t be how I wanted it. I sat outside and waited for probably about 45 minutes and Dr. Medchill shows up (David was still dropping off the kids). He gives me my options: because I was right on the border, it was still medically sound for me to stay and be induced that day with a slightly higher risk of C-section due to being induced, or I could wait and see, but I would have to get an ultrasound every 2 days (with the slightly higher risk that something could happen to baby in the mean time). I called David and we talked about it and decided that we would just go forward with it that day. Since my fluid had been dropping so fast anyways, waiting would probably only buy me maybe 3 days at most, which would mean I would still most likely need to be induced and have a hospital birth, so why prolong it and risk anything happening to baby (and have to pay for all the additional ultrasounds)? After we had made our decision, I got another call from the midwife. She said that no matter what I decided that she was transferring my care over to Dr. Medchill because I was no longer in the “low-risk” category. That further confirmed my decision because even if I happened to go into labor in the next couple days, I wouldn’t be able to have her at the birth center anyways, so let’s just get this whole pregnancy thing over with.

Once we let the hospital staff know that we were staying, it took them a bit to get me back to my room. I got to my room around 1 pm and they didn’t start anything until 4:30.

While I was sitting there waiting I was actually having pretty consistent contractions roughly around 5 minutes apart. I was hoping I would just go into labor and that this could get over with fairly quickly. I was only at 1 cm and 60% effaced. At 4:30, they gave me Cervidil, which is supposed to soften the cervix. Sometimes it is enough to start labor on its own, but if not, then they start pitocin 12 hours later. After putting the Cervadil in, contractions kept coming, although maybe slightly stronger. They were still easy enough though, and we were just hanging out. I was reading a book, we were chatting with the nurses, eating food, etc. I started thinking that maybe the epidural route wouldn’t be such a bad way to have a baby. I remember walking the halls of the hospital around 8:30 and being more uncomfortable. I was so sweaty and stinky. I don’t remember what time it was, but I finally took a shower because I couldn’t stand the smell of myself anymore. Things were definitely more uncomfortable now and I really felt like things were progressing, and hoped I wouldn’t have to have the pitocin. I still had to be on the monitor for 20 minutes of every hour, which meant she would make me climb back into bed. I tried to sit on the ball one time but apparently “baby didn’t like it.” What I think that really meant is that the monitor wouldn’t stay put and give an accurate reading. It is so hard to lie in bed and not move during the contractions. At one point the nurse had me lie on my side with the peanut ball between my legs while I was being monitored. I’m not sure how I did it, but I was able to relax and get brief stints of sleep between the contractions. I finally got uncomfortable in that position, and we begged to walk the halls some more. We were able to get into a closed wing with a long hallway and we’d walk back and forth, back and forth. This was around midnight or later. I can’t remember if I got checked before or after this point, but I was only between a 3-4. I remember talking to David about how defeated I felt. I hated them constantly telling me what to do, I hated that things were not going the way I planned, I hated spending my WHOLE labor (instead of just the last several hours) in the hospital. I hated that I was only 3-4 cm when my pain compared to my other labors felt more like I should be at 6-7. I decided that if I had to get pitocin I would most likely get an epidural because it was already hard and I was giving up.

At 4:30 when they took the Cervidil out, I was between 4-5. I was definitely in active labor, so luckily I avoided having to have pitocin, but things were HARD. My other labors were 11 and 12 hours, and here I was at 12 hours and not even at 5. I was very frustrated, but there was nothing to do but keep going. At 6:00 I decided to call the midwife (she said they would still come to the hospital and help out even though they couldn’t deliver the baby). I felt bad calling her because only being at a 5, I felt like it was still going to be a ways away, but I was really struggling and needed some additional support. Both Mary (the midwife) and Summer (the assistant) showed up about 6:30. They made me eat a little bit of food (though the hospital wouldn’t have allowed it if they had known). I was hot and sweaty but had the cold shakes. The contractions were crazy painful and definitely not easy to relax through. After feeling nauseous for a little while, I finally threw up (which happens once every labor, but I was much further along in this labor than with my others). I don’t remember what time it was the next time I asked to check where I was at. I definitely felt like I was in transition, but I was at 6 cm. So discouraging. I couldn’t understand why it was moving so slowly. Everyone always says labor gets faster with each one, but this has not been the case with me. I just couldn’t understand why I FELT like I was at 10 cm, but still wasn’t really even close. It seemed like I was still going to be hours away. Mary kept telling me “you can go from a 6-10 in one contraction.” I just kept thinking “Yeah, right. That’s not how things have been going.”

This one was taken 6 minutes before she was born. I would essentially hang from David during the contraction.

I was at a 7 the next time I got checked, which was probably around 8 or a little later. They said that the bag of waters was already starting to come through the cervix, and baby’s head was right behind. Mary kept repeating to me, “you can get to 10 in one contraction.” Well, by the next contraction or maybe 2, I was dying and feeling like it should be time to push already. The nurse checked me while I was standing up during a contraction (not fun), and couldn’t feel any cervix. They had me get on the bed so she could check again when I was not having a contraction. This time it was 9, but they said I would be at a 10 during a contraction. “Can I push then?” They told me, yes, but I have to wait until the Dr. gets there, and the nurse rushes off to grab him. Well, the next contraction came and I gave a little mini push just to relieve the pressure. I wasn’t holding my breath or bearing down or anything like that, more of a relax and let it flow kind of push. Well, with that my water broke. They’re all yelling at me, “Don’t push! Don’t push! Wait for the Dr.!” I’m sorry, but that’s pretty impossible. With another mini push, the head was out and then baby. The Dr. walked in right after that. The nurse that caught her was actually the one that we met at the very beginning before they even started the induction. In chatting with her we had found out she literally lives right around the corner from us in our subdivision, so we kind of had this mini bond. She was born at June 28, 2014 at 8:44 AM.

Chloe was our smallest at 6 lbs 1.8 oz, 18” long. We knew she wasn’t going to be big, plus she was almost 2 weeks early, so she was pretty much the size I expected. Shayla was 6 lbs 14 oz, and yet Chloe still seems so teeny tiny.

It’s always such a relief to have baby out and healthy (and to see that this one had hair!), but I always forget that the pain isn’t over yet--more contractions to get the placenta out, getting stitched up--none of which is any fun. I held baby (we still weren’t set on a name yet) during all this and David cut the cord. Whew! The last little bit was such a whirlwind. Mary was actually right about jumping to a 10 so quickly. For such a slow progressing labor, she sure came out fast. Everything about this labor was so different than my others—being induced obviously, but just the way it progressed was so different. I always assumed that on a “labor pain” scale, 5 cm would be about a “5,” 7 cm a “7,” etc., but my pain was way ahead of how dilated I was this time. I guess I just didn’t know that was possible. With my other 2, the pushing phase was hard work—holding your breath as long as you can and pushing as hard as you can. I really don’t think you can even say I pushed this time, she practically came out on her own. When Dr. Medchill came to check up on me the next morning, he said that he was sorry I tore. I just shrugged, because it’s just kind of expected. He said that I wouldn’t have torn if he had been there. Oh. Bummer. I kind of felt like maybe he was angry with me for not waiting for him, but I’m really not sure I could have stopped it if I tried. So, it is what it is. Recovery is still way better with a tear than an episiotomy. WAY better.

The rest of the hospital stay was pretty uneventful. My parents brought Shayla and Easton over, who of course adored her from the moment they saw her.

Tanner and Jenn also stopped by. We still didn’t get out as early as we would have liked the next day, but we did have a good nurse who had everything all ready and waiting, so that we could leave as soon as the pediatrician came in.

My family brought dinner over that night when they brought the kids home, and they even left us all the leftovers. That ended up being more of a blessing than we thought, since one of our dinners never showed up. David had the whole week off. I had all these plans of things he could get done while he was home, but I pretty much spent the whole week feeding a baby, and he spent most of his time feeding the others, and changing diapers, and doing all the “mom” stuff. I think I maybe got one nap that week. We also had to get ready for the family reunion which was the next Monday, but we had family coming into town on Saturday. I know I shouldn’t worry about whether or not the house was cleaned, but I just can’t let someone come stay at our house when the carpet hasn’t been vacuumed in weeks (and it gets dirty within a day or 2 of vacuuming), or the kitchen floors are sticky. So, with all the last minute family reunion stuff, it just wasn’t a super relaxing week.

The week after the reunion (when she was 2 weeks old) has been my first week alone with the kids, and I must admit that I survived okay. My mom watched Shayla and Easton all day on Monday, and a friend watched them for a few hours Friday, so I did have some help. The house may not be super clean, but the laundry is done and mostly put away. Our fridge is essentially empty, but we have had dinner on the table every night, so we’re alright.

I’m a little disappointed because with Easton I gained 29 lbs, and I came home from the hospital having lost 20 lbs already. It has pretty much been the opposite with Chloe. I gained 35 lbs, but I started off weighing less. 4 weeks later and I still have only lost about 12 lbs. This is going to be a long journey. I really can’t wait until I can start exercising again. I can’t stand all this extra belly fat hanging around.

Chloe has been a pretty good baby for the most part. We had a few struggles with eating in the first week or two, mostly that I couldn’t get her to wake up to eat. She essentially sleeps through the night and I have to wake her up just enough to eat. The last several nights she has woken me up about every hour and a half, but then she falls right back asleep and never seems to get a full feeding in, which means she’s hungry again in another hour or so. She’ll be awake for quite a long time in the morning, where she’s trying to fall asleep and can’t, and just wants to be held. But then come late afternoon she is pretty much out. The other kids are always wanting to hold her (though Easton is done after about 30 seconds), and touch her and call her “Cu-mo.” I have no idea what that means, well actually Shayla said it means “baby.” I ask them over and over to leave her alone, and then they will touch her, “Look Mom, she’s awake!” Argh. That’s exactly why I asked you NOT to touch her. I’m glad that there’s no jealousy and all just love. As hard as my pregnancy was, especially when having to deal with the other 2 kids, I was really having a hard time getting excited about having another one to take care of (and feeling guilty because of it). But now that she’s here, I just love her to pieces. Having done it twice before, I’m really trying hard not to take this sweet and tiny phase for granted. I’m trying to enjoy all the moments when she wants nothing else but to be held by Mommy (even when I’ve got to get dinner going).

We are all so in love with her.

Shayla’s My Little Pony Birthday Party (2-1-2014)

2014-04-17T17:18:00.001-07:00

I decided this would be a good year for Shayla to have a birthday party, and she definitely thought it would be a good idea too. I let her pick the theme, and she chose My Little Pony. We started perusing Pinterest and Google, and came up with some fun ideas. My sister in law, Linsey, always makes nice cakes, so we enlisted her to come up with a cute My Little Pony cake. Shayla decided that Fluttershy was her favorite pony, because she is yellow, and yellow is her favorite color. Linsey ended up not being able to do the cake at the last minute, but she had already done the fondant part, which turned out so awesome. The ghetto part of the cake was all me, the awesome part was Linsey. Even if my part didn’t look pretty, it sure tasted yummy.

I worked for several weeks to get everything ready that I could beforehand, but I still ended up being up late the night before setting up, and then all the last minute food stuff as guests were arriving.

I had planned on making little signs for the food, but ran out of time. This is what they were supposed to be: Fluttershy’s Bunny Treats (carrots and dip), Spike’s rainbow skewers, Applejack’s apples and dip, and Rainbow Dash’s Skittles.

I forgot to take a picture of this the day of, so this is the day after falling apart version.

We invited several little girls from church, and one neighbor girl, and I think everyone had a fun time.

We started off by decorating our unicorn horns:

Next we went to Rainbow Dash’s nail parlor and decorated our hooves.

We had to get pictures of everyone once they were all beautified.

Shayla and Sophie Blackson

Reese Overton, Shayla, and Sophie Blackson

Shayla and Grace Puno

Paige Butler and Alyssa Fantauzzi

Alyssa and Calista Fantauzzi

Of course we had to open presents. Sophie kept asking me which present was for her.

Next up was cake and singing happy birthday:

Then, we let the girls run around and play until the mom’s were ready to leave. Shayla definitely enjoyed it (and has loved all the toys she got). I think the other girls had fun. Success. We’ll see how I do pulling off a birthday party with a bunch of rambunctious boys in a couple years.

Shayla’s 4th Birthday

2014-04-16T17:13:00.001-07:00

Shayla was SO excited for her birthday. Her birthday fell on a preschool day and she couldn’t wait to bring cupcakes. The day before her birthday she had a pretty high fever and was kind of miserable. I was just praying she would be better on her birthday. She was acting her normal self when she woke up on her birthday, but she still had a fever of 99/100 so I couldn’t exactly send her to preschool like that. I told her that we would have to bring cupcakes another day. I was so sad that she didn’t get to go. She seemed okay with it though. All day she kept asking when daddy was going to get home from work so she could open her presents.

David put this up on the fridge for her:

Opening presents:

She really wanted a cake with yellow frosting (“because yellow is her favorite color”), so that’s what she got. She still can’t really figure out how to blow out candles. (You can hear David give a blow to help her out).

We also let her have a birthday party this year which she was also very excited about. That’s coming up in the next post…

5th Anniversary Trip (January 9-12, 2014)

2014-04-14T13:50:00.001-07:00

David and I celebrated our 5th anniversary this year. We wanted to do something special, but didn’t want to spend a ton of money. We picked somewhere close where we could drive and where we could get reservations with our timeshare, so we wouldn’t be paying for that. Las Vegas ended up being our destination, even though it’s not our favorite place and we’ve been there several times before. This time we decided to do some of the random things that we haven’t done in the past. On the way into town, we stopped at the Hoover Dam, and walked over the new bridge. We talked about doing the dam tour, but it was too late, and I was starving.

Lame selfie of the Nevada sign, except we cut off half the word:

Dam from bridge:

Us:

Lake Mead lookout:

The next day I realized that I forgot to pack all the necessary underwear that I needed (we did have a washer and dryer, but I didn’t want to have to do wash every day), so we set out on a mission to buy more, which we both needed anyways. Luckily Vegas has one distribution center not far from where we were staying, but that took forever for us to make all our selections.

Once that was finally done, we headed to tour Ethel M’s chocolate factory. The tour was pretty lame actually, you just walk through a hallway on your own and read signs that explain stuff and watch several poorly timed videos. You can also watch the candy making in progress, unless you happen to get there when everyone is on break and no candy making is happening. But we did get to sample some chocolate and peanut brittle, and then of course we had to buy some very yummy but overpriced chocolates. There were botanical gardens outside of the factory, so we walked around those for awhile too.

David really wanted to do the Hoover Dam tour, so we drove back and did the whole big tour where you get to go inside and all the way down to the bottom. It is interesting and worth doing once.

This is one of the tunnels inside the dam:

The next two pictures were taken from one of the vents inside the dam:

Some other views from after the tour:

Stateline

That night we went to the Cirque del Soleil show “O.” It was really weird, but it was pretty cool too. We had no idea what the story was supposed to be, but the stunts they do are pretty amazing. The stage moves up and down in many different pieces. One second, someone would be standing on a piece of the stage, and the next, someone would be diving into water from the same spot from 30 feet in the air. After the show was over, my poor pregnant body was too tired to do much else, so we just headed back for the night.

The next morning, we got up and did a hike in Red Rock State Park (something like that). The hike that we did was Ice Box Canyon. We pretty much followed a dry riverbed, which meant that there was a lot of climbing up and over rocks.

The hike ended at some waterfalls and pools. Unfortunately, to see all the pools, you had to do some rock climbing that I was not up for doing with my very worn tennis shoes. But David and one other man did, so he got some shots for me. Not too much to see really.

A shot of us as we were coming out of the canyon:

I had really been wanting to go to a buffet. We went to one of the mid-priced ones on the strip (which was still WAY too expensive), and ended up being sorely disappointed. Nothing was very appealing to my pregnant appetite. We could have just spent the same amount of money and went to a higher end restaurant.

We just walked the strip afterward to catch some of the free shows. I had never seen the volcano at the Mirage (or even known that it existed). It was fun to see.

We also saw the water show at the Bellagio which never gets old.

We happened upon a Michael Jackson and Elvis show:

Sunday we got to enjoy a sacrament meeting with no interruptions from children, and then we made the trek back to Phoenix and to pick up our kiddos. We enjoyed the time away.

Christmas 2013

2014-04-11T21:10:00.001-07:00

The next several posts have been written for quite some time, but I lost some of my Christmas pictures, and it took awhile to get copies of them from my Dad. I wanted to keep everything in order, so yes they all happened months ago, but here they are anyway.

The kids got to see Santa quite a few times this year. First in CA when we went to their cousin Ayden’s baptism:

Next at our ward Christmas party:

We also saw Santa at the Reed Christmas party:

You would never know that they both were always super excited to see Santa by the looks on their faces. We had been talking about a bike to Shayla, so with a little prodding, she did actually tell Santa what she wanted.

We also got some pictures with Grandma Reed at the Christmas party as well.

Christmas Eve we hosted a family dinner at our house, with the usuals of ham, cheesy potatoes, salad, and probably rolls, but I don’t remember now.

We attempted to reenact the Nativity, but a certain little “Joseph” was getting tired and grumpy. Shayla was Mary, Zoey and the naked baby doll both played the part of Jesus, Taylor and Shelbie were shepherds and David was the wise man bearings gifts of soap dispensers.

Christmas morning the kids were obviously excited to see what Santa had brought and to open some presents. Coming down the stairs:

Santa came through and brought bikes. Luckily Shayla didn’t mind that Santa could only find a boys’ bike (she didn’t even know the difference). Months later and Shayla is just barely getting the hang of how to turn the pedals. Easton still has no clue. When he asks to go ride his bike, he’s really just asking for someone to push him, or he’ll just carry it around with him.

Shayla got some princess dress-up:

Easton got lots of cars:

And Cars pajamas:

They got some books and some movies:

They both got soccer balls (Shayla picked out the one to give to Easton):

Shayla got a My Little Pony Castle and Easton got Legos that can be made into cars from the Soto family. They were pretty excited about those.

You can see in the background that there are a few other gifts we did not get pictures of. After opening presents, we packed up and headed over to the Merrill’s to celebrate and eat breakfast. The kids enjoyed opening their gifts from Nana and Grandpa and from Shelbie.

Shayla and Charlotte both enjoyed the Disney princess ponies that go down the ramps. Easton actually likes them quite a bit too. :)

Easton got a big dump truck that makes noises. Can’t see it too well in the pictures though.

Shayla got this princess book from Charlotte. She really enjoys playing with it a lot too. It has paper doll dress up clothes for Belle, and she really enjoys that part.

She also really loves her Rapunzel Barbie. Really it was all a hit this year. I love the look on her face in this video. It is obvious that she really likes it, but like she’s trying really hard to contain the excitement.

Easton and Lightning McQueen. He was frantic when he saw there was a Lightning McQueen (Yighta Keen) and he couldn’t get to it. He also got Mater, but the battery died before he got to it. These are his absolute 2 favorite cars, though he usually carries all 4 of the Cars cars that he owns around.

Easton’s 2nd birthday 12-2-2013

2014-02-12T13:51:00.001-08:00

A little background info: we finally got a Café Rio out on our side of town. They had a pre-grand opening where if you signed up, you got a coupon for two free entrees. Well, what Mormon can pass that up? It happened to fall on Easton’s birthday. So, we all went and had a nice big (and free) Café Rio dinner. By the time we waited in line, ate our food, and got home, it was already pretty late and we were all stuffed. So we decided to wait on the cake, and we just let Easton open presents. He was pretty bummed that it was too late to have time to play with them.

He loves his Lightning McQueen slippers, even though he won’t keep them on for more than a couple of minutes.

He was pretty upset that Daddy wouldn’t open up his airport for him.

David’s parents were in town the next evening, so we celebrated with cake with them.

Opening his present from Nana and Grandpa Snow

He didn’t totally get what was going on , but he loves singing Happy Birthday, opening presents, and eating cake, so it was still a happy couple days for him. When you asked him how old he was, he would say “I turn 7!” I have no idea how he came up with that number. Finally, 2 months later, he is now finally saying that he is 2. Also, after both mine and Shayla’s birthday, he was ready to have another birthday of his own. He doesn’t totally get that birthdays only come once a year. “It’s my birthday!”

Field trip to Tolmachoff Farms 11-27-2013

2014-02-11T13:19:00.001-08:00

For one of Shayla’s preschool field trips, we went to a local farm. We’ve been there before, but we didn’t make it around Halloween when most people usually go. David decided last minute to take the day off of work (it was the day before Thanksgiving), so he got to come along with us. The kids really enjoyed having him there.

They let the kids pick several different vegetables (cucumber, zucchini, the tiniest carrots you’ve ever seen, swiss chard). They took them through a short route in the corn maze. They got to ride the train. We checked out the animals. The baby pigs were very popular.Then they got to jump on the big bouncy trampoline thing. The kids loved it: anything involving being outside and running around (and seeing animals), always makes them happy.

What the kids do…

2014-02-11T12:59:00.001-08:00

I don’t have a smart phone, so I feel like I am behind in the “always capturing pictures of my kids’ doing stuff” department. No random pictures while we’re out shopping, or just hanging out. I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to get pictures of the kids doing our day to day things.

11-4-2013 This one is pretty true to form. Shayla would wear her pajamas all day long, every day if I would let her (and even when I tell her not to). She especially loves these Doc McStuffins pajamas. She has always loved doing puzzles, and we haven’t been doing them as much as we used to (because I have them put away to where I have to get them down for her). She really can pretty much do them on her own, but sometimes she gets frustrated when she can’t find the piece that’s right in front of her face. Then she thinks that she needs me to do it for her. Usually a little guidance is all it takes.

Easton loves to sing. Some of his favorite songs are “ABC’s,” The Jake and the Neverland Pirates theme song, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, I am a Child of God, Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells.

11-10-2013 Singing ABC’s. For awhile, each time he sang it, he would leave out more and more letters. Now he is back to singing it more thoroughly.

11-11-2013 Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

11-13-2013 I just had to get a picture of the way he was sleeping here.

11-19-2013 Easton also loves to build with blocks. Back then he would say, “Look Mommy! Make! Block!” (As in, look what I made). I have to look, and get really excited and say “Awesome!” He’ll often tell me it’s awesome too. Now he tells me “Build a house!” He usually just makes really tall towers and then gets frustrated when they tip over. Shayla likes to use the blocks too, which can cause some problems, even though we have 2 different types, and they could easily each use their own. Easton is definitely the one you are more likely to see building something.

12-26-2013 Shayla really loves the book Pinkalicious. She literally has the whole book memorized. She slurs the words together, which makes it difficult to understand, but she is getting it almost word for word. The video is long. I’m mostly putting it on for me to remember, but feel free to watch for a bit to get the idea.

2-2-2014 Shayla got some My Little Pony things for both Christmas and her birthday, and has played with them almost non-stop. The only problem is that they come with a lot of little pieces. Shayla never wants to clean up after herself because she’s always going to “play with it again later.” We keep finding pieces all over. This is going to have to change before a new baby comes around.

Of course I don’t take pictures of the kids watching TV. They really love Jake and the Neverland Pirates. They play on the “pirate ship” on our swingset outside, and Jake, Izzy, and Cubby are pretty much Shayla’s imaginary friends that hang out with her all the time. Easton really likes Mickey Mouse and Word World.

Family Photos 11-02-2013

2014-02-10T15:11:00.001-08:00

It was about time for some updated family photos, and since I’ve never done Christmas cards, I thought maybe we should go for it this year. We just did a “mini session,” but I got enough pictures that I was happy with that I didn’t even have to go back and do Shayla’s and Easton’s 4 and 2 year old photos.

Such good pictures of Easton:

She was trying so hard to pose just the way the photographer asked her to.

I kind of feel like we’re all going to tip over in this picture. I tend to tilt my head in pictures, and I don’t realize I’m doing it. Somebody make me stop!

This was the Christmas card photo.

And here’s the Christmas card while I’m thinking of it. Apparently people don’t actually read these things because very few people actually caught the baby announcement on there. I was working on my photoshop skills, and ended up pretty happy with how it turned out.

Upper Reunion 2013 and the Saga of the Cars

2013-11-04T14:58:00.001-08:00

The “Uppers” are my roommates from BYU. We lived with each other in some combination or another throughout all of our BYU years. We have all attended each other’s weddings. Most of our reunions have been when we gathered together for weddings, but now we are trying to get together every 2 years. Last time, we all got together in Vancouver, WA at Jamie’s house. This year I volunteered to be the host.

I spent the few weeks leading up to it cleaning out rooms that had gathered up junk and getting the house more organized and presentable. I cleaned out our closet and made a big DI pile. It was just an excuse to get things done that have needed done for awhile. I saved all of the basic cleaning for the last couple of days beforehand, because with small children, we all know how long it stays clean.

A few weeks prior, we got a leak in one of the Mazda tires. It couldn’t be fixed, and all of the tires were at the point where they should be replaced. So, we bit the bullet and just did it all at once since it’s cheaper to buy them as a set than individually. Unfortunately, this car has racing tires, which makes them very pricey. Well, the next week, David’s car broke down on the way home from work. Long story why, but we had just bought a tow rope the week before, so I was able to go and we towed his car home. The next morning we paid a tow truck to tow it to the shop. That ended up being a somewhat pricey repair, and the first time his car has ever broken down in 15 years. The Mazda had been having some “jumping” issues, and we knew it was related to the transmission, so the next week, we finally got around to taking it in. This was Monday, 3 days before everyone was supposed to arrive. Well, we find out that they have to take apart the whole transmission to figure out what’s going on. That by itself is $400, let alone what the actual repair is going to be. Yikes. Cars are starting to get expensive around here. By Wednesday, they determined that we were going to have to completely rebuild the transmission. More than just pricey. Rip your heart out and bury it in the ground pricey.

We had been juggling cars for the last week and a half. Wednesday I had tons of errands to run before Nichole arrived Thursday morning (groceries, etc.). I also was finally getting around to getting my hair done. My appointment was back in Mesa. I was driving David’s car, and I had the kids with me. Well, about halfway there (and I was already running a few minutes late), the RPM needle thingy started moving all over the place. Weird. But then the car started sputtering. It stopped sputtering, then started again. I was not going to stay on the freeway in this condition. I of course call David crying. Not only am I breaking down on the freeway with my children, but I have a thousand things to do, I am late for an appointment, I don’t want to spend any more money repairing cars, and I HAVE to have a car to pick people up from the airport the next day. This was the worst time possible to be car-less. I was only a few miles away from my Dad’s work, so I got off the freeway and was able to sputter myself over there. He so graciously let me take his truck. We switched the car seats over, and I finally made it to my appointment about 45 minutes late. I felt horrible. And then Shayla peed all over her floor. Awesome. And then I couldn’t find my checkbook to pay her. Triple awesome. The day really could not get any worse. Shayla missed her dance class for the second week in a row due to car issues.

The only benefit to all this, was that I was able to leave my kids with my mom while I ran my errands. I was actually able to get it done pretty fast. I was scared to drive the Honda back home by myself with the kids, so my dad let me take his truck home, and he drove on the surface streets. Oh yeah, and in all this, the battery on my phone died, and I didn’t have my car charger because I wasn’t in any of our cars. I had to borrow my mom’s cell phone so that my dad could get ahold of me in case he got stuck. David went and got a rental so that I would have a car the next day. David, my Dad and I all arrived home within a few minutes of each other. Apparently the Honda kept dying on my Dad. He barely made it. By this time, it was about 6:30 pm. Luckily we had leftovers that night. By the time we ate and got kids to bed, it was probably about 8:30. I had tons of cleaning to get done that hadn’t happened yet since I hadn’t been home. I was up to 1:30 AM. So tired. So relieved for the stress to be over.

The good news was that my Dad and David figured out that it was just the fuel filter in the Honda, and David was able to fix that on his own with just a few bucks. That was a relief. It was a pain having to leave my friends Friday afternoon to go return the rental and pick up David. Then again Saturday, I had to leave again to finally go and pick up the Mazda. But at least all the cars were working at that point.

The bad news was I got a text from my Dad the next day saying the transmission went out on his truck. The truck that I had just been driving all over town with my kids. I felt horrible, like I cursed it, but also very grateful that I had been protected driving it with my children.

Nichole was the first one to arrive at 9:30 AM. She got to run with me to Costco to finish my final errand that didn’t get done the day before. :) She was kind enough to stay with Easton (who was napping) while I ran and picked up Jamie, and her baby Megan. There was traffic on the freeway, and we literally pulled in to pick Shayla up from preschool right on the dot. Both of my kids were so excited to have babies in the house. The just laughed and giggled and smiled at them, and wanted to kiss them. Shayla was also very excited about holding the babies too. Tera arrived later that evening. She apparently got stuck in the worst traffic backup ever in Phoenix. With her crying baby. He just had the most traumatized look on his face when they walked in the door. Poor little guy. London came Friday with her two girls, and Holly came Saturday with her baby, Katelyn.

This is Shayla with Megan. The flash kept making poor Megan close her eyes, so we didn’t get too great of a picture of both of them.

We had lots of fun with each other. We mostly just hung out and visited. It was amazing how easy it is to pick up where you left off. Even though it had been at least 2 years (and more for some), since we had seen each other, it felt like it was just yesterday that we were all in college together.

We did LOTS of crafting.

We went out to Oregano’s together. We worked out together. We crafted some more. It was such a fun (but still exhausting) weekend. My family loved having them all here. David didn’t really know much of them, though he’s heard all about them, so he enjoyed getting to know everyone. He commented how impressed he was that we were able to have such a close knit group of friends, and that we still stay in touch and are friends 10 years later. It was so fun to hear about everyone’s families and to see where life has taken them. We are spread out all over the country.

It took me over a week to catch up on sleep (I went to bed after 1:30AM for 5 days in a row), but it was so worth spending time with some of my most favorite people (though we all missed Red’s presence). Love these girls.

Halloween 2013

2013-11-01T15:18:00.001-07:00

I have long wanted to have Shayla be Snow White for Halloween, with her dark hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. With her love of princesses, it was an easy sell. When I saw the costume on sale at Costco a couple of months ago, I snatched it up happy that I wouldn’t have to worry any further about her costume.

She was obviously not in the mood to smile.

I decided to have Easton be Lightning McQueen this year since he loves cars and Cars so much. I was sure I was not the first one to make the costume, so I googled it and got some ideas. I just used a pull-ups box, less than a roll of red wrapping paper from the dollar store, lots of packing tape (and some duct tape) to hold it all together, and some paper scraps I had. Super cheap. He even wore the same red shirt and pants that he used for his costume last year (though they were a tad bit on the small side). Definitely took more effort in the time department though. He was definitely the most excited any of my kids have been about their costume though. “Lightning Keen Car.” Over and over. I was worried he would get annoyed with it, and not keep it on. When I put it on him to test it out, he got very angry when I tried to take it off. He just loved walking around with it on. He was very proud of it. Yesterday at Shayla’s preschool party, he found a Little People car, and he carried that around while walking around in his costume. He did have a few casualties, such as tripping and falling and not being able to get back up. This also tore the box a bit and I had to do some surgery to fix it all back up again. As we were out trick-or-treating last night, everybody “oohed” and “aahed” about how cute he was.

Sweet face

I think the kids got a better haul at the ward Trunk or Treat than we did going out last night. Easton was really good at saying “trick or treat.” He loved to put the candy in his bag by himself.

With Shayla’s friend Paige Butler

We didn’t carve pumpkins until the night before Halloween, partly because I forgot, and partly because if you do it more than a few days early, it tends to get gross before Halloween. Shayla wanted a Mommy pumpkin and a baby pumpkin, so she helped David in the design.

Shayla’s preschool had a Halloween party on Halloween.

I was in charge of a craft. We made little bats out of toilet paper rolls. I was too busy trying to keep track of Easton and helping Shayla and the other kids to get any pictures of that. Easton kept wandering off and climbing up the swingset. It just makes me nervous when he’s up there by himself. He won’t go down the slide, so he tries to climb down the ladder, and I don’t really trust his ability to go down backwards. This little boy sure loves to be outside every chance he can get. I let him out in our backyard, and he just happily wanders around and plays in the dirt.

Back to the party. They played some games, and then did trunk or treating at the end. This time Easton wasn’t so willing to say trick-or-treat. He even got angry a couple times when I would try to take him over to get candy. Shayla had no problems with it of course, and couldn’t wait to get home and check out her loot.

Trick or treating that night was a bit of a bust. There aren’t very many houses that pass out candy anymore. You waste a lot of time walking up to doors with lights on, and then no one answers. After we got home, we found that the kids were given Halls cough drops from someone. That’s NOT candy! One cute little thing from the night: Easton still wouldn’t say “trick-or-treat.” So one person asked him if he wanted candy. In his sweetest little voice: “Yes.” The guy thought that was pretty funny.

All ready to go!

Sedona

2013-10-31T16:07:00.001-07:00

We were given a 3 day/2 night stay in Sedona for attending a timeshare presentation (plus some additional cash that also funded our new TV). We made a small family vacation out of it. David took the day off of work on Friday, and we went straight to Slide Rock State Park in Oak Creek Canyon before checking in at the resort. We ate a picnic lunch and then hiked down to the creek. It is quite the hike. I did not know it was so far removed from the parking lot. We had all of our change of clothes, and the diaper bag, and extra shoes, sunscreen, etc. It was heavy carrying it all the way down there. The water was quite cold, but the kids really enjoyed playing in it.

They were not so sure they liked the Slide Rock portion of it

Easton

Shayla

It was good we went to Slide Rock the 1st day, because it rained most of the rest of the trip. We were able to go swimming in the resort pool when there was a brief respite in the afternoon. We found a yummy pizza place to eat dinner, and just generally hung out the rest of the time. On Sunday we tried to attend church, but we got there and found out it was Stake Conference about 45 minutes away. So instead, we drove up to Flagstaff to check out a family reunion location for next year (nothing is working out!), and we had a picnic lunch up there and played a little at the park before we headed home. It was a short trip, but a fun little getaway.

A few other random happenings

2013-10-30T16:51:00.001-07:00

Father’s Day. (6-6-2013) Super late posting. I know. The kids love having a reason to celebrate.

7-21-2013 This is another one of Shayla’s random dress-ups. That is a frisbee she is wearing on her head. Easton just discovered said frisbee this week and has been wearing it around as a hat as well.

6-22-2013 My parents have an apple tree that produces quite a bit. They are green apples that are not very good for eating, but they are good for baked goods…pie, apple crisp, and APPLESAUCE. We got buckets and buckets from my parents and over the course of a week, made 60 quarts of applesauce I think. It is messy business, but it is good. It is free. My were the kitchen floors a sticky mess by the end of the week. The glass-top stove was impossible to clean off the sticky boiled over apple water/juice. We’ve got plenty of applesauce to last us until next year!

Shayla really enjoyed helping to turn the crank.

7-25-2013 Easton woke up with his eyes glued shut. Poor boy was not happy about me cleaning it off for him.

And if I take a picture of Easton, then Shayla needs one too. She’s actually smiling in this one, which makes it worth sharing.

7-26-2013 David’s work sponsored a family night at the Arizona Science Center. They fed us dinner and we had the place to ourselves for the evening. The kids enjoyed exploring. Apparently I didn’t take many photos.

You spin around on this thing.

Playing in the dirt, making rivers, lakes, and such.

7-28-2013 Since my last haircut didn’t turn out so well, we got Mariah to do it this time. He actually did pretty well at holding still for a toddler. It helps having toys to play with.

He looked so much better after, but we never did get a very good picture.

I volunteered to help with a baby shower for a woman that I worked with in YW’s. I was in charge of decorating. I made my first ever diaper cake, and I must say I was pretty proud of it.

8-3-2013 Here are the decorations from the shower. I should have just volunteered to do it at my house because it was a lot of work hauling all the décor back and forth.

8-2-2013 Yes, Easton still sucks his thumb. Sometimes I don’t see him do it very much and I think he’s starting to grow out of it, but then other times it seems like he can’t keep the thing out of his mouth. The more busy he is with toys and running around, then he tends to forget about it. But if he’s just sitting around, or is sad or scared, the thumb immediately goes in. It would be cute if I knew it wouldn’t be a pain to break him of the habit.

8-26-2013 David’s birthday. When David asked Shayla what she did that day, she said “Went to the store and bought clothes!” This was before he opened his presents of course. I think he probably figured out what he was getting.

9-8-2013 Easton with his cars (what else?)

9-23-2013 My brother Taylor and his wife Mariah had their first baby, Zoey Jane. We had been anticipating her arrival for a few days, so we were all so excited when she finally made it. When I told Shayla, she asked if it was Zoey’s birthday. Well, yes, actually it is. So we had to sing her happy birthday when we went to meet her. Shayla and Easton sure loved her. So did we.

Everything else that has happened since the last string of updates merits its own post. I’ll keep cracking…

Easton Updates

2013-10-27T17:09:00.001-07:00

We had the YW over to watch a movie for mutual and Easton was pushing around the pink stroller (weaving in and out of all the girls sitting on the floor), while also wearing high heels. I was a little embarrassed for his lack of manliness, but he makes up for it with his love of cars. The first thing he does every morning is to go find his 3 Little People cars. He goes to the little end table we have in the family room and pushes them all around. “Car. Honk. Honk.Vroom.” He also loves to put his cars in the stroller and push them all around the house. We finally entered the land of HD TV’s a few weeks ago, and we put in the movie “Cars” to test it out for the first time. He got SOO excited. He loves the movie anyway, but I think the fact that it was BIG was just so amazing to him. He was screaming “cars! cars!” and kicking his little legs and just so happy. The other day when we were eating breakfast, he says “Pocus! Peed!” It took me awhile, but figured out he was saying “Focus! Speed!” from Cars. When we were camping a few weeks ago, he would wander off, and then go stare at and touch any of the trucks that are around. Sometimes he calls them cars, sometimes “Honk.” Every car he sees is a green car. Whenever we are in a parking lot, he is always pointing out all the “green cars.”

Easton has really turned into quite the little helper lately. Much moreso than Shayla is or ever was. He already likes to take their plates out of the dishwasher and put them away (I keep all the plastic plates and bowls in a cupboard they can get to). When I’m making a meal, he gets their plates out and puts them on the counter for me. He usually gets 4 or 5 plates, which is far too many, but he’s trying. In the last couple of weeks he has started wanting to “help” me cook. He’ll pull the chair up to the counter and climb up saying “help!” I’ll let him help me with whatever he can. He LOVES sweeping. We have a push broom and a regular broom, so if David is using the push broom, then he will grab the other broom and start dragging it around the kitchen all the while telling us “Seep. Help.”

10-20-2013

He has also really loved playing with blocks lately. He likes to just stack them up as tall as he can. Then he will get my attention and say “Make! Blocks!” He is so excited to show me what he made. I get very excited and tell him how awesome it is. Sometimes he will try to carry his creations around the house, but then he gets very frustrated when they inevitably fall apart. Lately when I’ve gone to pick him up from nursery, he is almost always building something with the blocks (or playing with cars). Today we were out in the hall waiting for church to be over and he kept saying something to me over and over and getting angry. I finally figured out that he saw the door to nursery and was saying “play blocks!”

One other funny little thing: Shayla has been watching My Little Ponies a lot lately. We were doing the free month trial of Netflix, so when we are looking for something to stream for them, he sees the picture of My Little Ponies, and he’ll start yelling: “Ponies! Me! Me!” all while raising his hands. The other day we made pancakes for breakfast and David asked who wanted pancakes. Easton comes running in raising his hands “Pancakes! Me! Me!” Most days he requests bacon and eggs for breakfast. True mark of a man.

He is saying lots of short little sentences: Light off. Camera off. Wash hands, etc. He has learned the word “mine.” But he will also say “my car” or “my da-doo (water)”.

He loves listening to music and dancing. He always wants to listen to music in the car, then he’ll say “dance!” and start kicking his legs. Shayla and Easton will giggle back and forth as they are dancing. As soon as the song ends, he says “Music off,” but gets excited when another song comes back on. Shayla gets upset sometimes and does not want to listen to music in the car, so we can have a bit of problem with conflicts of interest there. He also loves to sing songs. Most of the time he just talks in a sing-songy voice. When I change his diaper, he often says “Sing song.” Then he proceeds to sing: “Yucky poop, Yucky poop.” He’ll tell me he wants to sing ABC’s or Sunbeams. He loves singing the theme song to My Little Ponies.

Easton really loves reading books lately. Problem is, he loves the same ones over and over. We have to different Car books, and those are his absolute favorite of course. He also loves the Farm Animal book and Donkey Donkey. We’ll pick other books to read to him at night, but he always remembers and starts requesting: “Cars book,” “amils book,” “donkey, donkey,” etc. Lately he has also really got into “what’s that?” We are reading books, and he has to point to everything “what’s that?” He often asks the question because he knows the answer and wants to tell me. “What’s that? Cow. Moo.” But other times he will point to totally random things and wants to know what it is. This very much delays the progress of book reading, but that’s how he learns, so I deal.

He also likes to tell me what he’s hearing. “Hear doggy.” “Hear car.” “Hear a-pane (airplane).” He always stops in the middle of whatever he is doing and seems to be very fascinated by whatever it is. His most recent is “Hear fire truck. Wee-oo wee-oo.” Just about any car he hears driving past is now a fire truck wee-oo wee-oo.

He was not so excited about being left in nursery at first. He was a bit more clingy than Shayla was. But after a few weeks of “warming up” to everyone he has a blast. His nursery leader, who is quiet and doesn’t say much of anything to us, told me a couple weeks ago “Easton is doing AWESOME! He was a bit unsure about nursery at first, but now he’s singing all the songs and just really getting into it.” That surprised me, because while Shayla always knew all the songs, I think it took her a long time before she actually started participating instead of just watching everyone else. I was glad to hear that he was taking to it so well. Then last week he told me “Man, Easton really likes to eat, doesn’t he?” Oh boy, does he. We were laughing at him this morning because he was just shoving large spoonfuls of oatmeal into his mouth and swallowing them as fast as he could. He doesn’t even stop to chew. It’s like eating is a race to him. He finishes within a couple minutes and is asking for “more o’meal.” It is impossible to keep up with him.

Seriously, this boy loves to eat, and he eats just about everything except the majority of vegetables. He loves peas, but broccoli or green beans, notsomuch. He loves sweet potatoes and carrots if they are cooked. He pretty much doesn’t like anything if it involves too much chewing. He shoves as much food as possible into his mouth at one time. We tell him to take small bites, then he will spit it all out and start over. Lovely. He usually finishes his meal before I even have a chance to sit down. I am worried about what it is going to be like to feed this boy as a teenager. He already eats as much (or more depending on the meal) than I do.

9-30-2013 He didn’t even wait for us to cut his potato for him. Just ate it whole.

He LOVES playing with the Vitamix. He likes to push the plunger up and down. I stopped keeping it in the cupboard because he would always pull it out. Now he sees it sitting on the counter “Mima-mix!” over and over until I let him play with it.

6-4-2013 I mentioned awhile back, how he folds his arms when he prays. Most of the time now, he refuses to pray, but when we can get him to join us, he will fold his arms like this:

He is a goofy little boy, he just loves to play and laugh and be happy. He does this goofy fake laugh that cracks us up every time: Then he’ll often say “Funny!” and laugh some more. I just love having his sweet little personality in our home. I love that he still enjoys a good snuggle with his Mommy too. Well, not very much anymore, but I’ll take them when I get them.

Shayla Updates

2013-10-14T23:52:00.001-07:00

I keep thinking of all these things that I need to write about the kids because it has been so long since I’ve last written. I’m sure I will forget most of them. We’ll start with Shayla’s latest.

Back in June, Shayla was standing on a chair in the kitchen helping me make dinner. She must have taken a step back off of the chair because she fell down on her back and smacked her head on the ceramic tile. She was crying pretty hard (definitely not the fake hurt cry). The only reason I even thought to check her head was because there was a spot of blood on the floor where she had hit. I searched and searched through her hair and couldn’t find where it was coming from. It really wasn’t bleeding very much, especially considering it was a head wound. It oozed a little bit. I wiped it with a clean rag as best as I could and applied some pressure to hopefully stop the bleeding. David was still at work, and was supposed to be home late that night. I called him and decided that it wasn’t bad enough to need stitches, so he stayed at work and the kids and I ate dinner. After dinner, I washed it off a little more and it was still bleeding, but still not very much. I got the kids ready for bed and just put a towel over her pillow so as not to get blood on it. David came home shortly afterward, and he thought she needed stitches. I stayed home with Easton, and he took her to urgent care. She did end up with 2 stitches.
Apparently they tried to staple it at first and it kept jamming, so David suggest they just do the stitches. She whimpered a little when they were trying to do the staples, I think because it was pushing so hard on her head and a little scary. Other than that, she was a super champ and didn’t cry at all. She was very brave. Even now, months later, she will tell me that if she is not careful, then she could fall down and break her head open. I took her to the Dr. to get the stitches removed and one of them was already out, and the other one essentially fell out when the Dr. touched it. What a waste of money, especially considering that was the only thing we’ve put towards our deductible all year. A couple of weeks after that, I was brushing her hair, and a huge wad of hair came out. Then I noticed it was all attached to a piece of skin. Gross. Now she has this random bald spot in the back of her head. It never really scabbed, so it was odd to me that the hair would fall out in that spot. Luckily it’s covered up most of the time, but I do have to be careful how I part her hair when I do pigtails.

She started preschool in August, and just loves it. Her teacher is Miss Bedie from one of the other wards that share our building. She is very sweet with the kids. Every day when I ask her what her favorite part about preschool was it is always “snacks.” Coloring comes in at a close second though. One of the days after she got home she developed a rash all over her arms and face, but especially on the left side. I can’t figure out what she may have eaten that was different, but it appears to have been an allergic reaction of some sort. The only thing I could come up with was maybe the food coloring in “Gogurts.” We only eat plain yogurt at home. But she has fruit snacks and things with food coloring in it during nursery, so I don’t really know. It took about a week for it to go away completely. It was really hard to keep her from scratching it.

8-8-2013 First Day of Preschool

8-15-2013 This was an “about me” poster we made for preschool. Her smile cracks me up.

She also started taking dance from Holly Parsons in our ward, who I work with in YW’s. She loves dance as well. She comes home and sings the songs and does the moves. I stay and watch her sometimes if I don’t have any short errands to run (it’s not long enough for me to run home at all). Poor little girl has both of our lack of flexibility and our fantastic body coordination skills, but she gets better and better every time. They run and leap over the “river” which is two pieces of ribbon laying on the ground. The other little girls picked it up pretty quickly, but Shayla would run up to it, stop, then try to jump with two feet over it. She was always landing in the river. So we got some ribbon and practiced at home just having her walk and take a big step over it. She has definitely improved. It is fun to watch things “click” for them.

7-16-2013

The girl loves everything princess. She loves to put all her dress up clothes and necklaces on (usually all at the same time).

6-19-2013 One of her more random “dress up” outfits

8-2-2013 Like a true mom…stroller, 2 bags, and what you can’t see is that she’s also wearing her backpack

The other morning Shayla came up to David in bed and he asks what she has all over her. “I painted my fingernails!” That got me out of bed pretty fast. I was just envisioning fingernail polish all over the carpet. I went and checked and not a drop to be found. She had put the lid back on (although not very tightly) and put it back in the drawer. She didn’t get it on her pajamas or anything. She painted all of her fingernails and her toe nails. For a 3 year old I was actually quite impressed at how well she did. I couldn’t be mad at that, but I did have to explain to her that it could make a big mess and that she needs to ask mommy to help her next time.

9-21-2013

Her imagination has really started to blossom too. She has been making up lots of stories and songs. The only problem with this is that she wants me to sing the songs with her, and it’s somewhat impossible to know what I’m supposed to say. Or sometimes she’ll want me to be doing something (not a song necessarily) and she wants me to do it EXACTLY how she wants it, and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get it right. So frustrating.

She loves being motherly. We do a babysitting swap with a couple of other families, and she will go up to their babies and talk sweetly in “baby talk” voice and touch them softly and kiss them. The babies don’t usually like it, but she definitely has that sweet motherly instinct. It is hard to remember this sweet tender side of her sometimes when she is being so stubborn and challenging. She is very much a drama queen and the littlest thing can set her off in a frenzy and it is very hard to set things right at that point. She has had fits and refused to eat her meal because her muffin broke in half, or we thought she wanted salsa on top of her food, but she really wanted it on the side. Things like that. Drama drama drama.

A couple funnies from her:

We decided we needed to start reading scriptures with the kids, so we started reading in the evenings last Sunday night. We read again on Monday as part of FHE. We give Shayla a Book of Mormon to "follow along" with, and then we help her "read" a few of the verses. On Tuesday night as we are all just sitting down, she opens up her Book of Mormon and starts reading by herself..."And it came to pass. And it came to pass. And it came to pass." We just busted up. After only 2 times, she caught onto that pretty quickly.

The other day she came into my room after I got out of the shower. I had just wrapped my hair in a towel and put it on top of my head. She looks and me and says, “You look like Jesus’ mommy!”

From FB:

(8-2-2013) Shayla said her stomach hurt when she woke up this morning. I told her maybe she was hungry, so let's eat breakfast and see. After breakfast I asked her if her stomach was feeling better. Her response: "No, but I will feel better when I get married, okay?"

(8-20-2013) "Mommy, your gray hair matches your gray shirt!"

5-30-2013 This is about the only time Shayla takes naps anymore, when she randomly falls asleep in the car:

6-10-2013 I bought these chairs for the kids at Wal-Mart. They use them to sit on when they watch TV, they push them around the kitchen in circles like “race cars”, and sometimes they even carry them upstairs to sit on them. At least this particular day they did. They just carried them up there, sat down and hung out.

6-21-2013 Watching TV in their chairs

6-14-203 I had to get a picture of her in this dress because I think she looks so cute.

6-23-2013 I found these in the bathroom one day:

6-29-2013 I found her asleep like this one night. She had laid out her blankets on the pillows. One for her, and one for teddy bear.

7-2-2013 This is from the Snow Family Reunion, which I will eventually get to, but Shayla had a whole queen sized bed to herself, and yet she kept falling out. Multiple times per night. We found her like this one evening. She was sleeping on top of a suitcase with her legs up inside the bedside table. I have no idea how it’s even possible to sleep like that. We finally just made a bed for her on the floor.

9-13-2013 Our little cheerleader:

That’s enough for now. Shayla really can be a very good and sweet little girl. She can entertain herself for hours, and I just love listening to her play with her toys. The conversations that happen between the toys are awesome. I just wish I could capture these candid moments on camera. Every time I bust out the video, she always stops what she is doing. I need to be more sly.

Shayla’s First Dentist Appointment

2013-05-29T22:46:00.001-07:00

I have been talking up the dentist for the last several weeks to prep her. She came with my to my last appointment 6 months ago, and they gave her some toys. She remembered enough to know that it was fun. I wasn’t sure how well she was going to do with opening her mouth and letting them work in there, but she did so awesome. I think she had fun too. The hygienist did really well with her, telling her about all of the different instruments and letting her try them out. Everyone was impressed that she did so well her first time. I was a proud mama.

One cute little thing…the hygienist asked Shayla how many teeth she thought she had. She thought about it for a minute, then answered “Many!”

2013-5-22

Sucking water out of a cup

Counting teeth

Polishing

And here’s a cute little video:

She did really well with her appointment, but by the time they were done with my teeth, she was totally bored and kept asking when we got to go home. She was very excited about getting a new toothbrush and picking a bracelet from the toy box.

Cheapest vacation on Coronado ever

2013-05-28T21:55:00.001-07:00

David had a work training that just happened to be on Coronado…in the Marriott…which meant that he had a room paid for in a super nice hotel…for 5 nights. I didn’t care whether he really wanted us to come along or not, he had no choice. David had breakfast and lunch provided through his training, and the room we were staying in only had a small fridge (and we got a microwave by request). I have been doing my darndest to keep processed food out of the house. I didn’t want to totally negate all of the good things that we have done in our diet lately, nor did I want to pay the exorbitant amounts it would have cost to eat out for every meal. So I spent the week prior preparing freezer crockpot meals (we brought our crockpot), making homemade cereal, granola bars, a grain-free “oatmeal” that we like, and putting together a few other things that we could eat (yogurt, fruit, applesauce, etc.) I was quite proud of myself. The one thing I didn’t take into account was how small their fridge was. We kept our ice chest stocked up with ice, so it worked out alright.

We did eat out at Claim Jumper on the first night, since we weren’t there long enough to cook anything in the crockpot. I have never taken kids to Claim Jumper before, and they may not do it at all of them, but they had little snacks for the kids to eat while we were waiting for our meal. They also had plastic placemats that actually stuck to the table, since they never actually eat off of their plates anyway. It was genius. I wish all restaurants would do that. Makes for a much more peaceful meal.

We really didn’t do anything super exciting. We just hung out. I would exercise in our room in the morning (we requested bottom floor so as not to drive anyone crazy), Easton would take naps in the pack and play in the bathroom, and Shayla and I would play or watch TV while he was sleeping. We went for lots of walks, hung out at the beach, went to the park, etc. The resort had fish in their little ponds, and both of the kids, but especially Easton LOVED to sit and watch the fish swimming around. He would get so mad when we would take him away. There were also lots of ducks, and he loved chasing them. He would say “Duck, gack gack” (quack) and chase after it.

2013-5-13 Walking along the beach path:

Playing at the nearby park:

David enjoyed seeing all of the big boats going past:

2013-5-14Playing on the beach:

Being the diva that she is:

Eating sand:

One of the evenings, we walked along the beachside path, and there was a man blowing huge bubbles. The kids had a blast chasing them around and trying to pop them. We didn’t have our camera with us, which I’m totally bummed about. That’s the lame thing about not having a smart phone. My phone pictures are too lame to make it even worth trying to take pictures on it.

We went swimming in the resort pool one night. It was slightly too cold. It took the kids awhile to start enjoying it. We were the only people in the pool except for a 7 year old girl who kept following us around and would not stop talking. I was trying really hard to be polite, but she was driving me crazy. Why could her parents not tell her to leave us alone?

2013-5-15

One of the nights we walked to the Hotel del Coronado, which took awhile considering it was on the other side of the island. We found several million dollar homes for sale along that way that we wouldn’t mind purchasing someday. If you want to contribute to the fund, we’ll let you visit anytime.

2013-5-15

The weather was fantastic while we were there. Sunny and warm enough that we could play outside and in the water without getting cold, but not so hot as to make it miserable. It really was just right.

2013-5-16 More beach time:

Another night we were able to get free tickets to the Padres game from some company in the water building/engineering/whatever industry. We got to eat from the fancy buffet, and then had pretty good seats behind home plate. Easton, the boy who eats everything, screamed and cried and refused to eat anything. We finally appeased him with cheese. Plates full of assorted cheese. I was afraid of the digestive distress it was going to cause the next day, but he seemed to be fine. Sometimes you just have to give them what makes them happy. Shayla was actually quite well behaved. Lucky us, on the way to the game, we go to start our car that we hadn’t driven for several days, and it wouldn’t start. The parking garage is essentially empty, so we get the valet’s to come with their little machine thingy that did nothing for helping to jump our car. Luckily we were able to flag someone down that was leaving and get them to give us a jump. Thankfully that worked and we drove straight to AutoZone. Come to find out that we had a bad battery, so luckily we didn’t have to pay for the new one. That did put us a little late getting to the game though.

2013-5-16

They gave both of the kids balls. They both enjoyed them, though Easton just kept chewing on his.

Friday after David got out from his training, we headed to Balboa park. We ate lunch there and walked around. We got some balloon swords from the weird girl hanging out there with her ugly dog. She was nice, even though Shayla was scared of her. Easton just loved running around chasing the birds. We told Shayla we would take her on a carousel. It took us awhile to find it, but we got there and it was closed. So we went on the little train ride instead. Shayla thought that was pretty neat.

2013-5-17

Friday evening we drove to the Ford’s and stayed with them until Sunday. Mom and Dad Snow came over for a barbecue Saturday evening. The kids enjoyed playing with cousins. They gave Shayla and Easton a bunch of books that they had outgrown, and Shayla spent the majority of the car ride back, and lots of time at home reading them. We always welcome new books in this house.

Even though David spent most of the time at training, we still all had a relatively relaxing week, and it’s just nice to go somewhere new to get away for awhile (especially when the weather is so nice)!

Other randomness

2013-05-26T23:07:00.001-07:00

I finally gave Easton his first haircut a couple of months ago. It looked pretty bad, but I was so sad to cut off the little bit of curl he had. I had to make sure to get a before picture. I didn’t get an after picture because let’s be honest, it didn’t look all that great after either. I am no hair stylist.

2013-3-31

We used our 4 man tent last year when we went camping and it was just way too small. We found a decent deal on a bigger one, so we snatched it up for summer camping this year. We set it up in our family room to test it out. The kids had fun playing in it. We are excited to get up to the mountains and the cooler weather sometime this summer.

2013-4-15

Shayla’s eating habits have been less than stellar lately. You really never have any idea whether she is going to eat or not. She will specifically request something for her meal and then refuse to eat it. Sometimes I can’t even get her to come and sit at the table. She will go meals without eating. We don’t really do many snacks around here, and she doesn’t get snacks or treats if she didn’t eat her food. If she does eat, then she often wants us to spoon feed her. It’s so frustrating. I don’t want to give in because then she continues to make these demands, but sometimes we are in a hurry (or just tired of sitting at the table for so long) or she just hasn’t hardly eaten anything for a really long time. She doesn’t care if she doesn’t get treats because she didn’t eat her food. She never says that she is hungry. She has been eating better the last week or two. It just goes in phases. Drives me crazy. It is always a happy day when she eats well. I can’t figure out what she was eating here in this picture.

2013-4-21

I have been doing a rewards chart for Shayla recently after a period of really bad behavior from her. She gets to put a sticker on her chart for doing certain things (i.e. going #2 on the potty, sharing with Easton, obeying me, cleaning up, etc.) When she finished up her first chart, we took her to Dairy Queen for her reward. She got a strawberry sundae, and gobbled it right up.

This little girl can throw some serious temper tantrums. You put her in her room, and she throws everything on the ground. A couple of weeks ago, she got angry and went into the living room and threw one of the lamps on the ground. Luckily it was only the light bulb that broke. Grrr, she can really make me angry sometimes. When she gets at her worst, I have to strap her in her booster seat and put the chair outside where we are out of her sight and she can’t destroy anything. A few tidbits from her mouth lately:

“Mommy, I love you, but I wish you would be kind and obey me.”
(Screaming at me while I’m doing her hair) “You’re making me crazy!”
When I start counting 1, 2, 3 before she gets in trouble: “Stop saying all those numbers!” (It came with a slap in the face tonight).

The rewards chart has brought out more of the sweet, obedient side of her, but we are really struggling to figure out ways to discipline this very stubborn and strong-willed child. She has definitely been more helpful in actually cleaning things up lately, or getting something for me when I ask her to. And the best of all…she has finally stopped pooping her pants! Hallelujah! She still occasionally has an accident because she refuses to go to the potty when I suggest it (yesterday she went 9 hours without using the restroom, which ended in an accident 3 feet away from the toilet). She also has figured out how to get on the big toilet by herself. I’m happy to be done with the potty chair, but I figure I ought to leave it out for Easton. He likes to lift the lid and sit on it. He is showing a little interest, but I don’t think he’s super close to being ready yet. It only took Shayla like 10 months to get potty trained. I really don’t think it could get any more difficult for Easton.

2013-4-22

For a combined YM/YW activity, we went on a hike near the new Phoenix Temple, and then afterward went to the visitor’s center to learn more about the construction. It is up near David’s work, so he met us up there. The angel Moroni was put up last week. We are excited for it to be completed.

2013-4-23

Shayla and Easton are both pretty good at playing by themselves. Notsomuch together, but individually they can entertain themselves. I really enjoy watching each of them play. Shayla loves Little People. She has a very good imagination. She always has some big scenario going on with all of the people and animals. She has been playing a lot with all of her stuffed animals lately too. She also can sit and read books to herself for a really long time too. Easton loves any sort of push or pull toys. We have a little toy dog, that he loves to pull around. It makes a squeeky “barking” sound. He’s actually really good with it. The leash is pretty short, and Shayla had a hard time actually keeping it on the ground, or it would tip over and she would just drag it. Easton is pretty good at keeping it up. He also loves to push the stroller around, or the kitchen chairs (which is like nails on a chalkboard). He also likes to bring me toy food and try to feed it to me and smack his lips.

Here’s a video of him pulling his dog (not super exciting I know, but I had to capture it):

Shayla calls Easton “Eastie.” I don’t know why she gave him that nickname, but now he calls himself Eastie too.

Easton is continuing to talk and learn more and more words all of the time. He copies a lot of the words that we say. He knows most of his body parts, though he doesn’t always point them out correctly (or only gets the general area), but he will say them as he points to it. He is starting to tell me when he is poopy. But if I ask him if he pooped, then the answer is always “No.” The answer to any question is “no,” and he always says it in the sweetest, most innocent voice: “No-oo.” His favorite book is the “Little Blue Truck”. He calls it the “beep, beep” book. We’ve read it so much that Shayla has it memorized. She can basically read it to him. He knows all of his animal sounds. I think my favorite thing he says right now is please. This is used most frequently when he wants more food. He’ll eat all of his banana, then he’ll start saying “Pease” and making the sign. He is very adamant about getting more food when he wants it. One of my favorite words he says is “apple” because he says it so perfectly.

The boy eats like a teenager. One morning he ate like 4 pancakes, a couple bananas and a cup of milk. Most of the time I don’t let him eat that much. I think he just shoves it in his mouth so fast that he isn’t digesting it fast enough to realize that he’s full. He’s more picky than Shayla was at this age, but he doesn’t have nearly as many teeth either. Anything besides meat that requires chewing, he usually just spits out. I can’t get him to eat too many fruits or vegetables yet. I have to steam them up and puree them so that they are mushy. I don’t do that very often, but we always put some on his plate and he usually spits them right back out.

He’s definitely starting to exert more independence. He has figured out how to go down the stairs feet first (not sliding on his belly). It takes a lot longer, but he is determined to do it. I don’t think Shayla figured that out until she was 2 1/2. He’s starting to protest his naps more too. He starts crying as soon as we start to take him upstairs. He gets very angry when Shayla (or us) take things away from him. He really fights back now. Most of the time, though, he is just a really happy little easy-going kid who has a goofy side. He thinks he is so funny pulling silly faces. He has been very sweet about giving us kisses lately. Shayla got hurt and started crying a couple of days ago and he walked over to her with his mouth wide open and leaning toward her face to give her a big kiss.

Oh, I can’t forget, the other super cute thing he does lately is “ fold” his arms for prayer. We really need to get a picture, because I can’t accurately describe it. He puts the tops of his hands together (so his palms are facing out), and then puts his hands together like that underneath his chin. Then he bows his head. So cute. It cracks me up every time, especially because he’s so serious about it.

He is a sensitive little soul. If you get angry at him for something (it’s usually when he throws his food or dishes of his tray), his bottom lip gets all pouty, then slowly starts to quiver, then little tears start to run down his cheek. Then he starts to cry. It just breaks my heart. It is definitely different than the “I’m not getting what I want” or the “My sister is torturing me” cries. He knows he has upset us, and it really hurts his feelings. We have to tell him that it’s ok, give him a hug and a kiss, and he’s usually over it in a minute or two. When Shayla hurts him or tortures him, he comes running to us, and needs hugs. He will often grip on very tightly and snuggle up with his head on your shoulder. I do love those snuggles.

2013-4-29

I’m sure there are little things that they’ve been up to that I’ve left out, but that’s all I can remember for now.

Easter

2013-05-26T18:20:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I know. Easter was like 2 months ago, but I’ve had other projects going on around here, so blogging just hasn’t happened. Not that I still don’t have a million projects, but I figured I’d better get through these things, before the next round of big projects starts.

So the day before Easter, we had the family Easter picnic. Shayla was not feeling well and had a mild fever, but we decided to take her anyway since this only happens once a year. I thought she would still have fun, and I’d just keep her away from the other kids. Well, she just wanted to be held the whole time, and never was really into the whole egg hunting thing. She was sicker than I realized. (What is up with my kids getting sick on holidays?) We had been practicing hiding Easter eggs at home, and Easton had a lot of fun. Although, he was probably more interested in picking up grass and rotten oranges than looking for eggs. We enjoyed visiting with family we don’t see much.

2013 3-30 Shayla was obviously not happy about all of this

Easton having fun

This is about the extent of Shayla’s egg hunting

Since Shayla was sick, we didn’t take the kids to church on Sunday. David had to teach 2nd hour, and I had to teach 3rd hour, so we had to do a quick switcheroo in between meetings. We just had the kids do their Easter baskets in their jammies before David left for meetings.

Easter baskets:

Since they didn’t get to wear their Easter outfits on the real Easter, and it was conference the next Sunday, it was two weeks before they were able to wear them to church. It was impossible to get a decent picture of the two of them together.

4-14-2013

Trying to get pictures of them individually is equally as difficult.

Our first picture was the only semi-decent one we got. Kids. They sure did look good though.

Random happenings

2013-05-26T17:13:00.001-07:00

I have lots of little things to catch up on, so here goes…

Our ward does a playgroup every week. I’m not very consistent in going, but they had scheduled a tour of the local fire station, so we made sure to attend that one. We got a small tour of the fire station and then they told us all about the fire trucks and got to see a lot of the different tools and what they do. They also watched a movie from the 1980’s about “Stop, drop, and roll,” and then all of the kids got to practice. I think that was Shayla’s favorite part. I don’t think she really had a clue what was going on the rest of the time. Easton liked getting to wear the hat that he tore up within the next couple of days.

3-6-2013

Next up, they opened up a small branch of Phoenix Children’s Hospital over here. It is basically an Urgent Care that is open during the night, but they had lots of other things there too: children’s physical therapy, and lots of lab work type things. I’m really not totally sure what all they have, but the place is pretty big. Anyway, they had a huge grand opening event. Doc McStuffin’s was supposed to be there, so I thought that would be a lot of fun for Shayla. There were a TON of people there. There were a lot of food vendors and a fire truck, and some dancers and other entertainment type things. We hung out outside for a little bit, then decided to go inside to find Doc McStuffin’s. Each of the kids was supposed to bring a stuffed toy for a check-up. The event went from 10-2. We got inside maybe about 11:45. Come to find out they were shutting down the Doc McStuffin’s stuff already, so Shayla only made it to a couple of the stations, and she didn’t get any of the hand out type things that they had. I was so disappointed. I wish they would have put that on the flyer somewhere. We would have made a point to get there earlier had we known. Shayla didn’t really know the difference, but it frustrated me.

2013 3-9 Giving bunny a check-up

Getting a finger cast

They also got to play with toys in the physical therapy room. Shayla climbed all the way to the top of the rock wall (with a little assistance).

Oh my gosh, this picture cracks me up. Easton was/is in the phase where he likes to make goofy smiling faces at you.

A couple other pictures of the day:

2nd Annual Snow Trip

2013-04-03T16:00:00.001-07:00

Last year we found a nice place to stay, and decided somewhat last minute to go up for a weekend in the snow in the White Mountains. We really enjoyed the place, and decided to head there again this year. The key is that if we are going to go snowboarding, someone else has to come with us to watch the kids while we are at the resort. My parents ended up coming with us again. It worked out for them since they had to meet with some people up that direction anyways.

We drove up Thursday evening so that we could be ready to go Friday morning. We got there in record timing and ended up going to some small little restaurant for dinner (fast food just didn’t sound good). Shayla picked what she wanted to eat off the kids’ menu, she picked salad as her side, and she actually ate everything quite well. (Her eating or refusing to eat is a daily struggle around here). The kids were so well behaved, I was very happy.

My dad, Shelbie, and her friend Sawyer came along with us to go snowboarding. (Well, we snowboarded, but dad skied). It was Shelbie’s first time, so she took lessons. Dad pretty much stays on the bunny hill, so David and I took off and did our exploring. The last two years we have gone, we had fresh powder. Not the case this time, it was definitely spring conditions, but it wasn’t too bad. We met up for lunch, and then split up again. We tried to convince the girls to come halfway up the mountain with us, but they didn’t feel ready yet. At the end of the day, we get a call that they are stuck at the top of the mountain, so we rush over there to rescue them. They got brave until they got to the top and got scared. They wanted to ride the lift back down, but they wouldn’t let them. Ski patrol was going to take one of them down on the sled, but we convinced them that they could do this. It really is scary when you don’t know how to control your board very well, but the only way you can figure it out is to just keep doing it. It took me awhile to learn too. It took them some time to get down, and it wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t have one of the workers sitting on our tail the whole time telling us that the mountain was closed. Duh dude. We’re working on getting down. Stop stressing the poor girl out and just be patient. We eventually all made it down in one piece, but none of us put on sunscreen so we were all a bit sunburned (some much worse than others).

The next day we took the kids to the same hill that we went to last year.

I took Shayla up on the sled first, and just went to a smaller part of the hill, but she was crying that she wanted to go all the way to the top. I take her up to the top, and sit down with her and she freaks out that she wants to go by herself. I convinced her to let me go with her (or rather she had no choice, I just went with her). But then the next time David took her up, she insisted on going by herself. She was a little champ. She did awesome.

She wasn’t super happy here, because she didn’t want me to go with her.

It took her forever to walk up the hill by herself. It was much easier if we just pulled her up on the sled.

Making snow angels

This is the best video we got of her coming down, but you can’t really see that she is actually enjoying it.

We each took turns going down with Easton, and he just had a blast. It just melts your heart listening to him laugh the whole way down. It was the serious busting a gut laugh too. He was having so much fun. He was having a hard time walking in the snow, so he mostly just crawled around and played with it. We even got brave and let Shayla and Easton go down together a couple of times.

You can’t hear his laugh when he’s coming down, but this video of us pulling us in the sled gives an idea of how much he was enjoying it.

Back at the cabin, we played some bocce ball and let the kids play on the playground.

That night after we put the kids to bed, we played the worst game of Phase 10 ever. Dad and David were both behind for quite awhile, but I got stuck on 2 sets of 4 for at least 10 hands. No joke. They eventually caught up, and I can’t remember who won, but it wasn’t me. So frustrating. Sunday we just took our time packing up and we played one more round of bocce ball before we headed out.

It’s always fun to get away, even if it’s just for a weekend.

They just keep growing…

2013-03-11T16:10:00.001-07:00

In the last 2 or 3 months, it really seems like Easton’s development has exploded. He’s really started talking and figuring things out. He finally started walking about the week before he turned 14 months, which is the exact same time that Shayla did. Although once Shayla started walking, she was more consistent with it. Easton did half and half for a couple weeks. It wasn’t until this past week that he actually figured out how to stand up without pulling himself up onto something first. It’s just so cute watching him toddle around. I love it. You can tell that he is so proud of himself.

He has been saying the word “basketball” for a long time now. We have a toy basketball hoop, and everytime he saw it he would say “basketball.” We weren’t sure if that was a coincidence at first, but that is the first word he has consistently said other than “mama” and “dada.” He says it when he sees our basketball hoop out back, and when he has seen them inside the church building. He also says “doggy,” “bubbles,” “baby,” “yay,” “hi,” “bye-bye” and “uh-oh.” Everything is “uh-oh” right now. He’ll purposely drop his cup or silverware on the ground at meal time and then say uh-oh as if it were an accident. Little stinker. My favorite thing that he has learned lately is animal sounds. He first started saying “ba” for sheep, but then he eventually figured out “moo.” Now he can also do monkey, elephant, snake, dog, cat, and horse. So cute. I’m sure there’s more words that I’m missing.

The other day I went to get him up from a nap, and I could smell that he had a dirty diaper. I asked him if he was poopy, and he said “ya.” Then I asked him again and he said “Ya, I poo.” It was more like one word the way he said it, and it may have been purely coincidence, but I think these little people are often smarter than we give them credit for.

He is starting to figure out body parts too. He consistently gets tummy, nose, and ears right. We’re still working on the others.

He really loves to read books now. He always uses his thumb to point to the pictures. He loves turning the pages, and often too soon. I’ll leave him in his room sometimes while I go to take Shayla to the bathroom or clean off his poopy diapers. He will happily pull off all the books from his shelf and sit and “read” them. Shayla did this as well when she was his age.

He likes playing with the shape sorter. He always gets the circle right, since that one is easy. If you point to where the other shapes go, then he can usually figure them out too.

2-18-2013

He definitely is in the unloading stage. I keep all the kiddy dishes in a lower cabinet by the sink, so that Shayla can get out her dishes and put them away. Easton has found this cupboard, and he will carry the dishes all over the house. He also gets into my appliance cupboard and gets the plunger for the Vitamix. He wields that thing like a sword. Boy at heart. One difference from his big sister is that when I have asked him to put it away, he will actually go put it back in the cupboard, and then shut the door. Much more obedient child already.

One of my favorite things that he has been doing lately is blowing on his food. Everytime we put food on his tray, he puckers up his lips in a big “o” and starts blowing. He actually blows pretty well. If he keeps this up, he may actually be able to blow out his birthday candles. About a month ago (maybe more), he decided that he wanted to start feeding himself with silverware. I was feeding him some soup, and he just kept getting really angry, so I gave him the bowl and spoon, and he calmed right down. He picked up really well on this. Not that he doesn’t still make a mess, but he doesn’t really fling the food around the way that most babies do when they start trying to use silverware. He’s pretty good at poking stuff with the fork too. He’s definitely right handed, and has never really used his left hand to try to feed himself.

He is definitely starting to get more feisty, but he is still just a happy little easy-going kid. Put him in a room with toys, and he just goes from toy to toy and entertains himself. Unfortunately Shayla considers all of the toys to be hers, and so she just follows him around taking everything away. Poor little guy is quite abused. He also just likes to walk around and explore. We are now in the count down until nursery. Only two months until we can go in and sit with him, and 3 months until he’s in for good. He won’t nap during church, and he can’t hold still and be quiet either. That is just asking way too much of these little people.

Easton is starting to fight his afternoon nap. Oftentimes, he will play in bed for quite awhile, and then he falls asleep at like 4:30. I usually just let him sleep while I make dinner, because that’s what all good moms do, right? One less kid screaming while you’re trying to cook is always better. Usually he pops right up when I open his bedroom door, but the other day, he was super sleepy. I was able to run back downstairs, grab the camera, and take several pictures before he even started to stir. What a sweet little face. I just love kissing those cheeks.

3-7-2013

I really have no sleeping photos of this little boy, except when he was super tiny. That’s because my children don’t ever fall asleep anywhere cute. They don’t sleep in my arms at church, and they don’t fall asleep playing with toys. They sleep in their beds. That’s it. So, when Easton fell asleep in his high chair after a long day with no nap (due to church), you know he was tired.

3-10-2013

Monday night the week of Valentine’s, David went in to check on the kids before we went to bed. He hollers to me from Easton’s room: “Melissa, we have a problem.” I go in there, and Easton is standing in his bed covered in throw-up. It was smeared all over him and all over his bed.

2-12-2013

I have no idea how long he had been like that, but it smelled awful. Sad as it was, I had to laugh because Easton was just as happy as could be. He kept looking down at the mess in his bed with a confused look on his face, but he didn’t act sick at all. David gave him a quick bath while I washed everything off. He was still dry heaving ever so often, so we decided to put him in the pack and play in our room so that we could keep an eye on him. Since he wasn’t acting sick, and didn’t really seem to have a fever, we thought that maybe it was food poisoning. We had picked up Chipotle for dinner that night. David and I were feeling okay, but we thought maybe his stomach was a little more sensitive. Well, we finally go to bed, and several hours later Shayla comes into our room saying she has thrown up. Not much of a surprise, but she didn’t really seem too sick either, which further confirmed our food poisoning theory. I was too tired to do much clean up, and it wasn’t nearly as messy as Easton’s was, so we changed her clothes and made her a bed on the ground to sleep in that night. The next morning, other than having a whole lot of laundry to do, everything was back to normal. On Wednesday morning, we had play group at our house to frost Valentine’s sugar cookies and exchange Valentine’s. I was a little concerned having people over if my kids had just been sick, but they both really just threw up the once and then were fine, so I went ahead and had it since it still seemed to me like food poisoning. That morning I felt just a tad bit off, but I was too busy doing last minute cleaning and getting ready to pay any attention to it. Play group was a success, and the kids had fun. But then after everyone left and I finished cleaning up, I started to not feel so well. As the day went on, it kept getting worse. I finally threw up late afternoon. Now I really felt bad for having everyone over. As soon as David came home from work, I just went and laid in bed. I didn’t sleep very well that night because my joints were achey, and it was hard to stay in any position for very long. It didn’t help that David woke up in the middle of the night and threw up too. So, we got to spend our Valentine’s together, but not in the way that we would have liked. I was still not feeling 100%, and we were both grumpy. We had a pretty minor bout with the flu compared to most people, but I was surprised at how little it affected the kids. I had literally thought the day or two before, “Our kids have never had the flu.” Don’t ever think anything like that. Just make the thought go away fast.

Not too much has changed with Shayla. We never know what the day is going to hold with potty training. Sometimes she surprises us and tells us when she needs to go, but most of the time, the surprises are in the form of something very stinky and messy. She will usually pee when I take her in and make her, but sometimes she just wants to be obstinate and refuses to do it, even though it’s been several hours and I know she needs to. An accident generally follows pretty shortly after. I’m not sure what else to try with her. I think this is just one of her ways to assert her independence and control.

A couple of weeks ago I made some dinner that had teriyaki sauce on it. Shayla kept saying that she wanted more “yucky sauce.”

I use the terms “sweetie” and “honey” interchangeably with the kids, but Shayla has decided that Easton is “sweetie” and that she is “honey.” Of course I never actually get that right, and so she is constantly reminding me: “No, I’m not sweetie, I’m honey,” or “Mommy, Easton is not honey. I’m honey, and Easton is sweetie.”

We were out of town last weekend to go play in the snow (post coming soon). The room we stayed in had two beds, so Shayla got her own bed, and we put Easton in the pack and play at the foot of her bed. When Easton woke up in the morning, he stood up and started banging his hands on her bed. Shayla got upset and said “Mommy, Easton’s playing dum-ditty-dum-ditty-dum-dum-dum on my bed.”

Several weeks ago, I was putting Shayla to bed, and she kept saying something about needing her chance. Chance? I wasn’t sure if that’s what she was saying, and I had no idea what she meant by it. Well, I did the only thing I could think of…I want out to the hallway and picked up an imaginary “chance” off of the ground and brought it back in for her. That seemed to appease her. Now she asks for it every night. If we don’t remember, then she comes downstairs and tells us that we forgot to give her her chance. When Shayla is disobeying while trying to get ready for bed, or taking too long, we tell her that she is going to lose her chance to read books. This is the only thing I can think of as to where she has got this from. Apparently she thought a “chance” was some sort of object. It cracks us up every night. We always try to find some new place to get her “chance” from. Now she wants to give a chance back to each of us.

I posted the following snippet on Facebook a week or two ago: “We are making pizza dough and I tell Shayla not to touch. Immediately her hand goes to lick off the dough hook. I tell her again not to touch. "I'm not touching, I'm licking." Apparently I need to be more specific next time.”

Kids do say the darndest things.

2-19-2013

Shayla and Easton Professional Photos

2013-03-11T12:38:00.001-07:00

Well, I had these photos taken about a month and a half ago (1-28-13). I got really excited when I got them back because I loved them so much and posted them on Facebook, but got busy with other projects and never posted them here. I think I finally found a photographer that I love that is also in my price range. She has a little studio in her garage, and lots of different props. I just think all the pictures turned out so cute, it’s hard to find a favorite. Enjoy the show.

Normally I can never get Shayla to look at me and smile when I’m trying to take pictures, but she was such the little model here. Her little posed faces were so cute. She loved it. She also loves this gray sparkly (and poofy) dress, and was having fun twirling around.

This doll is Shayla’s favorite. It is her “potty baby.” (It came with a little potty to help teach them how to potty train). I told her she could take a picture with it.

All Easton wanted to do was to stand up and crawl around on this chair. He had a hard time holding still. He also loved wearing (and taking off) the hats.

I know I ‘m their mother and all, but I do think my kids are pretty dang cute. That does sometimes change when there’s lots of screaming and disobeying going on, but most of the time they are pretty awesome little people.

Shayla’s Third Birthday

2013-02-08T13:47:00.001-08:00

I thought about doing a combined birthday party for Shayla and Easton because I think Shayla is old enough to get it and enjoy it this year, but I just didn’t have the stamina to do all of the planning involved, so we had a quiet little celebration at home. We had been telling her that her birthday was coming up for quite some time, but that it was after my birthday. So the day after my birthday, so woke up and said (literally right when I woke her up), “Today’s my birthday!” I was so sad to tell her that she had to wait one more day for her birthday. All day long she kept asking when Daddy was going to come home so she could eat cake and open presents. The girl doesn’t really have a favorite dinner. Sometimes she really likes something, then the next day she won’t eat it. I tried to make something for dinner that I thought she would like (though I can’t remember now what it was). Whatever it was, we still had to fight her a bit to eat it. Thankfully we didn’t have to threaten to take away the cake (we couldn’t have done that to her on her birthday anyway). The nice part about having our birthdays close together is that David made a cake for me on Monday and we just kept the layers separate and had a “brand new” pre-cooked birthday cake for her.

She still didn’t really get the whole blowing out the candles thing. Well she did, but she was barely blowing, so I just had to blow at the same time to make her think that she blew it out.

Blowing

Yay! I did it!

Immediately licking the frosting off the candles

This video of her is trying to blow out the candles

Shayla blowing out candles

Presents are always the most exciting of course. She always loves opening them, even if she’s not quite sure what she got.

“Can I open up my presents yet?”

She got more of the Disney princesses to go with the Little People Princess Castle, more dress up, Little People A to Z zoo (which was fun for her since we had just gone to the zoo a few days before), some more food for her kitchen, a cash register, and some Leap Frog books. She enjoyed the haul. It was hard to convince her to go to bed that night.

On Sunday we had our birthday celebration with my family. My parents had gifts for her, and then I saved one gift for her to open there. I got her a doctor’s kit at the last minute because she loves watching the Doc McStuffin’s TV show. She was using her necklaces as a stethoscope, and she would get frustrated because she wanted me to put it on her, but I couldn’t clasp it (which meant that it would fall right off). Now she gives all of us at least one check-up a day (including her dolls). That is the first thing she wants to do when David walks in the door.

This was the best picture I could get of her holding the doctor’s kit. She could not figure out how to flip it over so we could actually see what it was.

When I took her to the doctor for her 3 year check-up, she was excited. She willingly complied with everything that he asked her to do. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this in the past, but the last few times we have been there for Easton, she will go right up to the doctor, and stand really close to him. One time she had her hand resting on his knee. She won’t really look at him or say anything. It’s the weirdest thing, because she isn’t like that with anyone else. He said other kids do that too, but it’s just really weird for her. Maybe he just has some sort of vibe.

Shayla is a very sweet little girl, with a very stubborn streak. She can be the best little helper when she wants to be. She likes to pick out plates, bowls, and spoons for her and Easton at meal time. She also helps me load the plates and silverware into the dishwasher. Some water spilled on the floor the other day and so she was grabbing all my clean rags out of the drawer to try and help clean it up. She loves to help me cook, but what that really means is that she loves to lick off all the measuring cups, spoons, beaters, rubber spatulas, the second that I put them down. It doesn’t matter whether I am done using them or not, and it really doesn’t matter how disgusting the individual ingredient might be (vanilla…no! no!). It’s a constant battle trying to keep certain things out of her mouth. It is funny how much she loves these things while we are cooking, but when it is all mixed up as a meal, then suddenly it’s very yucky and gross.

I still haven’t really figured out how to get her to help clean up toys. Cleaning up toys to her means that you start playing with them.

I asked her the other day what her favorite food was (to see if she really even had any idea). She told me it was soup with cheese and sour cream. The latter two items are the important part. Cheese and sour cream. She loves toppings, she loves dips: hummus, ranch, salsa. It doesn’t even matter how hot it is. She doesn’t like onions. If the meal has onions in it, then she refuses to eat it (which is just about everything in this house). She can tell as soon as it hits her mouth. I’ve gotten to where I puree them so that most of the time they are too small to be seen. She loves just about any breakfast food: pancakes, muffins, scrambled eggs, oatmeal. She loves yogurt with nuts in it for lunch. You really just never know with dinner.

The girl is still not potty trained. I have no idea what to do differently. She will not poop on the potty unless she is really motivated. New toys are about the only thing that motivates her. But it really has to be every time, and I can’t be giving her new toys that much. I am thinking I may need to go to the dollar store and pick up some cheap things and maybe she picks out of a box or something. She won’t tell us when she needs to pee. I just have to be diligent about taking her every 2 or 3 hours. Even then she tells me she doesn’t want to go. One funny thing she always says when I ask her if she needs to go poop, she says “No, just peep.”

She has told me a few times in the last few days: “I got married in the temple last night.” When I asked who to, the first time she told me Easton, but the other two times was to Jesus. Lucky girl.

We had some pistachios (which Shayla loved). I was trying to get her to open them by herself. She tried for a second, then she told me “I can’t do it, when I get bigger, then I can do it.”

One other cute thing she did recently was while I was making dinner. I think I had some music on and she was standing in front of the oven where she could see her reflection and she was just dancing away. Then she started doing exercises: “Mommy, I’m doin’ squats, now I’m doing my core (and she lays down), now I’m doing my cool down.” She had me cracking up. If I wasn’t covered in food, I would have grabbed my camera. She went on for quite some time doing this. She really loves dancing and wearing pretty dresses. I’m going to try to get her in a little ballet class a friend in our ward teaches. I think she will just absolutely love it. She may not be very good, but she will definitely have fun.

Whenever I ask her a question, and the answer is yes, she answers “Ya-yeah.”

We are happy to have this little girl in our home. Her beautiful smile can brighten any day, and we love her.