He's Mobile!

W started crawling last week! He was a big lump for the first six months, then he started taking off. He wants to touch everything, so I'm afraid he's going to be a handful. Still, I love when they start moving around. It's so fun to watch them grow and learn.

I also took him for his six month appointment. I took him six weeks late because of his surgery. But, here are the stats.

21 lbs

28 1/4 inches tall

He likes cereal and green beans, but that's all I can get him to eat.

He smiles, smiles, smiles all the time and loves blowing raspberries.

He loves it when the kids make funny noises and faces.

He's still a total momma's boy (yes I love it!).

J's check up

I took J to the doctor last week for his annual exam. He did well. He's tall and skinny. No surprises there.

He is 49 lbs and 50.5 inches tall.

His favorite color is still blue.

His favorite food is pizza and creamed eggs on toast.

His best friend is Danae.

His favorite school subject is recess and PE because he gets to talk and run around.

He is such a great older brother. When he plays games with the girls, he tries to make sure that M especially is having fun and excited.

He is really outgoing and talks to everyone and anyone about whatever.

Matt dropped J off at school the other day, and he really liked the song that was playing on the radio, so he was singing along. When he got out of the car, he just kept singing and was dancing to the beat as he walked into the school building, off in his own little world.

He started learning to play the piano this year. Hopefully it will get more consistent this coming year!

He is still set on BYU Hawaii, and living in New York, China and then back to Hawaii.

He reads like crazy, and loves the Tree House books.

And, he still loves Superman

Truce

My area and I have finally made peace. Don't get me wrong, it is beautiful here. And the people are awesome. And I love our ward. And I love how close everything is - like DC and Florida and New York. But, Oi! The weather! I just couldn't come to terms with living through Augusts and then have no snow. So not cool! But this has been a good winter. We have had two respectable storms, so I am good. Just knowing that this weather is possible (albeit occasionally - like once a decade), I'm okay. At least I'm not sentenced to a life with nothing but one skiff of snow a year. The yard toys are buried in snow, cinnamon rolls are baking in the oven, everyone's cozy. All is right with the world. Well, enough rambling! I've got some snow to enjoy!

Any Advice

Here's a TMI disclaimer if you don't want to read about nursing. You have been duly warned.

I have never been able to nurse my babies for longer than about eight months. I was really hoping to make it to a year, but I just don't seem to be able to. True to form, my milk supply is decreasing again. Does anybody have any advice on how I can reverse it? He nurses every 3-4 hours during the day, and goes about nine hours at night. I feed him cereal twice a day. I'm not sure if it's a hopeless cause. Do you have any suggestions? HELP!

Driving Help

Yesterday, I was driving home with Matt and the kids. We were about to enter the highway when someone made a left turn into our lane. There were only maybe two car lengths between us and the car in front of us, and we were going at least 45, so there was definitely no room or time for the car to turn. But, turn it did without even looking over. I slammed on my brakes, but we would have still hit them if Matt hadn't leaned over and jerked the wheel over. That kind of woke me up and I steered us to the side. Luckily, we avoided the accident.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been really irritated at Matt for entering my driving space and taking over, but I was just grateful. My reaction time was not what it should have been, and without that little nudge, we would have collided. Van+Escalade= Huge dangerous mess. At home, I told Matt that I should be irritated, but I am just glad that he grabbed the wheel. He looked at me a little blankly and said "I didn't grab the wheel. I knew you had it under control." "Did you reach for the wheel?" "No." "Almost reach and then change your mind?" "No." "Pretend to think about maybe reaching over?" "No." It hadn't been Matt, but I had literal felt a force jerking the steering wheel over. Enough so, that I really thought it was Matt. So, I am claiming my miracle and feeling very thankful to my Heavenly Father for His protection, however he gave it.

The Sleep Battle

W gave me five blissful months of good sleeping. Then he got sick. I let him sleep with us for a couple of weeks, now we're having a hard time going back to the old routine, especially because he is still stuffed up. Add to that the fact that he has gotten exceptionally good and flipping over to his tummy and refuses to sleep on his back, but cries when he wakes up on his tummy. sigh. So, this has been me every night for the last month or so.

I lay in bed and just hit that delicious state where you aren't completely asleep but completely comfortable and transitioning from thoughts into dreams. From the other room I hear a pitiful cry which signals that W has flipped again or rammed his head against the side of the crib and wants mommy. How can you resist that? I hop out of bed, bleary eyed and shaky, and stumble into the closet/nursery. I rock him for a minute, put him back down and creep back to bed, tip-toeing on the carpet that sounds more like two feet of gravel in the still house. I lay down, get into that blissful state again and...yup. I start all over. Usually by about 12:30, he relaxes enough to sleep until three. Then, he wakes up at three. At this point, I usually give up and bring him into bed with me for the rest of the morning. That baby sure has his mama trained! I just could never do the cry it out method, and that boy just melts my heart. I think I enjoy cuddling about as much as he does. Well, hopefully we will all start sleeping again soon.

A girl has to have a unicorn.

--E

Google Tease

On my gmail account, I have the setting set up so that the background reflects the weather outside - supposedly. About once every couple of weeks it shows the background scene a wonderland of drifted snow and gently falling flakes. The real weather - anything but snowy. Cruel and unusual punishment!

Kids At the Seal Tank

The Zoo Visits the Zoo

Monday, Matt didn't have to work, J was out of school, and the weather was fantastic (60 degrees without a cloud in the sky) so we headed off to the zoo to break in our new zoo pass. Thank you grandma and grandpa!!!

This picture is so typical of each of the kids that I had to include it. It is so characteristic, in fact, that it looks staged but it's not.

The spit-fire, the leader, and the drama queen.

Cute W was rarin' to go...

For about ten minutes. He was so good, but so happy to be held later on. Too bad he outgrew the snugli two months ago.

This was my favorite part of the zoo. I could spend all day watching this polar bear. You all know how big Matt is, this bear is HUGE! The rest of him stretches way beyond the floor where Matt was standing. I just thought it was so beautiful.

M loved the alligators. That's what she wanted to see before we got there, and she squealed when we saw them. She loved every minutes - until about 2:00 when she was just done and ready to sleep.

E loved the zebras the best. Last night she said she wants to go back to the zoo just me, her and her stuff pig named "puppy". She apparently meant it, because that was the first thing she said this morning.

J loved the elephant the best. We almost didn't make it. Everyone was beat, M was fussing, it was 3:15 and there was a HUGE line for the tram back to the other side of the park where our car was parked. Well, because of the line, we decided to leave Matt and W there and run to see if we could catch a glimpse. The elephant place ended up being a two minute walk away, so we saw it - great big red elephant. We didn't get to the rhinos though. Next time! J loved everything. I love how excited he gets about things and how he doesn't mind expressing it. He's such a great boy.

The airvent was filling J's shirt and making it look like muscles, so he kept flexing. after awhile he caught on to me taking pictures, but at first it was a true candid moment. I love J! He just cracks me up.

Sacrifice

Usually during youth speakers at church I try really hard not to glaze over. But, today, she gave a really good talk on sacrifice. She made two points that really struck me. First, she defined sacrifice as trading something good for something better. I liked that definition.

The second thought I really enjoyed was about the quality of sacrifice. She pointed out that in ancient times, the people of God were asked to sacrifice the best lamb and the best of the field. I thought about my own small sacrifices and found myself in desperate need of evaluation. Sometimes I'm afraid I give the leftovers rather than the best. Do I sacrifice my primetime, or do I sacrifice the little slot of time that I couldn't do anything else with? It seems like time is the thing that I struggle with the most. What am I doing with my time? What could I be doing with my time? I'm not advocating a dismissal of personal time and down time, but just giving the Lord first pick of our time. It's like the rock and sand object lesson that my brother Tom reminded me of. You've got a pile of big rocks, a pile of pebbles, a pile of sand, a container of water, and an empty jar. The only way you can get everything in is if you start with the biggest things and then do the smaller things. It's application really is as amazing as the object lesson. When you put first things first, you really do have time for everything else (unless of course you've got skunks masquerading as worthy pursuits). I'm grateful to Shenice for the reminder.

Conversations

Mom: "M, how did you sleep?"

M: "In my bed."

J: "Mom!"

Mom: "Yes, J?"

J: "E's tattling!"

Really?

Skunks

I love New Years. It's such a merciful thing to be given a chance to start over, to leave things in the past, and commit to achieving great things tomorrow. I think Heavenly Father knew we needed the psychological boost of a new day, an unmarred future. We always have that, but it seems like we usually get so into life as usual that it takes something like New Years to kick us out of that brain lock and recommitted to change and improvement.

This year, I am trying to dejunk. Quick story from a lady in church. Her mother lived in Florida years ago, and they adopted some skunks. The skunks responded really well to her and never sprayed. They were really quite domesticated. Well, one day, her husband took one of them to the vet. Long story short, the skunk sprayed the husband. Her moral of the story was if you have a skunk in your house, eventually one day it will...act like a skunk.

How many seemingly domesticated skunks are in my house, just lingering, sitting with a look of complete innocence, just waiting to strike? I want to get rid of my skunks. Those things that are stealing my life away without me really noticing. Those things that are interfering with the peace in my home. Those behaviors that are keeping me from achieving my full potential. I hope that this will be a fully productive year of pest control and that by next January I will be 100% skunk free - or at least a skunk trapping and relocation expert.

Deal of the Week

Yes. I am a nerd. But this deal was too good not to share it. For everyone who lives around Harris Teeter. Go buy last Sunday's paper and get the coupons. There are a bunch of great ones for free or cheap rice. But, the great deal is the Special K. Get the cereal bars coupon and the cereal coupon - they're each for two boxes - and buy the boxes at Harries Teeter. They are free!! So, even if you add in the dollar for the newspaper, that's a dollar for two boxes of cereal (any variety you want) and two boxes of cereal bars. How amazingly awesome is that!! Anyway, I just had to share. My cupboard is now stocked with cereal and cereal bars (and a bunch of other stuff - yay for SuperDoubles!!).

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve! We had a lot of fun. We decorated the living room with Christmas lights and construction paper lanterns that we made.

We snacked and watched movies and went to bed WAY too late. J wanted to stay up until midnight, and we decided he was probably old enough. He made a valiant effort, and fell asleep at 11:50 and was out for the count.

Here's to a fantastic New Year with all of its unknown challenges and triumphs!