March 2012

Annalisa is completely done nursing. I'm a little sad, but it is nice to be able to wear more clothes, and not worry about her being fed when I'm not there. She is 10 months old. 3-4-12

Sometimes I think we speak a different language at our house. Some examples:

What do you want for breakfast? 
Circles--> Honey Nut Cheerios
Squares--> Frosted Mini Wheat Squares 
Snowflakes---> Frosted Flakes

Lello-Yellow (Katie and Elayna both say this wrong)
Mushmellos-  Marshmallows
Alonely- Being alone and lonely

Annalisa will say "Hi Da!" when she sees someone she likes.

Elayna was crying, so I asked her what was wrong, and she said, through sobs, "When Katie grows up, she won't live in this house with us!!"
Then I tried to explain that they would both be older. Katie asked, "Elayna will be, like 10, when I leave the house?" 3-4-12

I was driving Katie to school, and she sang me this song. "Oh Mom, your eyes are a beautiful blue. When we go out and see people, the people all say..., your Mom,  your eyes are a beautiful blue."  What a sweetie.

Annalisa folds her arms for prayer. I hadn't even gotten to the point where I was holding her arms in place, she just noticed that is what we do, so she started doing it also. She will also fold her arms if it is quiet and she sees someone with their arms folded. Even if they are just sitting on the couch, talking, and there is a lull in the conversation. She's so observant.

Elayna sings while playing, eating, talking, walking. Her life is like an opera- there is always a soundtrack playing for her. 3-8-12

I went to check on Elayna in the night. She woke up enough to say- "I want to marry Grandpa Jerry, but Grandma Irma already did. I really want to!" 3-18-12

I told Elayna that Grandma Paula would cry if Elayna didn't give her a hug. She looked at us both, laughed, and said, "No! Grandma doesn't cry!". 3-18-12

Annalisa will balance on her toes and her fingertips, trying to stand up. She has let go and actually stood by herself a couple of times this week. Only for 1 or 2 seconds, but you can tell she is doing it on purpose.
She loves being outside and following her sisters. She has started to point at what she wants, ... or wants to look at, ... or go to. She does it a lot. Annalisa loves baths. She hears the water running while I'm changing her clothes, and she starts wriggling and smiling and laughing so much I can barely get the clothes off her. Then as soon as she is in the water, she stretches out her arms as wide as she can, and pulls them back to her tummy very quickly. That's an action she does when she is excited. It splashes lots in the water, and she loves it.  3-21-12

This morning, I was doing Katie's hair for school. Annalisa was playing in the bathroom with us. Ryan called for her, so I started saying, "Where's Daddy? Go find Daddy." After I said that 3 or 4 times, she crawled to me, pulled herself up to her knees on the stool, and impatiently said, "Da!" (I'm right here!) I laughed and said, "No, I'm Mom. Go find Dad." She left and went straight to Ryan. She's picking things up so quickly!  3-22-12

When I was outside with Annalisa, she pushed herself to a bent position: feet on the ground, hands on my knee, and pushed up to a standing position. She stood there for 3-5 seconds. She looked so happy and proud of herself. 3-27-12

Elayna can spell her name by herself now. She can also write all the letters in her name, in capital letters.

Katie was just standing outside my bathroom door today. Usually I know when she is there, but this time she really startled me!    We signed her up for Teeball, which will start in May. She'll drop gymnastics when it starts. Then she is counting on joining a dance class after her birthday.

Annalisa is getting to the point that she is sure she should be eating my food. Not the same food. My food, off my plate.  She's eating about everything now. Not peanut butter or eggs yet, but she likes yogurt and pretzels and fries, etc. 3-29-12

We left Annalisa's pacifier at my parent's house, accidentally, so we decided she was done with it. She hasn't been using it much anyways, so we figured it is a good time to stop. Of course, we forgot to tell anyone, so when Irma gave Annalisa a pacifier, I guess she was really happy.  3-30-12

February 2012

My brother David, his wife Janica, and their 2 boys were sealed together as a family in the Mount Timpanogos Temple on  Feb 18. It was such a neat experience, and I'm so happy for them.

A beautiful picture of the temple, that my Aunt Karen took. It is an amazing picture.

Elayna says "May can you..." when she is trying to ask politely. She also says, in prayer, "Thank you for Heavenly Father and Jesus can give us food."

Annalisa doesn't use her pacifier to fall asleep, sometimes. She will also sometimes just squirm in my arms until I lay her in her crib, then she will turn her head to the wall and fall asleep. 2-3-12

Annalisa started crawling today. She has been moving around, but today her knees and hands worked together to move her. She just about pulled herself up with my parent's black coffee table today also. 2-11-12

I lowered Annalisa's crib and put up some new curtains. I want to add some pictures, a crib skirt, and maybe a rug to make it look like a bedroom, not like we stuck her in a storage closet or something.2-14-12

Valentine's Day decorations:

Annalisa pulled herself up to a standing position today at Mom and Dad's house. She did it a total of 3 times. 2-16-12


I came to get Anna out of bed and she was standing, holding onto the side of the crib. She is getting so strong.  2-18-12


Annalisa has purposefully and successfully started clapping. When she is sitting up, she will stretch out until she falls on her tummy, then she gets on her hands and knees. She might scoot backwards,then she will lean back until she is in a sitting position again. She will be facing a slightly different angle at this point, and then she will start the process all over again. Instead of crawling!  She is scooting backwards in her crib. We will come in to get her from a nap, and her legs are stuck between the bars, and she is crying. I came in today and she was sitting up, holding on to the bars. She looked so proud of herself. 2-7-12

Annalisa has started waving (opening and closing her hand and shaking her arms) and smiling at everyone. 2-26-12

One of my Beehives (12 years old) was babysitting my girls. Her name is Stori. (Her sisters are Summer, Aspen, and Skye) Elayna was talking about her, and called her Book.

Annalisa is almost completely weaned from nursing. She is only nursing once at night.

There was a Dr Seuss week at Katie's school. They had different themes for each day.  Wear green, crazy hair, crazy socks, pajama day, crazy clothes.
 

Crazy hair:

 Katie seems to be liking gymnastics more, she tries to strengthen her arms by holding herself up with them. (on chairs, couches, anything she can put her hands on, then lift her legs up to support herself with her arms.)


Annalisa fell down the stairs today. We had some extra girls here, and they didn't know about the "always close the door to the basement" rule. I was in the kitchen, and heard lots of thumps and then silence, followed by loud yelling and screaming. I ran down the stairs, and picked her up. I quickly told the girls they should have closed the door, then ran back upstairs so I could console Annalisa. Then I heard Katie sobbing. She was so upset. I went back down and told her it wasn't her fault. She felt so bad that Annalisa had fallen. She had seen her falling, and tried to catch her but wasn't fast enough. After I consoled HER, I went back upstairs with Annalisa (I had been holding her this whole time. I think Katie cried more than Annalisa did). She had a bump on her head, but that's all. I'm so glad nothing worse happened. Our stairs are steep, and have tile at the bottom. Plus I had just put a desk off to the side that she could have hit. Oh, I'm so glad she was alright.

Elayna is potty trained for 1 or 2 days, and then not at all. It seems so random, and it is very frustrating.

Katie is writing and drawing so well. She sounds out words, and can write complete sentences. She is  sounding out words for reading really well also. 2-29-12

January 2012

A little leftover Christmas stuff. These are the pajamas I made for Katie and Elayna for Christmas. I just sewed a skirt on the bottom of oversized shirts, but I think they turned out very cute. I put ruffles on the skirts so they worked better.

Alisha's family gave our family a box of crafts for Christmas. These are some of the finished projects:

Puppets:

Dog made with clay, and cardboard pieces:

Pig:

Horse/cow and Cow/horse. (the legs and tails are switched. Katie and Elayna thought this was hilarious.)

Farm animals. They start with a basic shape, then the box had a ton of different types of material to glue on. Buttons, feathers, crepe paper, die cuts, stickers, pipe cleaners. Very fun.

Katie and Elayna have had so much fun with these crafts. There were 16 different projects with all the necessary items included. In fact, there was quite a lot of stuff left over, that we can use for other projects. It was such a great gift! Thanks again Alisha!


Us girls at Christmas time, by our tree.  I think I had Ryan take this picture because we ALL actually had our hair done.  :) 

Annalisa's cute little smile:

Jessica and Annalisa. They are 6 weeks apart, and really look alike. Some of their mannerisms are the same, and their features are also. I love that they are holding hands.

Another cute picture of Annalisa. I think she looks so adorable in hats! 

I was putting a jacket on Elayna, and this is the conversation we had:
Elayna- I want my hat on for so I can be like a doctor.
Me- Ok. Do doctors wear hats?'
Elayna- Yes, in the rain, but we don't see them. 1-3-12

Katie explained, correctly, the Plan of Salvation to Elayna. She talked about how we lived in Heaven before we came to Earth, that Jesus was crucified, and Resurrected, and that we can be together as a family after we die.  Ryan and I were pretty impressed. 1-5-12

Katie is so creative and comes up with fun and new ways to do stuff. We were talking about seasons, and she explained this project to me. She wants a string, then she will put a hole in a flower, then get dead leaves and put the flower and dead leaves all around the string and make a crown. She wanted to do the same thing with fall leaves.

Katie's thoughts on the digestive system:
The drinks go down a straight line because it goes down fast. The food line is zig zaggy and that's why it takes longer to get to your tummy. Katie and Elayna talked about how they can feel liquids going down so fast. 1-5-12

Elayna got 5 pennies from my Mom for something, and she got so excited!! She was jumping up and down and gibbering something about Chuck E Cheese in a high pitched excited voice. It was quite the reaction!

She says "car" when identifying the letter "r". 1-5-12.

Annalisa pats me on the back when she is happy to see me. She started using "da, ga, ma, ba" sounds today. 1-10-12

Katie was discussing the weather and how they watch the news at school. She said "we can only watch the news on a disc."  (I don't think she understands the concept of TV stations. The only time she watches cable or satellite or whatever is at other's houses. Radio and Cable are very foreign to her. She just thinks everything should be available when she wants to see or hear it.)
Katie wants glasses so bad! Abby and Hannah, the two cousins that are almost exactly her age, both have glasses. Plus, I went and got new glasses also. She really wants me to go buy her some fake glasses so she can just wear them around.  So I did:

 She actually didn't seem to like them much at first. I think maybe she wanted to choose her own. But a couple months later, she started wearing them all the time, everyday, for about a week.  Funny girl.

Elayna- This book is like Grandpa Jerry! (pointing back and forth between pictures) Gray, Gray, Same, Same! 1-11-12

Elayna was playing a game with me, and she wanted to go play by herself. I said, "I thought you liked to play with your mom." Elayna replied, "I do, but sometimes I want to do stuff that is really really fun." 1-18-12

Katie and Elayna, having a picnic outside, on January 20. Is it more crazy that they did it, or that the temperature was nice enough they could? 

Annalisa said, "Dadada". She's also been using "ga, ba, da". 1-13-12

Conversation between Katie and I:  1-20-12
Katie-It's Mr Argyle's birthday today!
Me-Who is Mr Argyle?
Katie-the guy that talks in the morning.
Me-He's the principal. That means he is in charge of the school.
Katie-No! Mr Goudy is in charge of the school! (Mr Goudy is the custodian, and also, our Bishop)

Annalisa said, "Mama" today. I think she says, "na na na" when tired. She also says "Ma!" when she is trying to get my attention. 1-22-12

 Irma did her hair all pretty:

 Annalisa looking at a picture of her dad: 

Loving the mirror:

Annalisa can scoot backwards and can turn in a circle. She wants to pull herself up on anything. She's very close to doing it by herself. She loves real food and loves water in a sippy cup. She loves Mangoes. She saw a picture of my parents and visibly recognized them. She grinned and pointed. Annalisa dances by moving her torso up and down or back and forth when she hears music. We have a book called "Touch and Feel Baby Animals" that has different textures. She loves to read it over and over. If you put the book down before she is done, she will grunt "heh!" or yell till you pick it back up. She loves to touch the different textures. There is one that says, "scratch the baby elephant's ears" and she has heard it so much that she will scratch before we even read it. Her feet are sticking out of the car seat already. She loves baths!! She hears the water running and gets so excited.  She will grin and wave her arms and wriggle all over.

Katie was Student of the Week, which meant she got to wear a paper crown with her name on it, and bring a Show and Tell on Friday. She was pretty excited about it. 
She was sick, and I was trying to explain how antibodies work. It boiled down to, in her words,  "the fighty bugs (antibodies) beat up the bad bugs (germs) and make them leave".

Elayna is still struggling with potty training.      She is so dramatic about everything! She gets incredibly excited with something simple, like, she gets to have a pink cup for lunch. Of course, the opposite is true also. She will burst into tears if she doesn't get the pink cup for lunch.
After Katie goes to school in the mornings, I put Annalisa down for a nap, and Elayna and I just play for a bit. We play games, read books, or put puzzles together, or she helps me do work (like cleaning bathrooms. Why is that so fun for kids?) It has been nice to have the one-on-one time to spend with her. 1-31-12

December 2011

My messy and happy Annalisa:

I wanted some closeup pics of all the girls. Elayna's fake smile:

Her "real" smile-when I ask her to smile pretty, this is what she does. Leans her head into her shoulder and smiles sweetly.

Katie's happy smile.

 

 Then I kept taking pictures while she was talking, and I thought this was cute too:  

Katie did her hair all by herself:

Ryan put blue icicle lights on the roof line of our house, then lights up the center of the tree, with nets on the branches. I think it looks really fun. The picture didn't turn out great, but trust me, it looks good.

My cute girls, snuggling in a blankie together. Well, Katie and Elayna are snuggling. It looks like Annalisa is trying to escape:

I love seeing Annalisa's feet like this. I remember Katie and Elayna doing this also. It's so cute!

One night, we were downstairs, and the girls thought it would be funny if we took a picture of us all "asleep". This is the result:

Katie loves to collect anything and everything. One day I went in and cleaned out all her drawers and shelves. These are some of the things I found:
-jewels, -necklaces, -bracelets, -pictures, -beads, -a "special" cup from Kylie (I had written Kylie's name on it so she would know which drink was hers ) -pictures colored and given to her from cousins, -a bag of different colored corn from Hannah, -pieces of broken hangers, -moldy carrots, -candy wrappers, -grocery ads, -bandage wrappers, -paper snowflakes, AND the pieces from the holes in the paper snowflakes, -and my favorite, some little rocks.
I wasn't sure what they were, until I remembered one day, when I was grinding some wheat.  The wheat bag that I was using had small rocks in it that I would fish out one by one so it didn't ruin my grinder. I had a little pile of them to the side of the machine. Katie took them, and, you guessed it, kept them.
These things are all important to Katie for some reason or another. I'm not sure why, but in the past, whenever I've tried to throw away wrappers, for instance,  she will start crying and say she really wants to keep it. So I was a little nervous to see her reaction when she came home from school. She went into her room, and it was silent for a long time. Just as I was bracing myself for a crying fit, she came out and said, "Thank you so much for cleaning my stuff and doing my chores!" That wasn't exactly what I wanted her to get out of it, but I'm glad she wasn't upset about it. 12-19-11

When I ask Elayna what book she wants, she usually replies with something like this, "I don't know...I don't know what one, do you know where is it? The different one? not the other book, the different one?" Or if I ask her what song she wants me to sing to her before she goes to bed, "You choose". I'll start listing some songs, and then she will say, "No, no, the other one?"  And I'm always expected to know the right answer.  12-19-11


I've had Urinary Tract Infections for the last year and a half. I was on antibiotics the whole time I was pregnant, and I've had 3 or 4 since then. I finally went and saw a Urologist. After I had emptied my bladder (I thought), they did an ultrasound and there was still 10 oz in there. That's a lot, so Dr Kronmiller scheduled a cystoscopy and dilation. That means he can look at my bladder to see what is wrong, and then dilate part of the urethra that might be keeping the fluid in my bladder, instead of emptying it like it should. I went and saw him on the 27th of December, and he said he was keeping the 31st of December open for people who wanted to have procedures done this year. Since we had met the deductible with Annalisa's birth, we decided to do it then. I was only under for about an hour, and I didn't have any pain. It took me a day to recover because I was really tired, but that was the worst thing, thankfully. I'll go back in 6 weeks to see if it worked.

Christmas 2011 is on a different post. Too many pictures to put them both together!

Christmas 2011

Katie's school had a "Polar Express" day on Dec 20th. They all read the book together, then each child decorated a "train" and they parade through the hall in their pajamas. This is Katie's:

 And Abby's, since her Mom couldn't come:

The next day, the Kindergarteners had a program for parents and families to come and watch them sing. This is one of the hats they put on. She's such a cute reindeer:

A picture of some of her class, with their hats on:

They also made and wore this Santa hat. Elayna really wanted to be in the picture also.

 Katie and Elayna really wanted to decorate sugar cookies this year. If you click on the picture, it will show a bigger picture, which shows how messy they were.

 Plus, then they started licking the bowl, and kinda having a free-for-all. I think they had lots of fun. I did too.

The next day, after all the cookies were frosted. Some of the cookies are completely covered with sprinkles. When I told them I wanted a picture, they wanted to put ribbons in their hair. They were good helpers, and we made some fun memories, I hope.

Annalisa, surrounded by toys, and happy to be sitting and playing: 

For some reason, these are the only two pictures I have of Christmas. These are the pajamas I made this year. It is just a too-large T-shirt, with some shimmery purple stuff sewn on the bottom. My next-door neighbor gave me 10-12 yards of the stuff, because she wasn't going to use it. I also made some flowy circle skirts for them. They all turned out really good. The fabric was kinda hard to sew with. It works really well if all the raw edges are covered. But if anything starts to fray, the whole thing falls apart. I didn't make the pajamas ruffled, at first. They tore through them right away, because their stride was too long. Then I ruffled them and put them on again, and they are lasting really well.

Getting ready to open their Play-doh sets, I believe. 

We celebrated Christmas Eve at my parent's house. We didn't exchange gifts that day because Michael and his family will be here the first of January, and we will do it then. Christmas Day was nice. We all woke up around 9 am, did stockings, ate breakfast, and opened presents. Then my parents came over to visit, I made some lunch, and we went to just Sacrament Meeting for church. Then we rushed to Bowman's and opened our presents quickly so we would be ready when Palmers and Coronados came over. We did White Elephant gifts with them, ate, sang some songs, and came home around 9 pm. It is a crazy busy day, but we love it, and wouldn't want to spend it away from our families.

Annalisa does this all the time. I can't believe she can just bend in half like that! 

We actually decorated this after Christmas, but it was still fun. 

The finished house: 

Pretty girls in pretty dresses: 

 Working with Grandpa Jerry: