Sillies

Big news: I vacuumed this morning! Not every room, but I got the stairs which count as like 16 rooms because they’re such hard work. Ok, enough of my boasting.

Nine times out of ten, my favorite pictures are the silly ones. That is probably because it’s nearly impossible to get “good” pictures of active kids, especially indoors. So nine times out of ten, all I have are silly, blurry pictures. I guess they are more realistic. My goal for Amber is to get ONE good picture of her per month. Just one. We’re barely a week into May and I’ve already taken waaay too many silly/blurry/blah pictures of her in my effort to get that golden monthly picture. It’s getting harder to get good pictures of Amber because she moves a whole lot more now than she used to. It probably doesn’t help that most of my pictures are taken with a cell phone these days too. It’s always the closest camera when I need one! Well yesterday when we got back from a pleasant morning walk, Amber had just woken up from a pleasant morning nap in the stroller and she was being extra cute and smiley. So I whipped out my ever-handy cell phone and took The Golden Monthly Picture at last!

That face!! This was the morning after her very first FULL NIGHT of sleep: 7pm-6:30am with no wakeup calls! Well, I gave her the binky around 8pm but that doesn’t count because I didn’t have to wake up to do it.

 

Here are some sillies to balance out this moment of perfection:

The Daddy-boat

One happy, one sad. This is a typical scene in our house: Rose sobbing over some minor matter while Amber happily plays in the background. Yes, Rose is wearing a button-up cardigan sweater as pants here. She may have been crying because the sweater wouldn’t stay up on her waist.

A family walk. We walked to the library on Saturday afternoon, and the kids took turns riding Rose’s bike. Those floppy bobble-head helmets are downright comical!

Swing swing swing

 

Rose looks WAY to big to fit in that Costco cart, but we squeeze her in anyways. Amber clutched Rose’s dress the whole time we were there, little sister. Rose kept removing Amber’s little fist and Amber kept grabbing her dress again.

Morning faces! In an effort to be more consistent with our family scripture and prayer every day, we moved it from evening to 6:30am this week. Let me tell you, even though Amber has been sleeping better lately, it is still not easy for me to wake up in the mornings—something about over a year of intense physical trauma and sleep deprivation. But it’s working—we’re 5 for 5 since we started morning scripture and prayer!

Rose has taken to doing her own hair a few days per week, and let me tell you, those tangles are NOT FUN to brush out. But she happily straps a headband over her bedhead and frolicks all day feeling beautiful so I can’t put a stop to it.

 

 

Walking home from school for the first time in weeks and weeks. Amber is usually sleeping all the way up to the last minute before we pick up Jay, so we haven’t been walking all that much.

Our latest feat of engineering. I love our wooden train tracks almost more than the kids do! It’s one of my favorite building toys.

 

Spontaneous Rose-hug from behind. I was conveniently holding my phone and captured her sweet hug. She came up behind me, put her arms around my neck and said “This is a hug, Mommy.”

 

Sometimes it seems like a good idea to put the pants on the baby’s head. These particular pants have bows at the ankles, so they made me think of braids when they were on her head. Or a pharaoh. Or a Vermeer painting (he may have called it “Baby in pants”). Anything to cheer up the hungry cranky teething baby!

Jay didn’t have school today so of course we had to pile into a chair and take a bunch of silly pictures!

 

 

 

These three little people make my life so good. I’m glad they remind me to be silly, because BOY do I need it, especially when things like this happen:

Half a year old

Amber turned six months old this week. As usual, I am fluctuating between thinking “where on earth has the time gone?” and “it’s only been six months?” The time warp of parenthood never ceases to amaze me.

Amber is such a different baby than Jay and Rose were. Jay and Rose never took a binky or a bottle, for instance, so I didn’t even try giving Amber a bottle at all until last week. Guess what? She LOVED IT! I decided to –gasp- switch her to bottles 100%. Yesterday I also suddenly got tired of cloth diapers, so we’re using disposables till the cloth mood strikes again (if it does). Who am I? I’m kind of having a motherhood identity crisis! I breastfed my first two babies for their entire first year. I discovered and learned how to use cloth diapers when Rose was 7 months old. Those two “natural” things were part of my baby-mama identity back then and that identity carried through the intervening years till Amber was born. So it feels like breastfeeding and cloth diapering were an even bigger part of my mom-self than they were. It’s so weird that I even wanted to be done with breastfeeding so suddenly, but once Amber started eating (and liking) baby food, I found myself thinking “what’s the point?” I panicked a little right before I gave Amber her first bottle of formula last week, but when she grabbed the bottle and joyfully sucked it down, I felt this amazing, giddy feeling. I have never liked breastfeeding; it’s a pain! But it was free. And healthy. So I did it. But now I don’t have to!

After some very painful days in a lower circle of the lactation inferno, my body is starting to get the message and Amber is down to one feeding per day on me. This bottle conversion came at the perfect time: Amber’s first tooth poked through this week. I never thought I’d have a bottle baby, but if there’s one thing parenthood has taught me, it’s never say never!

My biggest desire with Amber is not to have any regrets, since she’s my last baby. I want to make decisions that are exactly what I WANT to do and that are best for HER. It feels like cheating to use disposable diapers and bottles, but it’s FUN. Is taking care of a baby allowed to be this easy?

And now for the monthly comparison pictures:

Other things about Amber right now: she will sleep on her back or on her tummy, whichever she’s in the mood for. She knows how to put the binky into her mouth all by herself—yay! She loves her Wub binky. She’s almost always lying on her back playing with her Wub monkey when I come into her room. At night if the binky is out of her reach she still needs me to come give it to her. She only wakes up 1-2 times per night now, and she doesn’t need to be fed in the middle of the night—I just give her the binky and she goes back to sleep!! She goes to bed around 7 pm and wakes up between 6:30-7:30am. She actually likes baby food (a first for my kids) and she eats baby food mixed with cereal at lunch and dinner now. She has about 1/8 of one bottom tooth. She’s getting better and better balance at sitting up. She adores Jay and Rose, and they can almost always make her happy when she’s sad. When she’s really tired and I give her the binky, she snuggles her head into my neck in the most endearing fashion and grabs my face with her hand. I kiss her cheeks at least 100 times a day.

 

Rose and I found this awesome Exersaucer at Goodwill this week. It’s great because our living area doesn’t have any door frames to hang the Johnny Jump up from, so we use this instead. Amber likes it.

 

Happy half birthday, baby!

Stake Conference

Surviving a Sunday at church has been harder since we added a baby to the mix and started meeting at 1pm. I have to admit, it’s daunting to go when I know it means 3 exhausting hours of holding a baby and trying to keep her content and quiet, not to mention feeding her and managing the other kids. It often feels pointless at the end of church, like why did we even go? I’ve been feeling rather discouraged on Sunday evenings lately, especially last week when Jeff was sick and I went to church solo with three kids and no binky.

Today was stake conference for us. That means we had morning church at the ideal time: 10am. Yay! We had to drive 45 minutes to get there, since it was being held in the Tri Cities. Stake conference is always a long two hours. It’s always a struggle to make it through, especially with kids. But Jeff and I resisted the temptation to stay home today. There is power in being in the right place at the right time—standing in holy places, if you will. I know that but normally it usually doesn’t change my frazzled state at the end of church. Today I actually felt uplifted during stake conference, and it took me off guard in the midst of the back row scuffles and other demands of parenthood.

It’s been a while since I “got something” out of church. Usually there is too much kid-wrangling, tangling, and [hopefully not] strangling going on for me to really catch more than bits and pieces of talks. I have found that the best way to handle this is not to stress about listening. Church is not about me right now. It’s about teaching my kids to go to church, how to behave at church, and to feel good at church. Today was no different, but I was lucky enough to hear most of our dear stake president’s talk at the very end of the two hour meeting (a miracle, I know).

Our stake president is a great guy. Jeff and I got to know him when he was our company leader on the youth handcart trek 2 years ago. When I was deathly sick and pregnant last year, he called me to see how I was doing. I could hardly believe he had the time/memory to do that! Basically, he is inspiring and humble and good.

My favorite thing that he said today was this: he told about a recent Sunday when he and his wife took their grandchildren to church without the parents and how challenging it was to handle a two year old all through sacrament meeting. He then said thank you to all of the mothers who keep bringing their children to church and teaching them the gospel, even though it’s hard. This simple part of his message was JUST what I needed to hear. I feel like we Mormons like to get up and give talks about the ideals: how we should go to the temple all the time, do family history all the time, do extra projects for our callings all the time, and somehow after all that, still have lots quality time to spend with our families and be patient stellar parents, etc., etc., etc. There are plenty of people who seem able to pull this off, but I prefer a more realistic approach. Of course we have high standards, callings to fill, people to serve, and we do try to be better each day, but I have been craving a down-to-earth talk acknowledging how yes, it is hard to be in the trenches of parenthood and yes, family is the highest priority. At the same time, I loved how he said that we often complain about the very experiences that are given to refine us. We are here on this earth to learn and grow, not complain about it!

So the big happy heart-swelling lesson that I had today was a classic rephrased: just keep going to church, just keep loving my kids, just keep living the gospel, just keep trying my best, and stop complaining!

Soccer!

Jay and Rose are on the same soccer team this year! We signed them up for the same soccer program as Jay did last year—the Kids First Soccer program at the local Church of the Nazarene. Since Jay is still 5 and Rose is 4, they are in the same age group. Having both of them on the same team makes viewing games and practices quite easy for us parents. Their six week season is half over already, and I’m finally getting around to posting a few pictures of the running, kicking, and playing they’ve been doing every Tuesday and Wednesday evening. I love this league because it’s only $15 per kid and it’s not a huge commitment—it’s just long enough to stay fun, and then it ends.

It’s interesting how the kids’ personalities show up when they are on the soccer field. Jay is very analytical—instead of jumping in the fray and getting caught in a jumble of kids, he looks at where the ball is and then estimates where it will be kicked next. Then he runs to that spot and waits for it. The great thing is, he’s impressively accurate with his ball-location-forecasting and he steals the ball a lot!

Rose is still a tad timid and oblivious out on the field, kind of like Jay was last year. She’s just as likely to stop and play in a patch of dirt as she is to follow the action and try to kick the ball. But she feels special and happy to be playing soccer like Jay and with him, so she’s having a good time. I love her toothpick legs—the shin guards make her calves thicker than her thighs!

Amber is patient for the most part, sitting on the sidelines in the stroller. As long as her spacey mother remembers to bring the binky, that is. One dreadful evening, I forgot it and Amber cried inconsolably for the last 20 minutes of practice. I was so frazzled and exhausted when we got home! Between 5:30-6:30pm is a bad time to take a baby out and about because it’s dinner time and she’s tired from the day. The binky gets us through, when we have it.

 

The first day of practice was WINDY: 30 mph gusts. We all froze!

  

Who can resist a baby in sunglasses?

Rose was sick for the first game, so it was just Jay. High five, coach!

Baby toes in the breeze!

There is a set of twin girls on the team. I wonder if the coach thinks Jay and Rose are twins too.

On Rose’s first game, she wasn’t in the mood to play, so she kept saying no when the coach tried to put her in. Finally near the end she went in and jogged around a little.

Meanwhile, Jay scored a goal! At the right end of the field!

3 more weeks to go.