The kids like peeking out through the various doors and tunnels.
They especially love the chimney!
Fun, cheap entertainment!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Cardboard Fort
As we continue to unpack and organize all our junk (seriously, I need to go though and get rid of stuff, why did we keep all this stuff?), we find that we are left with lots of big, empty boxes. At first, we just broke them down and put them in the recycle bin. But then Jeff got the idea to put them together into a great big fort for the kids to play in. That's what he's working on right now, and the kids are having a blast!
The kids like peeking out through the various doors and tunnels.
They especially love the chimney!
Fun, cheap entertainment!
The kids like peeking out through the various doors and tunnels.
They especially love the chimney!
Fun, cheap entertainment!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Random stuff, how we're doing lately
Audrey has been somewhat colicky lately. I'm not really sure what's wrong, but she just doesn't seem to feel well. She'll act really hungry but refuse to latch on for more than a couple seconds, then pull off and cry. When I burp her she spits up way more than usual, then cry some more. I try burping her more often, giving her gas drops after feedings, pumping her legs to help "move things along," giving her lots of cuddles, anything I can think to help her feel better. And sometimes she does fine, she's not always like this. But sometimes, more often than I'd like, she's just inconsolable. It breaks my heart to hear her cry the way she does, she sounds like she's just sad and confused, wondering why she feels so yucky and begging me to help her feel better. I think I've been handling it okay, staying calm and whatnot, but every so often I find myself fighting back the tears because I want to help her feel better but I can't. It's been hard.
Adding insult to injury, Audrey has started giggling - but only for Jeff. I have yet to hear her laugh.
Okay, deep breath, enough of that. Moving on.
Zaylee and Thomas are starting to have more moments of getting along. They still have their "disagreements" - like where one kid takes the other kid's toy and they spend the next ten minutes screaming at each other, that kind of thing. But more and more they're having times where they play nicely together, give hugs and kisses to each other, share their toys. It's quite a relief to me that they're starting to play nicely more often, and seeming to accept the fact that they really are stuck with each other and they might as well make the best of it. They're also being a little more appropriate in their play - I'll notice that they've been really quiet lately, and when I peek in on them, instead of dumping cocoa all over the carpet, or dragging piles of fabric from room to room, or pouring water all over the bathroom floor, they'll be looking at books or playing with cars. That has been especially nice.
Another fun thing about the kids is their unique sense of style. I've already mentioned Thomas' obsession with wearing his hat. Lately he's also been wearing his coat almost all the time. At one point, he wanted to spend the day wearing his pajamas, his coat, his hat, and an apron around his neck. As for Zaylee, I recently got her some snow boots at D.I., and she fell in love with them (after all, they are pink) and has been wearing them a lot. Plus she wears this little red dress almost every day, usually along with one of her many hats.
Yes, Zaylee has tied herself to the door in this picture. No, I don't know why.
Thomas still doesn't say much, though his nearly unintelligible vocabulary has increased some. Zaylee however is talking up a storm and it's sometimes very funny. For instance, a couple days ago I started using my spit to clean up a spot on her face (I'm a mom, that's what we do), and she scolded me as I've often scolded her, "You need to keep your spit in your mouth, Mommy." Or we'll be eating and she'll turn to me with her mouth full of food and say, "I don't talk with my mouth full. I need to swallow before I talk." Silly girl.
Jeff has been called as a Sunday School teacher, teaching the 15-16 year olds. Honestly, that's a calling that would terrify me, but Jeff seems to be really enjoying it. I have yet to receive a calling, but that's probably for the best at this point, since Audrey has been a bit high maintenance lately. I spent all of Sacrament Meeting yesterday in the mother's lounge trying to get her to calm down, eat, and fall asleep.
Audrey will be two months on Thursday. I guess it's about time for me to start working out a bit, and eating better. I've lost about 25 pounds of baby weight, but am still 15 pounds heavier than when I got pregnant. I'm not in a hurry to lose it or anything, I know it takes a while, but I do feel like I should be at least trying to be more active and healthy. It's just hard when my idea of fun and bonding with the kids is making stuff like this:
And then eating it. By the way, this is the beautiful cake stand Jeff gave me for Christmas. Isn't it great? And in the background you can see a glimpse of our kitchen chairs...
There's a pretty cool story of how we got those chairs. We were driving to an appointment several weeks ago, when we passed Chuck-A-Rama. There was a sign in front that said "Chairs, $10 each." So on the way home from the appointment, we stopped by to look at them. Apparently the restaurant was replacing all their chairs with new ones, so were selling the old ones. They had tons of chairs stacked out behind the restaurant. We looked them over, and decided we liked them and we would get 8 of them. After all, they were good solid chairs, and a bargain at $10 each. When Jeff went and talked to the manager about buying them, however, he said that there had been very little interest in the chairs and so the price had been reduced to $5 per chair. Score! So we bought 8 sturdy, good quality chairs (that happened to coordinate nicely with our discounted table) for only $40! Adding it all up, our table and chairs for eight cost less than $200 total. I love being a tightwad.
Sorry this post has been kind of all over the place. What can I say, it's midnight and I'm tired. I should be sleeping instead of blogging, and I will be going to sleep very shortly. Just thought I should post about how we're all doing and whatever, since it's been a while.
Adding insult to injury, Audrey has started giggling - but only for Jeff. I have yet to hear her laugh.
Okay, deep breath, enough of that. Moving on.
Zaylee and Thomas are starting to have more moments of getting along. They still have their "disagreements" - like where one kid takes the other kid's toy and they spend the next ten minutes screaming at each other, that kind of thing. But more and more they're having times where they play nicely together, give hugs and kisses to each other, share their toys. It's quite a relief to me that they're starting to play nicely more often, and seeming to accept the fact that they really are stuck with each other and they might as well make the best of it. They're also being a little more appropriate in their play - I'll notice that they've been really quiet lately, and when I peek in on them, instead of dumping cocoa all over the carpet, or dragging piles of fabric from room to room, or pouring water all over the bathroom floor, they'll be looking at books or playing with cars. That has been especially nice.
Another fun thing about the kids is their unique sense of style. I've already mentioned Thomas' obsession with wearing his hat. Lately he's also been wearing his coat almost all the time. At one point, he wanted to spend the day wearing his pajamas, his coat, his hat, and an apron around his neck. As for Zaylee, I recently got her some snow boots at D.I., and she fell in love with them (after all, they are pink) and has been wearing them a lot. Plus she wears this little red dress almost every day, usually along with one of her many hats.
Yes, Zaylee has tied herself to the door in this picture. No, I don't know why.Thomas still doesn't say much, though his nearly unintelligible vocabulary has increased some. Zaylee however is talking up a storm and it's sometimes very funny. For instance, a couple days ago I started using my spit to clean up a spot on her face (I'm a mom, that's what we do), and she scolded me as I've often scolded her, "You need to keep your spit in your mouth, Mommy." Or we'll be eating and she'll turn to me with her mouth full of food and say, "I don't talk with my mouth full. I need to swallow before I talk." Silly girl.
Jeff has been called as a Sunday School teacher, teaching the 15-16 year olds. Honestly, that's a calling that would terrify me, but Jeff seems to be really enjoying it. I have yet to receive a calling, but that's probably for the best at this point, since Audrey has been a bit high maintenance lately. I spent all of Sacrament Meeting yesterday in the mother's lounge trying to get her to calm down, eat, and fall asleep.
Audrey will be two months on Thursday. I guess it's about time for me to start working out a bit, and eating better. I've lost about 25 pounds of baby weight, but am still 15 pounds heavier than when I got pregnant. I'm not in a hurry to lose it or anything, I know it takes a while, but I do feel like I should be at least trying to be more active and healthy. It's just hard when my idea of fun and bonding with the kids is making stuff like this:
And then eating it. By the way, this is the beautiful cake stand Jeff gave me for Christmas. Isn't it great? And in the background you can see a glimpse of our kitchen chairs...
There's a pretty cool story of how we got those chairs. We were driving to an appointment several weeks ago, when we passed Chuck-A-Rama. There was a sign in front that said "Chairs, $10 each." So on the way home from the appointment, we stopped by to look at them. Apparently the restaurant was replacing all their chairs with new ones, so were selling the old ones. They had tons of chairs stacked out behind the restaurant. We looked them over, and decided we liked them and we would get 8 of them. After all, they were good solid chairs, and a bargain at $10 each. When Jeff went and talked to the manager about buying them, however, he said that there had been very little interest in the chairs and so the price had been reduced to $5 per chair. Score! So we bought 8 sturdy, good quality chairs (that happened to coordinate nicely with our discounted table) for only $40! Adding it all up, our table and chairs for eight cost less than $200 total. I love being a tightwad.
Sorry this post has been kind of all over the place. What can I say, it's midnight and I'm tired. I should be sleeping instead of blogging, and I will be going to sleep very shortly. Just thought I should post about how we're all doing and whatever, since it's been a while.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Audrey Smiles and Thomas Mittens
Audrey has been practicing her sweet little smiles lately. The other day I grabbed the camera to try to capture the cuteness. I didn't get one of her big smiles, I was always a second too late or too early. But I did get some cute pictures.
This morning I decided it was time for the kids to go out and play in the snow. They've been cooped up in the house for too long. But Thomas didn't have any way to keep his hands warm, and I knew he would be grabbing snow and freezing his little fingers. So I used some of my fleece from diaper-making to make him some cute little mittens. They were really simple - I traced a mitten outline, cut out around it, sewed a couple pieces together, and trimmed the seam allowance. I didn't even turn the mittens. Then I colored some little stripes on them with sharpie markers. Thomas was thrilled with his new little mittens.
The kids had a blast playing out in the snow with Jeff. I didn't get any pictures of them though - I didn't want to go out in the cold! But it was really cute watching them - they were having a snowball fight. Zaylee would hit Jeff with hard-packed snow balls that didn't spatter. Thomas would try to throw handfuls of snow, but it usually stuck to his mittens and didn't go anywhere. And Jeff gently lobbed snow at the kids, or kicked snow up into their faces. That sounds kinda mean, but they loved it and were giggling like crazy. Then they came in and we all had pizza for lunch. It was a fun morning.
This morning I decided it was time for the kids to go out and play in the snow. They've been cooped up in the house for too long. But Thomas didn't have any way to keep his hands warm, and I knew he would be grabbing snow and freezing his little fingers. So I used some of my fleece from diaper-making to make him some cute little mittens. They were really simple - I traced a mitten outline, cut out around it, sewed a couple pieces together, and trimmed the seam allowance. I didn't even turn the mittens. Then I colored some little stripes on them with sharpie markers. Thomas was thrilled with his new little mittens.
The kids had a blast playing out in the snow with Jeff. I didn't get any pictures of them though - I didn't want to go out in the cold! But it was really cute watching them - they were having a snowball fight. Zaylee would hit Jeff with hard-packed snow balls that didn't spatter. Thomas would try to throw handfuls of snow, but it usually stuck to his mittens and didn't go anywhere. And Jeff gently lobbed snow at the kids, or kicked snow up into their faces. That sounds kinda mean, but they loved it and were giggling like crazy. Then they came in and we all had pizza for lunch. It was a fun morning.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Audrey's Blessing Dress
We had Audrey blessed this past Sunday. My family came and visited for the weekend. It was so awesome to have a house with enough room to fit everyone! I didn't take any pictures the whole weekend, though, except for pictures of Audrey in the beautiful little blessing gown that my mom made for her.
I need to get Mom to e-mail me some of the pictures she took - she had all five of us (Jeff, me, and the kids) sit on the couch and took pictures of our whole little family. That's a rarity, I'm the one taking the pictures usually so we don't really have any pictures of all of us together. So yeah, Mom, if you read this (which of course you will), please send me those pictures! Including the funny ones where everyone is looking different directions and people are blinking and kids are fussing. I like funny pictures like that. :-)
I need to get Mom to e-mail me some of the pictures she took - she had all five of us (Jeff, me, and the kids) sit on the couch and took pictures of our whole little family. That's a rarity, I'm the one taking the pictures usually so we don't really have any pictures of all of us together. So yeah, Mom, if you read this (which of course you will), please send me those pictures! Including the funny ones where everyone is looking different directions and people are blinking and kids are fussing. I like funny pictures like that. :-)
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