Sweet spirits

Lately Oliver has been doing this super cute thing at bed time. I give him a kiss and he says "I wipe it off and put it in my heart!" it's so so sweet and I look forward to him saying it each night.

Lily loves to repeat back everything I say at bedtime. My favorite thing to say to her is "I love you so much" because I love the way she says it back. Km her pretend play she's even started saying it to her babies.

I love seeing glimpses of my children's sweet spirits. It really makes my day!

Twin onesies

I made these twin onesies for Shauna's twin boys. Freezer paper stencil unh is so easy and you get fairly decent results! Would be even easier if I had a Cricut, but an exacto knife and some elbow grease worked just fine!

Baby Bath

My friend Kate hosted a baby shower at my house today for Shauna, who is pregnant with twins! I told Oliver we would be having a shower for Shauna. He came up to me later in the day and told me we needed to prepare a bath. What bath? Shauna's bath! I wanted up chuckle at his naïveté about the English language, when I realized that it was the language that was crazy and not him!

Sickie

Ahh! Where has the time gone!? I can tell you... To my poor sick Darcy Lou.
Last week she had a terrible rattling cough and wheeze that would wake her up and keep her up at night and her naps were averaging around 20 min. Every morning I'd say "well, surely last night was the worst of it! It will be better tonight.". I did this for 5 days, until Friday I decided I couldnt handle it anymore and scheduled an appointment for later that day. I suspected bronchitis. She had all of the symptoms except for a fever.
When I took her in, Stacey immediately ruled out bronchitis. I think the wheezing wasn't bad enough. She said she definitely had a chest infection, though. Then she looked at her ears she barely glanced and could tell she had a "raging" double ear infection. No wonders he couldn't sleep!
Right there in the office they gave Darcy a nebulizer treatment with albuterol. It was the most peculiar thing... For the first 5 minutes of the treatment, Darcy stared at her mask in bemusement and giggled. I had to afk if they put laughing gas in! Children are not supposed to enjoy neb treatments!! She figured that out for the second 5 minutes and was expectedly miserable. So since Friday she's been on the albuterol, prednisone and amoxicillin and it is just a world of difference! She's been sleeping again, eating again, happy again! What's amazing though is that before we found out what she had, other than sleeping, she just acted like her normal sweet self. What an angel baby! I'm so grateful for an attentive PCP and amazing modern medicine to bring me sweet girl back to health.

First haircut

Saturday we gave Darcy her first hair cut. It needed to happen for some reason hair was growing on the left side of her head and not the right. It was like a weirdy half mullet thing going on. Not attractive. So we gave the extra locks the ol' sniparoo.

Oliver-ism

He has many of them. On Christmas eve we ordered Chinese food and told Oliver that we were ordering crab Rangoon, to which he replied excitedly, "mmmm, I LOVE cranberries and goons!" needless to say, it's become an oft used phrase in our house:)

So tired.

I know that I have zillions upon zillions of blessings, and I have no right to complain about anything. But as I'm rocking my baby to sleep for an hour at midnight, knowing she'll be up 4-5 more times tonight, I may wish, just a teeny tiny bit, that I had babies that would sleep at night.

Happy napper

I love so much that Darcy wakes up from her naps happy. Oliver and Lily would both wake up in tears (where's mama!? She was here when I went to sleep!) with Darcy, though, she just wakes up and chats to herself for about 5-10 minutes. I try to leave a little toy on the edge of her cosleeper so when she wakes up she can play with it. I think she's happy to have time to play and not be attacked by older siblings. No matter the reason, I love going into the bedroom to be greeted by her rosy cheeks and big smile!

Homemade Christmas

I made a real effort to make some homemade gifts for Christmas this year. This is a sampling of them...

Homemade vanilla

Quiet books for church

Taggie monograms for Darcy and Chloe

A grocery bag out of my fave t shirt from Hawaii

A crayon roll

A holder for Lily's strawberry shortcake dolls

A car roll

Baby sling for Lily, Claire, and Averie

Rusable snack bags for the kiddos

A canvas with a quote for mom

Framed maps of each of the kids' cities for mom and dad

I was really happy with all that I was able to make! There is definitely a sense of pride from making your own gifts. I hope to make more this coming year!

End of an era

Last night Darcy got up probably a dozen times. It was pretty much horrible. Every time I would put her back in the co sleeper, her legs would touch the end, or her arms would hit the sides, and it would wake her up. In other words...she is TOO BIG for her cosleeper! Sad news for me, as this means when she wakes for feelings now, I'll have to actually get out of bed to retrieve her. It also means that we have to rearrange our entire bedroom to make space for the crib. I'm okay with that, though, because I hate the lay out of it right now. Shane's side of the bed is against a wall so he has to swap dive into bed every night. Also another possible waking trigger for Darcy. So as sad as I am that I won't have my little baby by my side anymore, here's to hoping she will sleep better, deeper, and longer in her new bed!

I'm back, baby!

I just made a VERY exciting discovery... I can actually update the blog on my iPad!!! It's hard forcnvncncncnc me to steal away to Shane's office to type ups little something, but I always have my iPad with me, so you should be seeing a lot more of me!

I will do a quick year in review of our year as 2011 was probably our biggest and best year!!!

I'm not sure if I updated about this before, but we finally got a second car back in March. We'd been making it on one, but that meant I didn't have a car most days, and when I did, I had to drop Shane off and pick him up from work. I cringe thinking about all the effort!

Obviously in May sweet baby Darcy Rose was born. We call her our consolation prize. She is such a pleasant, go with the flow baby. Oliver and Lily, while I love them to bits, we're high maintenance babies, so it is SO nice to have one that doesn't act like she's dying every time she's put down!

Memorial Day weekend we put an offer on a gorgeous house in Rochester. It was SO roomy, beautiful kitchen, and a foreclosure...so the price was right!! On June 28 we moved into that dream home! On July 1 we shipped off to Hawaii for a family reunion!!! That trip will have its own post, but we'll just say for now that it was definitely memorable!

So after 9 days in Hawaii we returned to our brand new home and our brand new ward. Week 1 I was called to be primary 2nd counselor and Shane was called to be youth Sunday school teacher. Rochester was a very small ward, but everyone was incredibly active and hands down amazing. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for in spirit!

Right as we were getting acclimated to the new ward, actually the week of our primary presentation, our ward was recombined with Somersworth. Everyone in Rochester was released from their callings, so I got to go to HALF of Relief Society before I was called as primary secretary, haha. Shame was called as ward missionary.

Oliver got to be in 2 primary presentations as Somersworth hadn't yet had theirs when we recombined. Oliver was a little nervous for the first one, but nailed his part and even sang a little for the second one! We were so proud of him.

In September, I got sick of laying in bed with the kids for an hour every night to get them to sleep, so I did some sleep training with the older 2. In less than a week I had lily going down happily for a 2 hour nap daily and both kids down for the night by 730. Bribery with chocolate chips and marshmallows may have been involved, but I take the "whatever it takes" approach :)

In September I also started watching 2 little girls 3-5 days a week. Claire has the same birthday as Lily and her mom and I are friends (she also used to work for Shane at the movie theater) and Averie will be 2 this month and was a member of the Rochester ward when we moved in. The extra income I get from watching them is SUCH a blessing, not to mention the fact that the kids get friends to come play every day!! It has limited our ability to get out and about as I don't have enough seats in the car, but between maintaining the home and juggling 4 nap schedules, I prefer staying home anyway!

Darcy started crawling a little over 7 months and started solids around that time, too. At 8 months she's pulling herself into standing, and it's only a matter of time before she's walking!!!

2 days a go I cracked open zlily's big girl undies that she got for Christmas, and she has taken to potty training with gusto! In 2 days she has had NO accidents, and that includes a day at MyMy's house and a dinner at Friendlys! If it continues this smoothly, I really have NOTHING to complain about!

Expect to see a lot more updates now that I know I can do it on the fly! Right now though, Oliver and Lily are begging to watch Mighty Machines and breakfast needs to be made! It's good to be ack!