Blue and Gold

My snotty, stuffy nosed baby is wide awake and content, so I'm going to see if I can be productive while she is self entertaining! She's got a bit of a cold and has had such a runny nose. It has made for a rotten past 2 nights. Fortunately, I know it will pass and things will get better!

On Saturday, Joshua had his first Blue and Gold dinner. We had a good time, although the girls were not happy that they actually had to sit there and I didn't let them run rampant. It was cute to see all the boys in their uniforms, looking so proud. And it was a celebration of 100 years of scouting too, which was kinda cool.

Delaney destroyed 2 plastic cups before we even got to the eating part. They had tacos and it was yummy!

Delaney was happy and had a good time bouncing around. Dan and I took turns holding her and eating. The little stinker decided she was hungry just before the skits and I missed Joshua's performance. I was sad about that.

Callie and her grumpy face. She wanted to eat NOW , and I made her wait till it was actually time to eat. And I let her put as much cheese on her plate as she wanted to!

This is Joshua on what he proudly informed me was his 6th helping! Yikes! He was still full Sunday morning, he said.

Marian enjoying her cake. She does manage to wear almost as much as she crams in her mouth.

Thanks, Alan for making these pictures possible!

And now, a video for my folks.... This is a 45 second clip, done by Callie, and it is a typical kind of video for her to make. Except its shorter and cuter than most! (My favorite part is the "I love you" at the very end. )

Follow Ups

Ug, I forgot it loads the pictures in reverse order. Well, my friends, let us celebrate Delaney's birthday backwards as well! My sweet little Valentine girl celebrated her birthday on Sunday, and had a good time. (I did download the pictures onto the PC, and put them on the thumb drive and brought them upstairs to the Mac and downloaded them onto here, just for you!)

She had fun opening her gifts, but her siblings had more fun and stole all her presents to play with themselves. She didn't seem to care at all.

Rylee thought her tights were tastier than our cake and worked very hard to get ahold of those toes!

Yummy chocolate cake and ice cream. I love a tasty chocolate cake with homemade frosting. So delicious!

Dan, Rylee and the big tub-o-ice cream! You can see that the quality of picture has been going downhill. The girls dropped the camera too many times. And I may have let it fall once or twice myself!

Hello Birthday Girl!

To all those who commented or emailed me about Rylee's nocturnal habits, I appreciate it. It made me feel so much better to know I'm not the only mom who's kid isn't sleeping through the night at 2 months. When moms say that, I always feel like they are implying that if I were doing a better job, my baby would also be sleeping all night. And then I hate them! Okay, not really, but it makes me quite cross. It is nice to feel loved and I wanted to expand a little. I have been emailing back individually, but I may as well address some of the things here......

First off, I have tried her on solids. It makes her gassy and uncomfortable and unhappy. So feeding her cereal at night has been a rousing failure. I am currently giving her a little bit at lunch time in the hopes that she'll get use to it and I will be able to feed her at night and she'll sleep longer. I am not sure if that will help though, since I'm not convinced that she is actually hungry when she wakes up. I think she wants comfort and for her, that means nursing.

Second most popular was co-sleeping. I'd be a much bigger fan of it if I did not have barfers. But to have to decide if I'm going to get up and change sheets, put down a towel and sleep on that, or just sleep in wet pukey sheets..... well, it wasn't worth it. Plus, Dan is very opposed to sharing the bed, and I never sleep well when the baby is with me. I agree that crummy sleep is much better than no sleep though! I have decided that I may sleep in the baby's room on bad nights. Delaney sleeps in there, but has been sleeping on the floor, rather than the bed for the last 2 weeks. That leaves an empty bed right where I need one! On the nights Rylee's not just eating and going back to sleep, I may sack out there. Options are good.

Third, and last, I think, I have ordered the "No-Cry Sleep Solution" book and will see if it has suggestions I can use. I really like the "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" book, but he advocates the cry it out option, and I can't do that. Well, not till they are older and just too stubborn to sleep when they should and it's either them or my sanity!

I did start a bedtime routine. Around 10:30, I change her diaper, oil her up, and massage moisturizer on her. If she's tired, I take her to her room and nurse her and rock her and put her down. I she's playing and not sleepy, I hold her till she is, and then I take her to her room. I had hoped to establish a routine and then move up her bedtime to a decent hour. I did have her in bed at 10pm fairly consistently for a week, then I realized that yes, she was in bed, but she only slept for 20 minutes stretches till midnight. So I quit.

I have been doing better with my new and improved cheerful attitude! I feel better and I feel better about myself. I'm sure things will disintegrate to the breaking point, but for now, it is great! And now to explain how my camera got broken.

Callie and Delaney developed a dreadful habit, which helped lead to the demise of my camera. They would sneak the camera out of the bag and then do things like this:

My head may explode

I had 5 different things to blog about. I'm not sure I can even remember most of them anymore. I have some pictures on the camera of Delaney's birthday, but the camera is now officially dead. As in dead-dead. I can't turn it on and get the pictures off. I COULD go downstairs and turn on the incredibly slow PC and wait for eternity for it to boot up and then I could put the memory card in it and download the pictures there. Then I would have to decide if I'd rather try to email the pictures to myself and open them upstairs on the Mac, or if I'd rather look for the thumb drive and put the pix on that, then walk them up here and download them onto the Mac. Its all so complicated. Ug. But that is my long winded excuse for no pictures and I'm not sure when I may have more pictures. Since life without pictures is a very bleak one to me, I hope it will be soon!

Also, I'm trying to figure out why it is that once I decide to work on being a better person in some respect, suddenly things are out to get me and life gets worse. For those of you who get the Ensign, there was a great article in it recently. The writer used the John Groberg story of Elder Groberg needing to get to another island so he could preach to people who were waiting for him. But there was no wind. They prayed and prayed for wind, but none came. So an elderly man got the row boat down and said let's go. Elder Groberg protested that they shouldn't have to spend several hours rowing, and the elderly man said that people were waiting and they needed to go now to be able to see them. So, the rowed out there.

This story was an eye opener to me. I wonder why the Lord doesn't seem to give me what I pray for, even when it is a good and righteous desire. To see that Elder Groberg, who was a good & righteous man, asking for a good and righteous thing was not given what he asked for made me feel better. And I discovered that maybe I need to stop asking for what I think I need. I decided to work on this. I keep praying that Rylee will sleep better. Its a good thing, right? A better rested mom is a happier mom. And yet, Rylee still feels the ned to eat every 2 hours, day and night. And nap time went from 1-2 hours down to 30 minutes. So I decided maybe I needed to figure out another way. I decided I was tired of being grumpy and cranky because I'm not getting enough sleep. I decided I wanted to be enjoying my children more, and I was going to stop being so tired and cranky and grumpy. I decided that if I wasn't going to get enough sleep, then I was going to pray that I just wouldn't NEED enough sleep and that I would be able to be more cheerful and happy.

I'm not too happy to report that Rylee is now waking up even more frequently. Add to that Delaney's sudden and consistent peeing through her diaper at night and Callie's re-emergence of bad dreams involving bugs and I'm getting less sleep than ever. I no longer remember what its like to sleep more than 2 hours at a time, and even those 2 hours are starting to seem like a luxury. Ug. I've been trying to get a good bedtime routine and it seems to work, till I look at the big picture. I can get her to bed at 10pm. But she wakes up every 20-40 minutes until midnight. Its a killer.

But I refuse to give in! I WILL be happy! I will be cheerful and I will pretend I am not exhausted. I demand to be blessed for this job of motherhood and I demand to have the ability to love and enjoy my children. Yeah, I'm so demanding and look how well that's working for me! Seriously though, I'm going to have a better attitude.

Which brings me to this..... what do I do with Rylee? I know that every parent has different experiences and they think what they have done works for everyone. I'm telling you that each kid is different, and mine are not happy sleepers. I would think it was me, except that Delaney was my exception. She is the only one who slept all night at 4 months. She was the only one who was content to sit in her seat and look around. She was the only child I have had who did not need to be held all the time, and she was the only one who would eat every 3-4 hours rather than every 2. So I don't want to hear that its a matter of training. It isn't. For my children, its more a matter of temperament and sheer stubborn will. With Callie I gave her 5-10 minutes to stop crying before I would go pick her up and that worked fairly well. Rylee starts to increase in volume by 5 minutes and any longer and she will continue to cry hysterically after I pick her up. And yes, every time I go in at night she acts ravenous and eats like I am starving her. I feel like I have two choices- either I keep doing what I am doing, or I put her in the porta crib down stairs and walk away at night and let her scream herself to sleep. I don't think I'm at the cry-it-out place yet. I think it is so cruel and inhumane. But if its my sanity or a few nights of her misery...... I think she looses.

Anyway, that last part was more rambling and venting. I just have to suck it up for another 6-8 more months, right?!

And now, I am going to go make pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner!

Food, Glorious Food!

After all the snow and no school ALL week, our routine was shot, I couldn't remember what day it was, and the kids were tired of having to put on 5 layers to go outside, and just wanted to play the Wii. I decided we needed to do something fun together. It kind of worked.

I had each of them go through the fun cookbooks (thanks Deborah for the fantastic dessert cookbook at Christmas!), and they all picked out an exciting item to make. Well, most of them did. Marian didn't care, so I picked out a tasty treat to try out for her. I chose a fabulous cookie recipe. Now, there is some background on this one. 6 years ago, I went to Texas to babysit my niece for 10 days while my brother surprised his wife with a cruise. Since she didn't know it was coming, she had made these amazing cookies. I, of course, ate them all while they were gone. They were so transcendingly delicious! I had never seen this kind of cookie before or since, and yet, as I pawed through my cookbooks, lo and behold, I had it all along! It was a very time-intensive cookie. You had to make the cookie and then melt chocolate to sandwich between two of the cookies. Yummy! I made these first and yes, they were as good as I had remembered. (There were none left for our party.)

Next, it was Joshua's turn. He chose some individual chocolate monogrammed cakes. I was very disappointed with the from-scratch cake recipe in the book. It came out very flat. I mean VERY flat. So we called it brownies and ate them plain. There is another story that goes with that part, but I'll save it for later. I ended up making regular brownies, which we then cut and dipped in the chocolate glaze. Then I piped Valentinesy things on top of them. They were SO cute! There's a picture at the bottom for you. SO cute, I say!

Then it was on to what I chose for Marian: Mississippi Mud Pie Brownies. I decided to stick with the brownies from mix, since I already knew how those turn out. Then we sprinkled marshmallows on top and covered that with homemade chocolate frosting. Decadent and delicious! I've done these before using marshmallow creme, but I really liked the actual marshmallows better.

Callie chose a Toll House Pie. I had never made one before, but I'm sure I will again! Yummy! It was rich, it was chocolaty, it was sublime! I am fat.

Delaney had chosen a pink cake mix last time we shopped, for her birthday. She decided she wanted to make it then. So we made pink cupcakes. We made mini cupcakes and I'm pretty sure Delaney ate a dozen or so of the suckers! She did like the pink cake thing. (However, her birthday is tomorrow and I still have to decide what I'm going to do for her cake-wise.)

And that was our day of cooking. We did invite friends over for a Dessert Party to share our treats, and they also brought treats. It was fun to visit with friends and eat wonderful things and get a break from the snow. Here are a couple pictures. There are none of the kids, since they were mostly still in Pajamas and were smeared with the contents of whatever bowl they had been licking. The bowl licking was their favorite part. Well, that and having company to be silly for.

Yeah, remember the first batch of cake/brownies? Well, here is the rest of the story..... they needed to come out of the pan. I was out of room in the kitchen, and Joshua was my helper, so I decided to invert the pan at the dining room table. Unfortunately, I stood in the wrong place, and the light fixture is NOT over the center of the table. So as I flipped the (Stoneware!) pan into the air to turn the brownies out onto the rack, I smashed it into the light fixture and it broke in a loud and exciting cascade of broken glass. Oops. This is the now-naked light fixture.

Here are the cupcakes, the pie, the reject brownies, and the mud pie brownies. This is the table, all set up for our friends to come and play.

These are the totally adorable individual frosted cakes. Aren't they so cute?! I could eat them up! And I did. They were delicious as well as cute!

Me, my Kids and lots of Snow

I had a whole blog in my mind, but as soon as I sat down to actually write it, it was gone. Yet, I am here, so I shall put up pictures, lots of pictures to cover the fact that I haven't actually written anything clever or witty.

For some reason, I thought it would be fun to take pictures of myself and each of the kids. Probably because there are no pictures with me and each of my children! Here are the results....

This was a tough one! Marian was jumping in the back and Joshua was trying to get his hand up before the picture clicked. You see that I was able to overcome both obstacles and have this lovely shot to show for it!

Marian was a little easier and she's actually smiling! She, by the way, lost her 6th tooth last week. That's now 2 missing on top and 4 on the bottom.

Callie wanted a silly shot. That's my girl!

Delaney also wanted to be silly. She LOVES taking pictures and having her picture taken. Then she wants to see how it looks.

This little cutie pie hit 2 milestones this week. She can now roll from tummy to back, and she had both bottom teeth pop through. Yikes, they are sharp!

And now, I know you have been dying to see what this latest round of snow brought. We had a good 2 feet, and then we got another foot or so more on Wednesday.

Joshua went out in the snowfall Wednesday afternoon. He burrowed around and had a good time. No one else wanted to go out.

He lobbed a snowball at me and ducked down. Silly boy.

It finally stopped snowing Wednesday evening and this is what the back yard looked like. I know Mom and Dad had asked how the snow was in the tree fort. Its pretty high!

This is my foot in the snow. It was DEEP! Its over my knee. I galloped out to the fort and giggled all the way. Then I almost fell down and couldn't get back up. It was a lot of snow and it sure was fun!

I was all motivated and shoveled part of the drive. It was easy because Dan had already done it 5 times! I just wanted you to get an idea of how high the sides of the drive are.

Delaney was the only other one who wanted to come out and play. She did not last long though.

Oooh, here I am! I'm working hard!

See, I told you it was me!