Well I Feel Stupid

Earlier I complained about not being able to get Jacob to sleep during the day lately. It was a rough week last week and I wasn't able to get much done (what was I expecting? He is, after all, only a month old!). But then, miraculously, he was great this weekend. The difference: Jeromy put him in his bed for me each time I was done feeding him, and he apparently swaddles Jacob up tighter than I do. Plus I was a little lazy with the whole swaddling thing last week (and I just didn't even think about it- lack of sleep definitely affects problem solving skills). Well, not anymore! I've learned my lesson. When all else fails, make sure he can't move in his blanket!

By the way, many thanks to Megan for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of swaddling!!

Pixy

Audrey and I did some Christmas shopping tonight, and when we came home, Jeromy said that someone ding-dong-ditched us a present. We're so thrilled! It is a mini Christmas tree and they even put a scripture with it for why green is a color of Christmas. How fun!

Imaginations

I have been so amazed at my children's imaginations lately! Here are three instances:

Audrey and Kierra love playing kitty. One of them (and only one!) pretends they're a kitty (meowing and everything) while the other one guides them throughout the house, saying, "Here kitty, this way." They'll do this for quite awhile.

I guess neither of them is ready to let go of Halloween (2 months later! Geesh.) They both get dressed from head to toe in princess paraphernalia, and then walk around the basement trick-or-treating to each other.

My favorite is when they pretend my big red armchair is Santa's sleigh. They sit on the armrest and Audrey puts this ribbon (which was originally wrapped around a present given to us, but has since been a ponytail holder, sash, belt, cape, scarf, and flying thingy.) on her lap for a seatbelt. Then she tells Santa (Kierra most of the time) she's ready. Kierra grabs the reins (the strings to the blinds) and away they go. If I'm nearby, Kierra will say, "Mommy, I'm Santa! I love you, bye-bye!" and then shakes the reins, just like Grandpa Wilson does with his horses (he'd be so proud:). I'll try to get a picture, but I'm usually nursing or otherwise detained when they're doing this.

I'm starting to think that they're really bored. But maybe it's just proof that they're really smart;)

Snacks

Kierra just gave each figurine in our Nativity a Ritz Cracker, saying, "Here's a snack a you, and here's a snack a you, oh oh oh, turn around, here, eat. And here's a snack a you..." After they had all "munched," they all laid down for a nap. I could just eat her sometimes.

55!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not to mention that I also would like to catch up on all my friends' blogs that I haven't looked at in over a month. Eeek, 55 new posts, Megan? This is going to be an all week project.

Arg

I've been trying so hard to get the dishes, feeding, changing, feeding, laundry, and more feeding done so that I can blog what's in my head before I lose it (I do have Mommy Brain, after all). Alas, the baby just woke up for the tenth time today, so I can't. Help! He sleeps sooo good at night (usually:) but lately I can't get him to stay asleep during the day for more than a half hour. I'm beginning to wonder if he's got some gas issues, or just an incredibly long growth spurt and needs to eat constantly.

Reindeer

Okay, Audrey is too smart for her own good sometimes. We went to our ward Christmas party on Saturday, and Santa was there! Despite being totally afraid of him and refusing to get anywhere near him, she was still intrigued and excited that he was there.

Afterwards, when we were getting everyone in the car, Audrey wasn't getting into her seat because she was looking all over the church. I thought she was just watching the snowfall, and we needed to get the baby out of the cold, so I was getting frustrated. But then she said, "But Mommy, where are the reindeer?" After a big "um" I told her they were probably in the woods behind the church eating while they waited for Santa. Then she continued to ask a bunch of questions about what they eat, etc. I can't believe how smart she's getting!

Elf Yourself

We elfed our kids. Check out this link:
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1272659655

Snowman

We got a bunch of snow yesterday, and so I decided to seize the day and take the girls out front to make a snowman. We had so much fun, by the end Audrey and I were laughing so hard from our snowball fight (this, by the way, is Audrey's first instinct when she's sees snow- to pick it up and chuck it at the nearest person). Her aim is so much better than mine that I got soaked!

Snowfall

Aaah, the magic of snowfall.

Fun on the Bus

The girls had a lot of fun shopping at the mall with Grandma Wilson and Mommy the other day.

One Month Old

And here are the ones I took this week at a month old. He's so cute, isn't he?! He's doing so well too, we couldn't be more blessed. He hasn't thrown up in more than a week, so we're really glad about that progress. Now if we could just get his older sister to stop messing her pants, then we'll be in business.

One Week Old

Jacob is a month old now! So I thought I'd share some recent photos. I've been trying to take pictures of him every week this past month to show how fast he's growing, but I only managed to take them when he was a week old and a month old. Here are the ones from when he was one week old.

Audrey's Prayer

Audrey gave the opening prayer for FHE this week. This is basically how it went:

"We're thankful for Mommy, Kierra, Daddy, and the baby. Please bless Heavenly Father. Please bless Santa. Please bless our family to be silly."

Then when she had finished, she said, "That was a new one, Mom!" I guess we haven't covered that aspect of the principle of prayer in our FHEs;)

Burps

The other day, Kierra tripped, fell, and then farted. Audrey then told me that Kierra's bum had burps.

He's here!!!

Well our little boy is finally here. He was born on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pm via "C" Section. He weighed 8 lbs. 12 oz. and measured 20 in. long. He scored 9-9 on his Apgar test (which is really good - out of 10) and has dark brown hair - so far. Hilary is recovering beautifully and is already taking short walks. She is as happy as a new Mom can be without ripping her stitches (no backflips or anything) and glows with the aura of a new Mother.



We went into the hospital at 10:30 am on Wednesday and waited for several hours. The hospital was packed and we waited until it was our turn which came at about 4:30 pm. We then went into the OR and the doctor tried to flip the baby. He tried pushing the baby both ways but he didn't budge. I think it was because the doctor told us that if he was able to flip the baby we would have to go home and wait until labor started and the baby wanted to come that day.



So after the third try the doctor started the "C" Section procedure and our baby was born at 5:15 pm. Hilary is doing great and the baby is just as happy in Hilary's arms as Hilary is to have him there. We have named him Jacob Timothy Wilson (a long J-A in Jacob for my brother Jay ;), the middle name after my other brother Timmy, and Jacob's initials "JTW" are the same as my initials which are the same as my Dad's initials).

We're goin' in

We're going to the hospital tomorrow to have a baby! We're going to see if we can't flip this baby into the right position. If it works, they'll break my water; if it doesn't, they'll send me to the OR for another c-section. Either way, it's pretty scary and dangerous, so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

Happy Halloween!!

What a fun day! Audrey was so excited that the first thing she did when she woke up this morning was run downstairs yelling, "It's Halloween today! It's Halloween today!" And Kierra was so excited about her costume that she kept saying, "Look at me, I a pincess!" When the trunk-or-treat got going and she realized she was getting a ton of candy, she couldn't stop saying, "Trick-or-treat" over and over and over again.



Poor Audrey had a hard time walking in her crayon costume, and her hat kept coming off. But she was a trooper and loved being a crayon!


Do you like our costumes?!?! I'm an egg and Jeromy's my bacon. I was so excited to be able to use my big belly for my costume. Thanks, little boy, for waiting to come till after Halloween!

Halloween Food Fun

It's a lot of fun having preschoolers at this time of year. Audrey helped me make pumpkin muffins this morning. At lunch we had bologna sandwiches cut in the shape of pumpkins, with carrot sticks (witch fingers) on orange plates. Then for dinner we had orange pudding salad and pumpkin-face quiche (above). What fun! And of course, we balanced it all out with plenty of Halloween candy!!

Cont. again

Okay, I just finished writing that blog, and Audrey just called out from her bed that Kierra doesn't have a diaper on. This is getting crazy.

Full Moon cont.

Audrey is in the middle of potty training! She has been doing pretty well wearing big girl panties all day. We've been giving her a treat whenever she sits on the potty, so of course, little sis has to sit on the potty too. Who knows, maybe I can kill two birds with one stone and get them both potty trained at the same time (right in time for the baby and for them to regress??). Anyway, I think Kierra has found this all very exciting and maybe even liberating because when I got out of the shower this morning, she had taken her diaper off and was just walking around for who knows how long without anything on except for a shirt. No puddles, thankfully, but she sat on the potty all by herself while I was upstairs. Maybe she just likes the fresh air.

Full Moon

We went to check on the girls last night before we went to bed. What we saw made us speechless. Kierra was lying on top of her blankets with ONLY a shirt on. We found her diaper by the door. Luckily, she hadn't wet anything, but it was just hilarious to see 2 little butt cheeks staring at us. I sorely wanted to take a picture, but Jeromy wouldn't let me. Something about child abuse or blackmail; I can't remember.

More Pumpkins

I found some more pictures of our pumpkin FHE. We had so much fun!

Funny Audrey

Audrey was helping me look for something upstairs this morning. She went to look in her closet, and noticed that the door had come off the track a bit. Right at that same time, the theme music for Handy Manny came on the TV downstairs (he's the Mr. Fix-it cartoon on the Disney channel). She yelled something about Handy Manny to me and raced downstairs. The next thing I heard was Audrey pressing buttons on her toy phone and saying, "Ya, Handy Manny? My door is broken, could you come fix it? Okay, thanks, see you later!" Then she closed the phone and told me it was going to be okay cuz Handy Manny was coming over to fix the door.

Sweet Audrey

Audrey has been especially sweet to me this week. I'll tell her I'm not feeling well and need to take a rest on the couch, and then when I get back up again, she'll ask, "Are you feeling better now, Mommy?" This is a comment that I would've expected from Kierra, and not so much from Audrey. She's never been that concerned about me, so it was a nice surprise.

And then yesterday when we were driving down the road, she asked out of the blue if the baby was kicking. I told her yes, and then she said that she couldn't reach so maybe later. This is coming from the girl that, for the past few months, whenever I complained that the baby was kicking me hard, would say, "I don't want to feel your tummy, Mommy," even though I wasn't exactly offering.

She has been especially excited about this little baby lately though. A few days ago, I was on the computer and the girls were at my feet reading, and Audrey turned to Kierra and said, "Kierra, did you know we're going to have a baby really soon? It's going to be a little boy baby! Isn't that exciting!" to which Kierra responded, "Oh! A boy baby, I so essited!" I could just eat those girls up sometimes!!

Jack-o-Lantern FHE

Audrey was VERY proud of her pumpkin (although Daddy did all the work- it was too icky for her). She couldn't wait to put a light in it. (Just a note, our apple corer worked great to get perfect little circles!)

Kierra was very tickled that she had her very own pumpkin. Since she's such a clean freak, I didn't think she would want to help me take the guts out (especially since Audrey wouldn't even touch hers), but she very daintily pinched out a few seeds, one at a time.

While Mommy and Daddy finished their pumpkins, Kierra very happily made "pumpkin soup" for us all.

We had so much fun!!!

Pumpkinland

Cousin Kai visited this weekend, and so we thought it would be really fun to take him to a fun pumpkin nursery called Pumpkinland. Too bad the weather was terrible so we couldn't do any of the fun activities. But we had fun picking out pumpkins! Love that cheesy grin, Kierra!!

Kierra's Bedtime

Kierra has been hard to put to bed lately. It's so utterly easy to put her down for a nap, but when it comes to bedtime, she rebels. She waits until her sister falls asleep (I think so that Audrey can't tattle on her, or maybe because that's when she gets really bored) to sneak out of bed and read in the baby's room or steal things from our room.


Anyway, Jeromy and I were watching TV tonight and could hear that Kierra was still awake, but we were too lazy to deal with her. A little later when our show had ended, we found Kierra half asleep on the top of the stairs! We snuck up on her and I said Boo (I know, we're mean) right when she opened her eyes. She looked pretty confused, and we just couldn't help but laugh. Then we asked her if she wanted to sleep in her bed. She shook her head no. We asked her if she wanted to sleep on the stairs and she (very seriously, I might add) nodded yes. That made us laugh even harder! The look on her face was priceless. Like she was trying really hard to get an inside joke but couldn't quite get it. She wanted to laugh with us but had no idea why we were laughing so hard and probably understood a little that we were laughing at her. That made it a little easier to put her back in bed where she belonged. Kids are funny.

Breech Update

So, for the past few weeks, our little guy has been breech. But not anymore!! His head is down, although he hasn't dropped yet. And with my history of breeches, he could very well flip again. We'll just keep our fingers crossed since the thought of having a c-section with 2 toddlers in tow is pretty scary.

It's funny, I've noticed since Saturday night that my belly feels a little differently than it has been. And Saturday night just happens to be when we were watching Transformers and he was rolling all over the place. I guess he's just a typical little boy that wanted to transform into a cool robot.

Nightmare

Audrey woke up screaming, "Noooooo!" in the middle of the night last night. As we ran to her (okay, Jeromy ran, I waddled), she said, "Mommy took my crayons!" What a thing to be traumatized about.

Grandma Wilson leads girls to Devil's...

Grandma Wilson took the girls (along with me - Jeromy) on a hike today on the trail that leads to Devil's Staircase located in the Jedidiah Smith Wilderness just East of Grandma and Grandpa's home in beautiful Teton Valley. We walked in about a mile looking at squirrels and chipmunks, stomping in the snow, throwing rocks in Teton Creek, climbing on rocks, and taking pictures on every log we passed (which was quite a few).





The weather was great, the sights were beautify, the sounds were peaceful, the company was pleasant, and the water was crystal clear. Funny that it was a heavenly walk to Devil's Staircase.

Their first snowman of the year!!

It snowed quite a bit last Saturday night, so Audrey and Kierra helped Grandpa make a snowman. It melted the next day:(

I'm fired!

Last night at bedtime, I thought I'd tell the girls a story, which is usually Jeromy's job. It was so nice to be with them, so I cuddled with them and told them a long story. I may have dragged it out a bit. After I finished, Audrey looked at me seriously and said, "Mom, Daddy tells the stories and you sing the songs." I guess she didn't like my version of Goldilocks. Oh well.

We're together again!!!

Jeromy and I came up to Wyoming yesterday to pick up the girls, who have been spending the last 2 weeks with Grandma and Grandpa. They had a lot of fun, and I got a lot of much needed rest, but now we're a family again! It looks like this will be a bit of a transition as the girls still call me Grandma every now and then. It's hard to tell who they missed more, Jeromy or me (I say Jeromy), but it's just so nice to be all together again.