3 Months

Our little girl is 3 months old! I can't believe how fast she has grown, but at the same time, I feel like we have had her in our family a lot longer than 3 months. She is a little sweetheart. She is full of smiles and is a happy baby unless she has a dirty diaper. She has recently decided that she likes her binky. She is taking a bottle better too, so that makes it easier to leave her with someone else for a while. She can go pretty long between feedings, and if I try to feed her before she's ready, she gets upset at me.

She enjoys bath time, except for the time P1 decided to give her a shower. I had the water still running and was starting to wash her hair when suddenly the water started coming out of the shower head and landing right on poor P2. She was not pleased about that.

She loves to chew on her hands, and pull blankets and burp clothes up to her face. She is "usually" a pretty good sleeper. I still get up at least once during the night with her. I've stopped changing her diaper in the night, and that helps her go back to sleep faster. She is getting better at getting her hands out of her swaddle; I have to re-swaddle her often in the night.

P2 has discovered her voice. She loves to jabber up a storm when not sucking on her binky.

 P1 really loves his sister, and is so sweet with her:

Sleeping like a baby:

All ready for church:

Full of smiles (and spit-up)

Playing peek-a-boo with the burp cloth:

Smiles and jabbering:

We love our little angel, and at 3 months I feel like I've finally gotten into the rhythm of being a mother to two.

Chilean Independence Day

We celebrated Chilean Independence Day on Saturday. We had a great turn out, and it was so much fun to catch up with everyone! One of the families we haven't seen since we've been married, and most everyone else we only see about once a year. Including us, we had 14 adults, 6 kids, and 4 infants.

It was fun to have all the kids over, P1 really enjoyed running around with the older kids.

P2 was great! As long as she had her pacifier, she was content watching everyone from the corner.

We simplified this year and just made empanadas (2 batches beef and 1 batch of cheese), completos, mote, and torta de mil hojas. We only did one recipe of the tortas and got 6 mini tortas, but we still had leftovers so I guess it was enough! And as always, we had way too much empanada meat and hotdog buns leftover. But they make good leftovers! We did 3
 lbs hamburger, so could do 1.5 lbs and be fine. And we only went through 2 bags of hotdog buns.

The kids had a lot of fun playing in the backyard. Who doesn't love digging in the dirt?

Thanks to everyone who came!!

Smiles and Music

P2 is full of smiles these days! It so much fun when they start smiling at you! And I love these cute jeans we got for her!

PE taught P1 about earphones the other day. He was fascinated!!! He had just been playing with them, and then PE showed him that they played music! He was very concentrated on holding them up to his ears. And when he was listening to "Bare Necessities" from Jungle Book, he kept saying "Cookie Monster!" I guess he thinks Baloo sounds like Cookie Monster??? 

State Fair

We went to the State Fair this month. PE actually won us free tickets from the radio, so we invited my family along. We didn't take a stroller with us, which I regretted. We had a carrier for P2, and P1 was fine for the most part. But a stroller would have been really nice.

P1 enjoyed seeing the animals, but he liked to keep a little distance from them.

We made sure this year to go on the day they had the rabbit judging. So we had fun looking at all the different rabbits.

The baby animals were the best part:

And P1 got to see his first reindeer!

Siblings

I put a Utah State onesie on P2 today. After putting it on, I looked at her, and said "Why hello P1!" She looks soooo much like her brother when he was a baby, especially when wearing the same clothes!

 Putting a bow on P2 helped me to feel like I hadn't traveled back in time:

Experience For Yourself

If you stop and think about it, so much of what we "know", we really don't know by our own experience. When it comes down to it, we are really just believing and trusting in what someone else says. Anything we have read in textbooks, in a study, in the news, or on the internet, is really just trusting in another person's knowledge and experience. And as long as we make sure we check our sources, it is usually okay to do that. Since we don't have the money, time, equipment, training/expertise, to experience everything firsthand, we trust and build on each other's knowledge and experience. That's how we have been able to progress so quickly in so many fields.

But there is one area of life that each and every one of us can experience firsthand. We don't have to take someone else's word for it. No matter your age, education, profession, IQ level, each of us can experience this for ourselves if we choose to. And the beautiful thing is, that this is the most important knowledge available to mankind, and we can each experience it for ourselves.

The most important knowledge is that God lives, that He is our Father, that He has a plan for us, and that He sent His Son to be our Savior as part of that plan. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can experience it for yourself. It really is a beautiful thing.

It's simple and beautiful. All we have to do is ask God, and experiment upon His word. And then we can know for ourselves, not because someone told us, but because we have experienced it firsthand. But because of how simple this seems, there are many that will not do it.

It reminds me of Moses and the brass serpent. The Lord sent fiery serpents to chasten the children of Israel. Many died, and Moses was instructed to raise a brass serpent on a pole, and that whoever would look upon the brass serpent would live (Numbers 21:6-9). Well, because of the simpleness of the task, there were many who would not do it and perished (1 Nephi 17:41). Now why wouldn't you look? They had nothing to lose by looking, but everything to gain. But because they did not believe that such a simple thing would work, they refused to look and they died (Alma 33:19-21). I think it came down to pride for them. They didn't want to try it, because they thought it would make them look foolish. But all they had to do was to try it, and then they would have known whether or not it worked.

In the Old Testament, the Lord asks us to test out the law of tithing. He says "Prove me now herewith...if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." (Mal. 3:10) I can tell you that paying my tithing has greatly blessed my life. That the Lord has always provided for my family when we have paid our tithing. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can test it for yourself!

I know that The Book of Mormon is the word of God, and contains the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know this, not because my parents told me so, but because I have read it for myself. And at the end of the book it reads "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." I tested it out, I asked, and now I know for myself.

Alma 32 is a great discourse on how we can experiment upon the word of God. Alma compares the word to a seed, and if we will try planting the seed in our heart, we will be able to see if it is a good seed by whether or not it grows and bears fruit. This is the same way the Scientific Method method works. Scientific studies are based on experiments, and interpreting the results of the experiments. And while most of us don't have the equipment to replicate most scientific experiments, we all have the ability to try out the word of God for ourselves.

Christ said "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." All we have to do is try it. You don't have to take my word for it, you don't even have to take Christ's word. You just have to test it for yourselves.

The restored gospel of Jesus Christ has brought incredible peace, joy, and happiness in my life. It has carried me through difficult times, and gives me strength beyond my own. Everything that is good in my life, I have observed to be the fruit of hearkening to the word of God.

But you don't have to take my word for it. You can know for yourself, all you have to do is try it out!

Colors

P1's new favorite past-time is coloring. He's always asking for his "colors". He enjoys coloring in his "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" coloring books. He can tell you who all the characters are. and if you ask him what Captain Hook says, he'll say "Argh!". I think Cubby is his favorite, because he goes around the house saying "Cubby" all day. But to be fair, his "Cubby" and his "Come, please" sound very similar.

Completely out of the blue, P1 developed an Elmo fixation one day. He had never really watched Sesame Street, but he had Elmo on his diapers, in a couple of books, and on a pair of shoes. He went around finding all the Elmos in the house and saying "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo..." We started teaching him who all the characters were, and he knows Oscar, Big Bird, Grover, Cookie, Bert, Ernie, and of course, Elmo. He learned his colors pretty quickly too. He can pick out different colors when you ask him to find red, green, blue, yellow, purple, black, brown. And he knows that Elmo is red, Cookie is blue, Ernie is orange, and Grover's nose is purple.

I learned how to quickly sketch the characters, so I'll draw their faces and P1 will color them. And he'll point to blank spots and demand certain characters. Oscar is one of his favorites, and I love how he says Oscar. It's more of an "Os..sir" with a pause in the middle.

Oh, and his favorite color is orange. He almost always picks the orange crayon. And whenever he brings a drawing home from nursery, it is always in orange!