Thanksgiving

This year we hosted our first Thanksgiving. We had PE's sisters come over, and one of them brought a friend. 5 adults and 2 kids was a very manageable number. PE did most of the cooking, and everything came out pretty well. One little hitch we had was that the turkey was still a little frozen. It had been in the fridge since Monday morning, but I guess our fridge was too cold (at least where the turkey was). But we had a good evening with good food! Except for the corn which came out horribly wrong. While we were finishing cooking, PE's sisters decided to throw together their "traditional" corn dish made of canned corn, saltine crackers, cheese, and I think milk. Turns out the saltine crackers were not just stale, but moldy. Yum!

5 Months

Somebody is already 5 months old! We love our little girl, and she loves us and always wants to be held! And she has already learned how to cry when you leave her sight unless she is sufficiently distracted. She likes to be sitting or upright, so she enjoys this jumper (until she decides she needs to be held again).

PE decided we should start her on some solids. I wasn't too worried about starting yet, mostly because I didn't want to do even more dishes and pumping. And I didn't think she was as ready as P1 was at this age. P1 was always fascinated by food and looked really excited to try some, but I haven't felt like P2 notices food as much. So it really surprised me how well she did! The pictures don't show it because they were taken at the end when she had finally had enough, but she loved it! And she ate way more than I thought she would, and learned very quickly how to open her mouth for more. When we started P1 on solids, he didn't know what to do and would spit most of it out, so I was expecting something similar. Here's to hoping solids will lead to sleeping longer at night, because she is still terrible at that. The other night I got up at 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, and 5 am with her. Yay for sleep deprivation!

She is getting better at grabbing things and playing with toys. Mostly she just wants to put everything in her mouth. She was chewing on my fingers when suddenly I realized she was cutting her first tooth! That really surprised me because P1 didn't cut his first tooth until he was 10 months old! She is just full of surprises! 

Duplo Temple

P1 has this green arch Duplo piece that he refers to as the temple. So one day I asked him if he wanted to build a temple. He got excited, so we went to work building a temple out of Duplos. 

I barely had time to take these photos before P1 started taking it apart.

On a different note, P1 has entered a "scared" phase. We went on a walk and saw a helicopter fly by, and P1 froze all hunched over. He used to love helicopters! And later a big dog barked at us from across the street, and he froze again and started crying. Then as we were walking away, some birds flew out of the bushes, and he froze and said "scared, scared", so I ended up carrying him for a block. Then in the evening, PE pulled up a little YouTube cartoon for P1, and the second it started playing, he ran away crying and saying "scared, scared". Poor little buddy. It's really like a switch got turned on though, he's been cautious about some things, but never really scared before.

Sundays

I love my beautiful children, even when P2 screams during the entire last hour of church.

And I also love being able to go to church and partake of the sacrament. Church can be rough with kids, but it is worth it.

And I'm grateful that Sunday is a day of rest. Yes, I still have to take care of kids, but it is nice to have a day off from the world.

Fall Leaves

We had our nephew over the other day, and had some fun playing in the leaves in our backyard. P1 didn't really like being in the leaves, he just liked to watch from the distance.

Burdens Made Light

Yesterday was a trying day. Being a mom is hard and exhausting.

Naptime/quiet time ended up with orange crayon all over the wall and crib.

Really, the hardest thing right now is lack of sleep. The crayon incident wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been in such a desperate need for a nap, that I put my toddler in his crib with his coloring book and orange crayon. I should have seen it coming, but he's always been good to color in his books and not on other things.

I was feeling frustrated that my prayers for P2 to sleep better at night have not been answered in the way that I want. I was feeling like if I prayed for her to sleep better, she would do worse. And while I was feeling frustrated, the impression came that maybe my prayers shouldn't be focused on changing other people, but on changing myself. God gave mankind agency, and He can only do so much without infringing on that agency. So maybe a more beneficial prayer is to pray for the ability to function on whatever amount of sleep my children let me have.

"And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord."

Mosiah 24:15 

I have felt the Lord's enabling power in my life, and while He doesn't always take our burdens away, He will strengthen us to be able to bear them if we turn to Him.

Halloween

For Halloween, we decided to be the Neverland Pirates! P1 got to be Cubby because of his red hair, P2 got to be the parrot Skully, and PE was Jake, and I was Izzy. We made all the costumes except the parrot, because I'm not that talented at sewing. And it's good that we all dressed up, because P1 refused to try on his costume until he saw me in my Izzy costume and P2 in her parrot costume.

Cubby and Skully:

Kisses!

Cubby and Izzy, (Cubby is digging for treasure):

Skully and Izzy:

We carved a Cookie Monster pumpkin before we went trick-or-treating:

P1 made Halloween sugar cookies with Grandma:

And we dressed up in our costumes for Grandma and Grandpa.

P1 refused to wear Cubby's hat. I managed to get it on him twice, for about 4 seconds each time. 

We went trick-or-treating to a couple neighbors, but nobody was home and it was really sad. Cubby was really worried that he hadn't gotten any treats from his trick-or-treating, so we let him knock on our door and trick-or-treat. It's pretty adorable when he says "trick-or-treat." (He learned all about trick-or-treating on Tuesday at our ward Halloween party). Then I took him down to our old apartment complex and we saw our friends and were able to get more treats for Cubby.

We also had a fun Halloween party with our friends a couple days before Halloween. We painted pumpkins with the kids and had yummy soup. The kids had a blast playing in the leaves outside. All in all, it was a fun Halloween!!!