Braids

Proof that I did my girls' hair once:

Angel

Mike had to come home from Utah at the beginning of January for school.  I wanted to stay for a couple more weeks to cram in some more therapy for Mariah.  Mike's incredible sister, Jessie, offered to drive home with me and the girls, and then stay for a week to help out!  Amazing.  Her little Max was only 15 months old (I think?) at the time, and she left him home with Danny (thanks, Danny!).  She left her baby for a week to come help me take care of my babies.  Truly amazing.

We had a great time while she was here, and she helped me get so much done!

Room with a View

I'm catching up little by little . . . . I just have to post these pictures of the view I had from my grandparents' kitchen, where we stayed in December.  We had a similar view from the front yard of the house I grew up in, and somehow, during this stressful time of life, the view of Timp brought me comfort each day.  I love the beauty of God's creations.

Sally

My baby's almost 10 months old, and I have been terrible at keeping record of the things she learns and does.  So, here are a few things about my Sal Bug, just off the top of my head:

• She loves to play and make jokes.  When she thinks something is funny (or thinks she's being funny), she throws her head back, grins, wrinkles her nose, and squints her eyes.
• Her favorite games are patty-cake, peep-o, and crawling tag.
• She likes to play the I'm-not-going-to-smile-no-matter-what-you-do game.
• She LOVES playing with the older girls. She thinks she is Elaine's equal. They already fight over toys. Help.
• She loves her daddy, but she's a momma's girl for sure!
• She has been cruising around furniture for a couple of months now and will let go and stand for a second or so.  Mike said today she stood up from the floor and stayed standing for 4-5 seconds.  Long enough for Mariah to say, "Hey!  You're standing up!"
• Crawled at 6 1/2 months.
• Pulled herself to standing at 7 1/2 months.
• First tooth:  8 1/2 months (our earliest teether so far).
• Second tooth:  yesterday (1 week shy of 10 months).
• She's not really into solid foods yet.  She'll take a couple bites of sweet potato, potato, broccoli, carrot, or oatmeal.  She likes raisins and begs for bananas (I only give her a tiny bit because they stop her right up) and green drink.  She DOES NOT like baby food prunes but will eat little pieces of a real prune.
• She LOVES to go outside.  If she hears me say, "Let's go," she comes hauling from wherever she's been and makes a bee-line for the door.  She also stands at our window and leans her head repeatedly against the glass--willing herself outside.
• She's a breather.  She huffs and puffs wherever she goes.  It's like her little motor.
• She thinks it's hilarious to escape when I'm changing her or getting her dressed.  She's strong and fast.
• She's not a good sleeper still and has the same burping issue Elaine had.  I should NOT have to burp my 10-month-old!  Her forehead gets all cold and clammy until she has all her (million) burps out.  Then it (her forehead) returns to normal, and she'll sleep . . . for 45 minutes before she needs to burp some more. Yeah, you get the routine.  It's aggravating and exhausting, to say the least. She's lucky she's cute.

Elaine loves entertaining Sal.  For a little while, anyway.

First pony tail.

I think she looks like my cousin, Jane West, in this picture.

The Escape.  Laughing and breathing hard.

One of their favorite games.

This is where Sal likes to be (or insists on being) for much of the day.  My back is sore . . . always.

Oblivious

I was preparing dinner the other day and turned around to see this (literally 3 feet behind me):

I was a little shocked that I hadn't noticed the party going on behind me, but I thought, Oh, no biggie.  Let them play.

About 2 minutes later, however, I turned around to see this:

"Ha ha, Mom!  Joke's on you!"

16 Minutes

A couple weeks ago, Mariah earned 16 minutes of princess dancing time by making eye contact for 16 seconds during cuddle time.  She was in princess heaven.

I would love to see this face more often.  It's pretty rare.

The amazing thing was she actually went the whole 16 minutes without getting silly and/or hyper.  (Elaine was at Evan's house.)  At one point, Sally went into the room, and she started getting a little silly.  I told her, "Even though Sally's in the room, I want you to stay calm.  Take some deep breaths and make little mountains with your brain." And she did.  I heard her a few times over the next 5 minutes, starting to get silly and then taking deep breaths and calming back down.  Now, if only she could do that with Elaine.  Will it ever happen?

Dear Elder Vic

Because this is the only journal I'm keeping at the moment, I'm posting a letter I sent to my brother, Victor, who's in Argentina serving a mission for the Church.


Dear Elder Vic.

I've thought almost daily that I should write you a letter.  But, every day comes and goes, and I have not done it.  So, now is the time . . . .

First, some things in response to your letters:

• Mike and I did initiatory last month.  All of my names, except one, were from Argentina.  I loved it!
• A couple of things/thoughts for your journal:
• Do you remember sleeping over at the guys' (Derek, Scott, Jarom, Bryan) apartment at Alta?  It would have been in '98ish, so you were pretty young.  You did it a couple times, and you would wake up WAY too early (5:30 or 6, I think) on Saturday morning and wake everyone up to ask them what kind of poached egg they wanted for breakfast . . . you're treat!  You were a really funny kid.
• I also have, somewhere, a college assignment where I had to follow around a little kid and write down everything he did or said.  I shadowed you.  It was during the sword-fighting-cowboying-car-driving era.  You said some pretty funny things.  You pointed out every 4x4 car you saw, and if you didn't know if it was 4x4, you asked.  I'll scan it and send you a copy.  Can you open attachments?
• I loved the Dr. Seuss tree!  It looks to me like someone buried a giant pineapple in the ground, no?
• I loved picturing you playing soccer with the Argentine kids.  When I was in Jerusalem, we would climb up onto the city wall.  On top of the roofs of the Palestinian Quarter was a soccer field.  Palestinian boys were up there a lot; we would play with them.  I actually still had the rod in my leg, so I couldn't really run, so instead of playing soccer, I would sit with this one handicapped boy who also couldn't run.  We would play hand games (the kind where you sit indian style facing each other and hit your knees, then hands, then the other person's hands, etc.)  He didn't speak any English, but we could still do that.  Those are some of my fondest memories of my time there.  I sometimes wonder if we had a lasting impact on any of those boys.  We weren't allowed to say anything about the Church or the Gospel, but they all knew we were from "Mormon University."  You could see the Jerusalem Center from the soccer field . . . across the Kidron Valley.
• Good job keeping such a clean house!  You're such a good example!

Now a little update:

Mariah has progressed a lot and is getting better and better at sharing her feelings instead of acting out.  We still have a long way to go, but she is doing better, and I have hope for her future.  She was teaching herself to read (seriously), so I finally started giving her reading lessons.  We're on lesson 16 of 100, and she's doing great.

Elaine is very very very 2.  Poor girl gets pretty neglected around here 'cause she's been sooooo easy going.  She's turned over a new leaf, and has thrown the ease out the window.  She is a feisty cuss lately.  I'm trying really hard to give her one-on-one time every day; it's hard with my other 2 very needy children.  I'm actually glad, though, that she has started acting out more so I can tell when she needs more attention.  And she's still dang cute.  Her favorite song is "I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."  Are you allowed to look at Family Blogs?  Probably not, but there's a dang cute video here of the girls singing it.

Sally is a hoot.  She's growing up so fast, and she's a smart one.  She doesn't say anything.  She just squeals or grunts.  Oh, she does tell herself "uh-uh" or "mmggggh" (growlish) when she's doing something wrong, like pulling all the books off the shelf, or trying to tip over my plant.  She's really coordinated and is really fast at figuring out how things work.  She only took a couple of minutes to figure out how to work the girls' magic wands by pushing the button with her fat little finger.  She also has this toy that has balls that spin around when you push down on the top.  She watched me do it once, and the next day, I found her doing it over and over and over again.  I think the same toy took Elaine a couple weeks to figure out, and she was a year old when she got it.  She LOVES to unload the silverware from the dishwasher.  She always goes for a spoon, and then sits on the floor to bang it.  Oh, and speaking of banging, I think she's fairly musical and has rhythm.  Sometimes I do dancing time with the older girls.  I tell them to get a musical instrument (maracas, tambourine, triangle), and dance to primary songs.  The first time I did it with them, Sally picked up the tambourine and figured out how to hold it correctly and bang on it.  Now, whenever music is on, or if I'm playing the piano, she hauls over to the box of instruments, takes out the tambourine and starts banging away, often with the correct beat.  She has a sense of humor and likes to play little jokes.  She loves to have the other girls crawl after her and chase her.  She initiates the game by squealing and huffing and puffing as she races through the room, sitting up every few feet to see if they're catching on and pursuing.  It's pretty funny.  She also loves doing patty-cake and playing peep-o.  (Sal's paragraph got a little long.  I guess she's done the most changing since you saw her last.)

Mike passed the first round of boards in November and did really well on finals in December.  This semester is a beast (supposedly the worst of the 4 years), but he's still so great to try to make it home before the girls go to bed, and often in time for dinner.

Not much to say about me.  My kids' life is my life.  I've spent the last month battling the flu and then pneumonia.  I still have a cough, and my voice is very slowly returning.  I haven't been able to sing for a month!  I'm hosting our Relief Society Book Group at my house tomorrow night.  I'm excited; I'm serving cashew cheez ball with crackers, Grandma Byrdenne's salsa sorta, gingersnap cookies and fat free snickerdoodles with coconut cream, and strawberries (also to be dipped in the cream).  I love exposing people to vegan food that tastes so good!  Oh, I'm now a Relief Society teacher.  My first lesson is on Sunday.  It's on the Word of Wisdom.  Go figure.

Thanks so much for setting such a great example for me and my kids.  We pray for you several times each day.  I know you're doing the Lord's work.  I love you.  Bekah

p.s.  I'm sending a separate email with a few photos.  Hope they go through.

Sun!

We enjoyed some gorgeous weather last week!  It's cold again now, but we were able to spend a lot of time outside.

We walked to the park one day.  ("We" meaning I walked and pushed M and E in the stroller, with S on my back.)  The park is a little over a mile from our house, so I got my workout for the day.  My back didn't really feel like carrying Sal on the way home, so I strapped her to the top of the stroller.  She thought it was hilarious!  She's a kick. (Sorry for the picture overload.  I couldn't decide which ones to post, so you get them all.)

Here are a few more sun photos:

I promise, nobody got hurt . . . .

"I Belong . . ."

This has been Elaine's favorite song for a long time now; she sings it all the time.  I've tried several times to get a video, and she's never cooperated until today.  So, for your viewing pleasure: