Kyla - Seven Months

Little Kyla Mae is now seven months old. She sure is getting big. Look how much she has grown in the last seven months.

     This baby loves putting her feet in the air. Every time I put her on her back, her legs go straight up. It is hard to get a picture with her legs down. She kicks her little legs a lot too. She loves to jump on my lap or in her jumper roo. She also tends to smile with her mouth all the way open. Really she just likes to have her mouth wide open all the time. Lately she has added the tongue so she smiles with her tongue out. She also has her thumb in her mouth for a lot of her pictures. Her eyes seem to get dark at times, when she was born I really thought they were brown, but they still look really blue at times. I am guessing they might be hazel like her sisters.

    Kyla is now talking a lot more. At least she is making a lot more new sounds. Her favorite is "dada" but she also says ba, bu, la, guh, she blows raspberries, and she coos and giggles. Her latest thing is this little grunt that she does. I think it is pretty funny. We are still working on mama.

     Kyla loves to eat baby food. She has had squash, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, and carrots. Joel bought a lot of those jars so it is a good thing she likes them since we have enough to last for the rest of her babyhood. Kyla especially loves those cereal puffs and she got ahold of a cracker and some bread and she loved them and ate them pretty well. She also seemed to like the pears, bananas, peaches, and applesauce that I mushed up and gave her. 

     Kyla hasn't slept very well this month. She seems to be a light sleeper and with two big sisters around she is afraid of what she will miss if she goes to sleep. She also had a cold and for a while and Annalyn kept waking her up in the middle of the night. Every time Anna woke up she would wake up Kyla. Hopefully she will start sleeping well again. 

     Kyla learned how to wave this month. She doesn't really do it on demand but she loves to wave over and over again at us. She kicks her legs all the time and sits like a pro. I have even been able to let her sit up in the bath. Kyla absolutely loves bath time. She goes crazy with all of her splashing in there. She got to celebrate Christmas and had fun trying to open up the presents. She really wanted to eat the wrapping paper. 

     Kyla is rolling a bit more but she is the happiest when I just sit her up with a few toys and let her play. She is getting good at reaching really far and she has gotten ahold of several things she should not have and put them in her mouth. I have to really watch her. When she is sitting she can scoot a little bit and she can pull herself down to her belly and grab things. On her belly she can scoot herself all the way around in a circle and she can scoot backwards. She is well on her way to being mobile. I might not have too much time until she starts crawling. I am not ready for that yet. 

     Kyla protests really loudly and gets mad when we take things away from her. For now she is easily distracted with an alternative toy but she knows how to cry loudly in protest. She seems to be very observant and loves watching what is going on around her. Kyla isn't spitting up near as much as she used to but she will every once in a while. I think she might be starting to grow some more hair. At least I hope she it. It is coming in really slow so her little bald spot is nice and pronounced. Kyla has really been such a joy to have in our home. We are all pretty crazy about her.

Annalyn Update

     Annalyn is two and nine months. She sure is super independent, extremely stubborn, and extra cuddly. Lately she pretty much refuses to walk to or from the van. She wants to be carried and it is a real struggle to get her to walk on her own. She will often sit on the front step and refuse to move. She is constantly asking me to hold her and rock her in the "black chair." She loves playing with Brynlee and with little Kyla. She loves the color pink and she really loves to play with her little animal figurines. Her favorite animals are dinosaurs and she has slept with and packed around the "Land Before Time" movie for the last month. She loves clothes as much as Brynlee does and will not wear jeans. She likes to try on clothes. When I was organizing Kyla's closet Anna had a great time trying on all of Kyla's clothes. She likes it when I fix her hair and she loves braids and it is getting pretty long. It is longer than Brynlee's hair.  She also likes to put "braids" in my hair and make me look beautiful.

     We were saying a prayer a few days ago and Annalyn did not want to stop playing to fold her arms for the prayer. We told her to stop playing and fold her arms and she ignored us. Joel took her toy away and Anna was really mad. She scowled at him, folded her arms in utter indignation, and yelled, "I am not folding my arms. Hump. I am not folding my arms." She refolded her arm and said that a few more time. I just had to laugh since she was folding her arms while she said that and she was so mad. 

      Annalyn loves babies. She is constantly pretending to be a baby and whenever she plays with her toys, she wants the baby toys. She is constantly requesting the baby pancakes when we make them. Pretty much anything is better if it is baby sized. The other day she was sitting in on the toilet and she called me in all excited so that I could some and see her, "cute little baby poop." She was pretty proud of that. 

          Lately Anna has been obsessed with putting things in her pockets and she recently discovered that when she doesn't have pockets she can just stick things in her panties. The best was when we were at church and she got a present from the primary president. Her dress didn't have pockets so she just lifted it up and stuck her present in her panties. We have been trying to teach her to put things in a purse but it she doesn't have a purse she just might stick things in her panties. You never know what you might find in there. 

     Anna is so quick to get mad and cry, but as soon as you look at her or give her what she wants, she laughs and smiles at you. She also does this little baby penguin type shuffle when she is really happy and I think it is hilarious. She sure is fun to have around. 

Brynlee Update

My little Brynlee girl just keeps growing and is officially 4 and 1/2. She sure is fun to be around. She is the typical bossy oldest sister who likes to follow the rules (most of the time) and she likes to keep everyone else in line. She is very much a perfectionist and can't stand to be dirty. She is super dramatic about any injury she gets and she has a hard time sitting still and being quiet. She loves the color pink and is pretty girly. She picks out all of her clothes and comes up with some crazy outfits. She has got some eczema on her eye that we can't get to go away. She is great at playing pretend and is constantly pretending to be someone else. She likes to haul all of her toys all over the house or put them in bags and hide them in her room. Here are a few of the latest quotes from Brynlee.

It snowed in November and Brynlee woke up the next morning and started jumping up and down yelling, "It's Christmas, it's Christmas. I knew it. It's Christmas." We tried to explain that it wasn't really Christmas yet but a few days later when all of the snow melted Brynlee was devastated. "Oh no," she exclaimed. "We missed Christmas!"

The other day Brynlee had this baby doll that she was pretending was her baby. She wanted to take her doll with her to preschool but I told her she must leave it at home. She was really worried about her baby but I promised to watch her. Brynlee was really skeptical about my ability to take care of her doll. "I don't know if you can watch this baby mom. She is really hard to feed because her mouth is really small." I assured her that I could handle it and she gave me some very strict instructions. Among other things she told me I must "make sure to feed my baby. If she cries, you have to change her diaper, (whispered in my ear - but don't change it for real, just for pretend.) You have to take her in the car when I go to preschool and you have to hold her and take care of her." As soon as Brynlee got back from preschool she asked me all about how her baby did. Then we went to my sister Heather's house and Brynlee ended up leaving her dolls in the bathroom. We were almost out of Heather's subdivision when Brynlee started bawling so we had to turn around and go save her doll.

Sometimes Brynlee likes to tell on Annalyn just to get her in trouble. The other day Brynlee came and told me that Annalyn had bit her arm and that I needed to give Anna a timeout. I asked if Anna had left a mark and she told me that she did but that I couldn't see it. I told her I would talk to Anna but that I wasn't going to give Annalyn a timeout. Brynlee went up to Annalyn and I could hear her whispering to Annalyn something about how she wanted Annalyn to bite her arm and leave a little mark. She was trying to convince Anna to bite her arm just so she could get her sister in trouble. Luckily Anna didn't do it.    

Brynlee loves it when Joel and I play with her. The girls and I were all playing outside one day when Joel just so happened to come home a little early and he came over to hang out with us too. I was the mommy dragon, Annalyn was the baby dragon, and Brynlee was the princess. Brynlee immediately assigned Joel the role of the big mean daddy dragon. Then she looked at me and her dad and told us "You dragons are in looove and you are married so you can go ahead and kiss."

One day Brynlee came out of her room and excitedly told me that she had cleaned her whole room. But then she told me, "just don't look on my bed. If you see a big blanket on my bed, never move it." She put everything that was on her floor on top of her bed and then she threw a blanket over it to cover it up.

I laid Kyla in her bed for a nap one morning while the girls were playing in Brynlee's room. Several minutes later I could hear Kyla cooing in her bed and it sounded like Brynlee and Anna were in there talking to her. I looked towards my room and saw that the light was turned on and a blanket was thrown up over Kyla's crib so that I could no longer see inside the bed. I called out, "Brynlee and Annalyn, you had better get out of Kyla's bed right now." All of a sudden Brynlee's little head popped up with a look of astonishment, "how did you know we were in here," she questioned. We put the blanket up so you wouldn't see us."

The girls spent a lot of time playing with all of my Christmas decorations this month and there were several interesting conversations. We have a wooden Joseph and Mary and several snowman and a grinch that were their favorite things to play with. There were a few times when Mary and Joseph would have a girl baby and the grinch was not always very nice. On one occasion they were all talking when all of a sudden Joseph's head fell right off. "Oh No!" Brynlee exclaimed. "Joseph just died!"

Annalyn keeps playing with the DVDs and she has scratched several of them so that they won't play anymore. I got onto Annalyn when I caught her playing with them one day after I had already told her to leave them alone. I told Annalyn she was going to scratch them. Brynlee walked up to me and sad, "It did not get a scratch mom, just calm down."

Brynlee was telling me about how she had a little bit of and accident and peed in her panties when she was at my mom's house. Apparently my brother Josh stole some of Brynlee's speed so Brynlee couldn't run very fast and then she just peed in her panties a little bit.

My grandma made some carmel popcorn one day and Brynlee kept talking about how much she liked the "popcorn that stuck together."

I had a friend over and she was telling Brynlee that she had a magic touch with babies and Brynlee really thought that she had magic in her hands. My friend also told Brynlee that she could say the alphabet backward. Brynlee then started walking backwards while she sang the alphabet. Obviously Brynlee can say the alphabet backwards too.

Brynlee came up to me the other day with her Snow White and Prince Eric polly pockets and she told me to watch because they were going to kiss. She then made them have a little make out session. I shielded my eyes and told her that was gross.
Bryn: "What!?" She demanded. "That is not gross. Why is kissing gross?"
Me: "You don't think kissing is gross?" I asked. "You aren't going to kiss boys are you?"
Bryn: "Yes, I am mom. I am going to kiss lots of boys."
Me: (Gasp)
Bryn: "What, you kissed dad when you were married. I saw the picture."
Me: "Yeah, but we were married."
Bryn: "OK mom, I will only kiss a boy when I get married."
I am going to hold her to that. I might be in trouble with this girl but we sure do love her.

December 2014

We had a blast this month making treats, eating way too many sweets, playing tons of games, and spending time with our little family and with our extended family. December was a fun month. Annalyn was sick with a fever for a few days and Brynlee got it too so we were stuck home for a while. We also all got colds but luckily it wasn't anything serious and everyone was healthy in time for Christmas. The girls spent many hours playing with all of the Christmas decorations and they didn't want me to take them down. When I took down the Christmas tree Annalyn just looked at me and cried out, "oh no mom! Why are you doing that to my tree?!" Joel took a few days off of work to celebrate Christmas and the New year with us. He had to spend one of his days off fixing a leak in the bathroom of our house. Our dresser was up against the wall so by the time we noticed that the wall was leaking, the whole thing was covered in mold. It was a lot of work but Joel fixed it and we were still able to spend some of Joel's time off doing fun things. He even went to Chuck E Cheese with us one day so we could use up some old tokens we had. We spent New Year's Eve at Joel's sister Joanna's house with all of his family. We stayed up really late playing games and eating food. We all had a great time. When we woke up the next morning the first thing Annalyn said to me it, "I like Joanna's house."

The year 2014 is over and overall it has been a pretty good year. Joel and I were looking back on it and we both had to conclude that the birth of little Kyla was the best accomplishment we could had ever asked for and the fact that we have three healthy girls that are growing and learning new things everyday has made this year a success. We may not have reached all of our goals yet but our family is growing and we are all pretty happy. We can't for to see what the new year will bring.