Summer is One!

     Little miss Summer is now one year old. These days she almost never crawls because she can walk so well and she is already getting pretty fast. It still seems so crazy to me to see such a little thing out there walking around. She really is pretty little. She isn't even 19lbs yet but she is super close at 18.97lbs (37%). I am guessing she is just hard to measure, she hates when they lay her on the table and tries to roll away so I don't think we got a good height measurement. We clocked her in at 27.5 inches (which is how tall she was at 9 months) which is only in the 5% so I am pretty sure she is much taller than that. She has a nice good size head at 18.25 inches which is in the 86%.

Summer took her first steps on the day she turned 11 months and from that moment on she was determined to walk. She was practicing constantly. Every time I turned around she was taking three or four steps. Eventually she got better and better and quit crawling all together. She was one determined baby who figured out what she wanted to do an went for it.

Summer is starting to get pickier about what she will eat. She won't eat bananas for breakfast in the morning which I used to feed her all the time. She also picks out all of the green beans every time she eats mixed veggies. Last time she literally threw them off of her high chair and onto the floor. Summer loves sweets but her greatest love lately has been getting to drink out of her cup/bottle. She loved the whole milk she got and she loves water and Juice. She usually spits a fair amount of whatever she is drinking out onto her clothes so is constantly soaked and needs a new outfit. I have to change her at least two or three times a day lately. Summer really enjoyed Easter and got to eat a little bit of candy. She devoured an entire sucker so quickly. The girls like to share with her. Kyla gave Summer a fireball one day cause Kyla didn't like it. Summer's poor little face. I hurried and took it away from her but I think she would have kept eating it if I would have let her. Brynlee also gave her a Smartie and she started to choke on it. That was a little scary so after that I threw away all of the hard chokeable candy and we had another talk about not giving things to the baby.

    Summer usually only wakes up one time a night lately and will sometimes go right back to sleep in her bed after I get her soother for her and tuck her back in. Sometimes she fights going back into her bed so then I bring her to bed with me. She usually goes to bed around 8pm, a few minutes after Annalyn has been put in bed since she shares a room with her and she wakes up anytime between 5:30 - 7. If she wakes up before 6 she will usually go back to sleep after I feed her but if she wakes up after 6 she is up for the day. She still prefers to sleep with mom and dad in their bed. Her naps are still pretty sporadic and she will often take three naps a day. A short one in the morning, a longer one in the middle of the day, and another short one before dinner. She won't sleep in the baby carrier anymore but will still sleep in my arms at church.

Summer is getting a little bit more adventurous. She walks all around the house and follows her sisters wherever they go. Most of the time she had a huge smile on her face while she does it and she likes to carry things in her hands while she walks. She hates it when her sisters go outside and leave her in the house. Whenever I let her out she eats the sand from our sandbox. She is usually still content to be in the baby carrier most of the time but I let her out at the library a few times so she begs to be out every time. She likes to grab all the books off the shelf and play with all of the musical instruments. At her one year check-up she ran all around the doctor's office and she giggled and had a great time. She cried for the shots but was better right away.

Summer loves bath time and she loves playing with her sisters. She likes to play with baby dolls and she is constantly putting blankets and any article of clothes she finds on her head. Then she likes to play peek a boo and run around with clothes on her head until they fall off. Then she laughs like it is just hilarious. Summer has come around to dogs and animals but is still pretty cautious around them. She still rips off her hairbands and hats.

Summer rode in the wagon a few times without complaint and she has warmed up to the swing and was even laughing and giggling the last time I put her in a swing. Just don't push her high or she will get scared and cry to get out again. Summer didn't enjoy being on the trampoline but she likes the grass and hasn't had a problem walking in it. She has also kept her shoes on while she has been outside and seems to appreciate that the shoes protect her feet from the grass. In the front Yard she loves to play in the rocks.

Summer is just the cutest little baby. I think she has far less hair than any of her sisters had at this age. Even the back of her head is pretty bald. She has four teeth but they came in pretty funny. She has the two bottom middle teeth and then the top two teeth that come in next to her front teeth. You can't really tell unless you look really close but I think it kind of makes her look like a little walrus. I can see the front one and they look like they are coming in close so they should be up soon.

Summer is such a fun little baby who has added so much laughter and excitement into our home. I couldn't imagine life without her. She is such a sweet and cuddly baby. She gives the best baby snuggles and we all sure do love snuggling with her. She is one well loves little baby.

Another Post by Brynlee

Brynlee has been begging to write another post for the blog. It takes her a long time to type so I wrote down what she told me to say after she wrote the first line and then she proof read everything and added the picture. I love that she is old enough to do things like this. Here is what Brynlee had to say. (I can't wait to find out what I am getting for Mother's Day)

This year I was so excited because it was almost Mother's Day and I was going to surprise her with a Mother's Day present that my teacher at school whose name is Miss McMorrow  is going to help me give her a surprise and I love giving surprises away. I cannot wait!!!

Ta Da!

Easter 2017

Easter didn't come until the middle of April this month. Grandma Hirtle gave Annalyn a cool egg decorating kit for her birthday in March so Anna had been begging and waiting very impatiently to decorate eggs ever since. In fact she opened up her kit and got the color ready the day after she got her birthday present so the egg dye had been sitting on my counter for several weeks by the time we finally got to use it. We decorated a little early this year and went ahead and decorated them the Monday night before Easter. We did it as our family night activity.

     We had lots of eggs to decorate this year. Everyone really got into the decorating and had lots of fun with it this year. Kyla did hers very quickly and was done in no time. Then she spent a lot of time putting stickers on hers. Joel spent forever trying to get Annalyn's color sprayer kit that she got for her birthday to work but it was so messy and just did not work the way it said it would so we ended up skipping that plan and Anna was content to just decorate her eggs the normal way.

     The girls ate a few eggs that night and then several more the next day. Kyla obviously really liked peeling them because she had more than half of her eggs peeled the next day. Brynlee only liked the white part of the egg while Anna and Kyla liked the middle part but no one wanted to eat an egg that someone else had touched.

     On Saturday Joel went with me and the kids to the community egg hunt. I took Kyla and the baby over to the little kid section, Joel took Annalyn over to her section and luckily we found a friend and sent Brynlee with them because she was with the older kids. We found my sister Heather and Remi and waited for the egg hunt to start but we lost them as soon as it started. Kyla ran as soon as the whistle went off. She ran past several egg and went for the middle. She still managed to get several eggs and she even got a slip of paper which said she won a tube of tootsie rolls. I helped Summer and she got one egg. She got a sucker too that she held onto tight and was very happy to get to suck on. Joel said Annalyn went crazy finding eggs and she got so many that her basket couldn't hold anything else. She was losing eggs with every step. She also got a prize of an Easter puzzle. Brynlee didn't get near as many eggs as everyone else but she ended up with a ticket that said 3rd place prize. She got a huge giant blue bunny and she was pretty excited about it. That thing got buckled in the van by us and taken to grandma Hirtle's house that day. It got drug outside and it has been sleeping with her on her bed ever since. It kind of takes up most of the bed but Brynlee is fine with that. If you ask she will tell you it is a girl. It's name keeps changing though.

     This year my girls kept asking about the Easter bunny. Brynlee wrote him a letter asking him to come to our house but I told them I had already bought their candy so they didn't need the bunny to come. They woke up pretty excited on Easter morning. Annalyn and Kyla were at the store with me when I picked out the candy and they picked out some juice that they were super excited to get. Kyla slept in and it was a bit tortuous for her sisters to wait to do the egg hunt until she woke up. Joel and I hid about 40 eggs all around the house for them to find and they had fun with that. They did pretend egg hunts all week so they were more than ready for the real thing.

     Before church we watched an Easter movie about Jesus and we talked about the real meaning of the season. We went to church and then ate a yummy Easter dinner at grandma Verna's house for dinner. My mom put together a little egg hunt for all the grandkids in the back yard and they had so much fun doing that. They found lots more candy and my mom even had a few prizes that my girls got to come home with. It was a fun filled Easter week where we got to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior and we got to see a lot of joy and excitement from our girls. Happy Easter.

March 2017

     This was a month full of many great accomplishments and a whole lot of fun. There were a lot of birthdays that we got to celebrate this month. Annalyn turned five, her cousin Jakobee turned six, and Bryn and Anna went to a party for a friend while Anna and Kyla went to a party for a different friend. The party that Annalyn and Kyla went to was a princess party and the girls were supposed to dress up as princesses. I got out all of the dress up clothes and Annalyn chose to be a ballerina princess while Kyla picked to be a "Fancy Mancy" (aka Nancy) princess. I had to admire their individuality.

Brynlee finally let us take the training wheels off of her bike and she took off almost immediately. After just a few quick pointers she got on that bike and took off riding. By the end of that first night she was riding like a pro and doing figure eights in the streets. I was so impressed with how fast she figured it out. Annalyn begged to let us take her training wheels off too. She fell a lot and got pretty frustrated because she couldn't get it but was pretty determined that she did not want to put the training wheels back on. For now she is just using her feet to wheel her bike around. I tried to put Summer and Kyla in the bike trailer and give them a ride but Summer hated that things and cried and whined until I took her out.

Annalyn also graduated from speech this month. I was so proud of her and of the amazing progress she has made with her speech. She graduated much sooner than was ever expected.

There were a few nice days where we went to the park to play and the kids spent as much time playing outside as they could. I babysat a few times again this month and we had a few friends over to play.

Joel started this month out with a really sore tooth. It was the same tooth that has already had a crown and a root canal but it was so infected. He went to the dentist and they sent him to a specialist but it was a while before he could get in so he was on some heavy pain killers for a while. They went in and fixed his root canal. Joel almost went on a campout with the youth but only two boys showed up so they decided to cancel it and they watched a movie instead. Joel was a little disappointed that he left work early for no reason. Right now his bag is still packed and sitting in the middle of our living room.

Annalyn filled up her shell jar and got to go on a date night. She picked to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie with her dad and they went to eat at Artic Circle afterwards. It sounds like they had a lot of fun together and they both really liked that movie. Joel made the kids pancake animals for breakfast one morning and they all thought they were pretty cool.

Joel's sister Jamie came up for a visit and we got to see her one night. I went to the Women's broadcast and a fireside with my grandma. We didn't really do anything to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We still went to the library every week on Thursday but we only had to go to speech once before Anna graduated.

The last week of the month brought Spring Break for Brynlee and I signed the girls up for swimming lessons during the week. Brynlee and Annalyn both got to do them. They loved them and were so excited to go swimming every day. On the second day Brynlee came home super excited and told me, "mom I was actually swimming. I was swimming for like two seconds." Haha! They both made lots of progress and were pretty proud of everything they had learned during the week. Annalyn was putting her whole body in the water like it was nothing. I was a little worried because we had to leave our house at 8 in the morning to get there on time but it didn't end up being an issue. Kyla and Summer were awesome little traveling buddies and were fine with watching. I let Kyla play on the Ipad during lessons on the last day and she was super thrilled about that. I paid to let her go swimming on another day and then the other girls all played in the little kiddie pool for an hour or so after their lessons. My mom and sister met us there and went swimming too. Then we went out for lunch and went to the park.

Most of our Spring Break was pretty cold. We tried to go to the park a few other days and my girls wimped out because they were too cold. We had my friend Rhonda over for lunch one day and had fun visiting with her. On Thursday during Spring Break it started out wet and rainy but by the time we got done with swimming lessons it was snowing and there were a few inches that had stuck to the ground. We all had flip flops on (except Kyla, she had her cow girl boots) and we had to run into the library through the snow with the wrong foot wear. We visited my mom after that. It was a fun filled week. We ended the month by having Madison Spend the night. It was kind of a crazy night. I had just finished cooking up five pounds of hamburger meat for dinner and I had the meat sitting in a glass bowl. Brynlee tried to help me by getting out bowls to set the table and she knocked a mason jar out and it broke and landed on my bowl of grease. That bowl broke too and there was grease all over my kitchen and there was glass everywhere. Brynlee cut her foot and was bleeding pretty good, and there was glass in the meat so our dinner was ruined. I doctored Brynlee up and sent everyone out of the kitchen. Then I called Joel and had him pick something up for dinner and I spent a good hour trying to get the grease and glass cleaned up and out of my kitchen. Despite the sad ending it was a pretty fun filled month.