Miriam at Four Months

This sweet baby was officially four months old on Christmas Eve. She is getting bigger everyday and is now 25.5 inches tall (80%) and is 15.6 lbs (75%). She is still in size 2 diapers and size 3-6, and 6 month clothes.

Miriam has been playing and is getting more and more fun everyday. She loves to play with the toys on her little play mat she got a few days before Christmas and she loves to jump and play in her little jumper toys. She was constantly trying to roll onto her belly when I put her on her back and officially did it for the first time just a day or two after she turned four months old. She can roll from her belly to her back as well but doesn't so that very often these days. She scoots and pushes around and moves all over the place when I lay her on the floor. She is seriously such a happy baby and does not mind being left on the floor to play at all.

Miriam still eats every three hours. She has slept through the night a few times but most nights she wakes up at least once or twice to eat. She still sleeps in the little bed in our room for now. She has become a lot more attached to her binky and needs it to fall asleep most of the time. She still takes a few naps a day and I can get at least one good long nap in her bed out of her in the morning. She likes to be rocked to sleep lately and cries when I leave her in her bed. I usually make sure she is sleeping and then have to carefully move her to her bed and hope she doesn't wake up.

 Miriam has a pretty big bald spot on the back of her head. She likes to stick out her tongue lately and the likes to suck on her fingers. She also likes to suck on my hand when I am holding her and when I have my hand by her mouth.

My mom has watched Miriam a few times for me while I help out in Annalyn's class at school and for the most part Miriam has been great for her. She loves to see other people and as soon as someone talks to her she gives them huge smile. She sleeps for most of our trip to the library and sleeps in her car seat on most of our trips. She loves to see all of her sisters and her dad and mom and gives them all big grins as well. 

 Miriam loves baths. She has been splashing and having fun playing in the bath lately. I have been giving her a bath in the tub with the big kids lately and she loves it. She will often get fussy during dinnertime so I hold her a lot while I eat and she likes to be with the rest of the family watching what is going on. She is starting to get a little bit grabby lately and I was getting a plate for one of her sisters the other day and she managed to stick her hand in some ranch and eat it before I could stop her. That was her first taste of food. I couldn't tell how much she enjoyed it. She didn't try to go back for more.

Miriam got to sit on Santa's lap this month. She saw snow for the first time but didn't get close to it. She went to the Kuna night lights parade but was bundled up warm and slept through the entire thing. She went to the library lots of times and she got to go on a few trips to the store.

We all love getting to spend time with this cute little girls so much. She is such a huge blessing in our lives. All of her sisters loves holding her and talking to her and making her laugh. They like to sing her songs and play peek a boo with her and she just eats it right up. She is such a fun and happy baby and we are so grateful she is a part of our family. 

Brynlee at 8 and 1/2

It is time for another update all about Brynlee. She is such a sweet and compassionate soul. She feels things so strongly and often wears her emotions on her sleeve. She is so empathetic and she thinks about others all the time. She is great about praying for the people that she thinks need help and will ask about them and check in on others all the time. She is also super bossy and likes to be in charge. She likes to tell her sisters what to do and she is great at helping to take care of them. They all look up to her and love playing with her but they do not always appreciate her telling them what to do. Brynlee also gets super upset and frustrated easily. Brynlee is also fast. If I give her a task she can get it done in no time flat. She reminds me the most of her dad. I am very methodical about that way I do things but Brynlee is all about getting things done the quickest way possible. When cooking, cleaning, or doing homework Brynlee just jumps right in and does it fast. 

Brynlee always works hard and tries her best. She puts her heart into everything she does. She still loves school and learning. Her teacher told me that Brynlee is the one who is always raising her hand and trying to talk to her. Brynlee likes to know the answer to things and is good at making things up when she doesn't know the right answer. She is telling us all kinds of made up facts all the time. She loves to read and will often stay up late into the night reading a book. She still struggles to fall asleep at night. Brynlee still likes to write and draw and is a talented little artist. She is constantly amazing me with some of the creative ideas that she comes up with. She likes to fix hair and is getting good at it. She made me teach her cursive last year and she loves to write in cursive. She also likes math and has fun telling us multiplication facts. 

Brynlee still loves to play with friends. She loves to sing and sings all around the house. She loves to play and be silly. She is kind and helpful and has such a good heart. I love this little girl so much. She teaches me and helps me all the time and I am a better person because I have her in my life. 

And here is the annual video of Brynlee telling us a little bit about herself. She still can't sit or stand still which you can tell in this video.

2018 Quotes From the Girls

I have been working on this post of quotes from my kids for over a year now. It's about time I finished it. There are a lot of quotes so hopefully this post isn't super long. There are only a couple of quotes from Brynlee so I will start with her. 

Brynlee:

At the end of Brynlee's dance class last Spring they had all the parents get up and dance with the kids at the end of the class. I was super pregnant at the time so I sent Joel out there with the rest of the kids. After class was over Brynlee told her dad. "Dad you really embarrassed me. You were not really grooving that much."

"Mom can we have a fancy dinner tonight? You know, like spaghetti or chicken nuggets." 

I am pleased to report that I made her request of a fancy dinner a reality that night.

"Mom are you going to feed the baby out of your, you know, your, (whispers) private parts."

Annalyn: 

"Mom I think I look good in black, just like you do."

"Well thanks Anna."

"Yeah, so could I wear some of your make-up?"

Annalyn had some tadpoles she was keeping in a bucket out in the garage this summer. She was so excited about those things. The morning after we brought them home she was right in my face with a tadpole before I had even gotten out of bed showing me how one of them was getting legs. A few days later she was telling me all about them and she told me that when she was getting a tadpole she had to be careful because one of the frogs had died and it turned into a slimeball at the bottom of the water. Annalyn said she hated touching that thing but apparently it had been there for quite a few days before she mentioned it. She had another frog in there that she called "fatso" because he was bigger than the rest. 

     Annalyn brought home this beautiful looking cup with some growing green things towards the end of kindergarten and Annalyn took care of those things and was very vigilant about watering them and watching them grow. I kept telling her I thought it was just grass that she was growing but Annalyn insisted that eventually they would become flowers. After several weeks Annalyn got pretty frustrated and started complaining to me about how long these flowers were taking to grow. At this point the grass was pretty tall and it was clear to me that she was growing grass. I told Annalyn the news and she got pretty upset about it. "You mean all this time I have just been growing dumb old grass? Why would my teacher do that?"

     In the Missoula play that Annalyn got to be in recently she was cast to be "mini Merlin." She was pretty excited about it until after she came home from practice on the second day. "Mom," she said. "I think Merlin is a boy." I tried to tell her it didn't matter but Annalyn just shook her head and said, "if the costume isn't cute, I am not doing it." I was a little bit worried about that but when I went to get her after the first dress rehearsal she ran to me and excitedly said, "Mom, I get a staff, a real life staff!" Needless to say the costume was super cute and she loved the character she got to play. The costume was a little big on her and that staff was hard to hold so I don't know that she was totally in love with it but at least she looked cute. 

 Kyla:

      Kyla was super upset about Joel putting the beams in our living room last year. She went to bed right before Joel started to put them up and when so woke up the next day she came out, looked at the ceiling and sighted a huge sigh of relief and said, "Oh good! My friends ARE going to like my house!"

     Kyla where do you think Josh will go on his mission?

 "At McDonald!"

     "Now my whole day is ruined. I hate when my day is ruined!"

     Kyla snuggled up on the couch with her dad one day and then looked at him and said, "Dad, you are as comfy as a frog."

     Later that week she came up to her dad and asked him to "hold me tight like a frizzly bear."

     Another day she sat and talked and talked to Joel and me almost without pausing. Joel told her she talked a lot and Kyla didn't even skip a beat, she just said, "yeah, I talk as much as a watermelon."

At church one Sunday Kyla got in trouble, probably for fighting with one of her sisters and her dad got onto her. She hid under the bench and refused to get up. Eventually she came up to me and sat on my lap and snuggled with me. I asked her how she was doing and she told me; "I am doing great but (Sniffle), someone just broke my heart. I think it was dad."

     We came home from a walk the other day and Kyla went in and told Joel, "we didn't go anywhere. We just went on a walk but we didn't go anywhere."

     During the summer I decided to cook some corn dogs for lunch one day and put several of them in the oven all at once. Kyla loves corn dogs and she was super excited about her upcoming lunch until she found out that the corn dogs were in the oven and not in the microwave. She cried and told me "mom, you just ruined my perfect day! You are the worstest mom I ever had!"

     We pulled up to the church to exercise one day and when we got there we saw another car. "Oh good!" Kyla exclaimed, "other humans are here."

     One of my friends told me she asked Kyla if she wanted a baby brother or a sister back before we found out what we were having. Kyla quickly told her, "a girl. We don't like boys at our house because they pee funny."

     Kyla lost her shoes while we were at Grandma and Grandpa Hirtle's house the other day. We finally found them and Kyla was putting them on while grandpa started teasing her. "You lost your shoes. I bet they were lonely," he stated. 

"Grandpa! They were not lonely," Kyla was quick to say, "They were together."

     "Dad you just Had to go this way because you wanted to, right dad?"

 Summer:

Summer was just tiny at the beginning of this year when she took her soother and put it in her shirt and then looked at it and patted it. I asked her what she was doing and she looked at me, smiled, and said "boobies."

     Summer came up to me a few months later super upset with an empty bag of skittles that she mostly ate. "What's happened?" I asked her. "Brynlee!" she madly pronounce. "Spank bum!" she told me. 

     Summer came up to me all sniffly one day looking sad and she handed me one of my bras and said, "Mom, I don't hab no boobies."

     "Mom, look! My eyballs are all gone."

"What?"

"Yeah, look! My make-up is all dried up."

"Oh, you want more make-up."

"Yeah!"

     For Joel's birthday we bought him some Oreos and a game. I thought I had hidden the presents pretty well but the next day when Joel came home Kyla was trying to get her dad to guess what we had gotten him. All of a sudden Summer comes running out with his present and hands it to him and says, look. I went in to rehide the present and discovered that an entire row of Oreos was also missing all of the cream inside of them. I still gave them to Joel but almost half of them were missing. She also gave away what my present was by telling me that my washer was broken and we had a new one in the garage. She can not be trusted with secrets. We didn't tell her what any of the Christmas presents were. 

     I will often let the girls play on the ipad while I fix their hair. Every time Summer wants to play on the ipad she messes up her hair and tells me, "my hair is messy. My hair is really messy."

     Summer ate the last brownie the other day that one of the other girls were saving. I questioned Summer about eating it and she gave me a hug and said, "I no mean to. I so sorry mommy."

     Summer went poop on the potty chair for the first time last week and didn't tell me about it until she started having problems and started screaming for help. She was crying and had somehow stepped in some of the poop and had some of it on her foot. She was pretty upset about the whole thing. I helped her get things cleaned up and she started to tell me the story about he whole thing. "mom, I just got poop on my foot and it was so Scary!"

     Later that week we were at grandma's house and she excitedly called me from the bathroom telling me she had gone pee. "You went by yourself on that big potty? I asked."

"yeah," she said. "I is not falling in."

     Summer has had to be taken out in the hall almost every week at church lately because she can not be quite for an entire hour. There have been a few times she has screamed really loudly while we take her out. A few times she has called us a poopy head or told us we were dumb during the middle of sacrament. Last week she started screaming, "I will be good, I will be good," quite loudly while I was hauling her out of the chapel.

     Summer had been so busy lately. She is constantly getting into things. She was able to sneak some shampoo into her room the other day and put it all over the pretend baby bed that was in there. She gets q-tips to unlock Annalyn's door and finds all kinds of ways to get in trouble in there. She wrote all over Anna's mirror with a washable marker and is constantly getting into Anna's lotions and special things and ruining or eating them. She has also gotten water all over the floor multiple times, nail polish on the floor, and permanent marker on several of our doors. There was one day Annalyn was getting ready to leave for school and her backpack was missing. We finally looked in Summer's room and as soon as we opened the door we could hear Summer laughing while she ran to hide in her closet. There was Anna's backpack left open on the floor along with Annaly's lunch box which was now empty. All of the food was all over the floor, the snack that was in there was gone, and Summer was in the closet drinking the juice box that was previously tucked away in Annalyn's lunchbox. I put Summer in time out and then had to quickly repack Annalyn's lunch so she could make it to the bus stop in time. 

     A few weeks after that I was spending a good amount of time trying to get Summer to fall asleep in her bed. Joel was gone and everyone else was asleep but Summer would not stay in her bed. I gave Summer a pretty stern lecture and at around 9pm I thought she had fallen asleep because the house had been quite for the last 20 minutes or so. Then I heard Annalyn start to scream for me. She told me she was all wet. She came out of bed just steaming mad all upset and her hair was completely soaked. Summer made a quick run for her bed but I could see that she had a hair brush and a water bottle in her hands. Summer must have snuck in the bathroom and grabbed the brush and water bottle and then snuck in Annalyn's room where she started to spray and brush Annalyn's hair while she slept. Annalyn was just boiling mad. "I was just asleep and then all of a sudden I felt something wet and it woke me it," she whined. Summer must have been spraying for a long time because Annalyn was so soaked. She got new pajamas and after giving Summer a nice good consequence I helped Annalyn brush and dry her hair. The whole time I was brushing her hair I just had the vision of getting woke up by your little sister standing over you with a water bottle fixing your hair and it was all I could do to hold in the laughter. Annalyn was so mad that I didn't dare laugh but it was hard to hold in the laughter.

A few months ago I changed the password on my ipad because I had a few kids that were constantly trying to play on it without my permission. I put all of my kids to bed that night and went to use my ipad and discovered that my kids must have realized that the password was changed because my ipad was disabled for an hour. Life with kids is so entertaining, frustrating, and fun all at the same time. I love all five of these sweet little girls so very much and I love being their mom, even on the crazy and the hard days. I am grateful for these funny moments, they make life so much more fun.