Miriam at 8 Months!

Baby Miriam is crawling all over the place these days. She is pulling herself up to stand along all the furniture and loves to hold onto my hands and walk all around the house. She sure is getting big. I can't believe she is already eight months old. I know it is kind of cliche but I have to say that she is seriously growing up way too fast. 

Miriam loves to eat whatever everyone else is eating. She has never liked it when I try to feed her and constantly tries to steal the spoon when I try to put it in her mouth. She is much happier when I let her feed herself. She loves crackers, eggs, peaches, peanut butter and yogurt. I used to give her a lot of food in those applesauce pouches but then she decided she didn't like them. I keep giving them to her and she has been eating them again. There isn't a lot of things that she won't eat and she has had most of the things we eat. She has had olives, green beans, taco meat, cheese, avocados, carrots, pears, and sweet potatoes and likes all of those foods. 

 Miriam learned how to say "mama" this month and she says it all the time. She has also showed a particular favoritism toward her mama and will whine for me and follow me all around the house. If someone else is holding her she likes to keep a strict eye on me and will cry for me if she can't see me. When she gets excited she flaps her little arms up and down.

 Miriam still sticks her tongue out all of the time. She waves at people and will usually give anyone that talks to her a nice big smile. She has such big, bright, beautiful eyes and people are always commenting on how big and cute they are. They also like to comment about how cute her little bald head is. I am glad that at least for now she is fine with me putting a headband on her head.

 Miriam still constantly scratches her face and seems to constantly have some sort of scab on her face. She is also starting to fight letting me cut her fingernails. She loves to crawl over to where her sisters are so she can be a part of what they are doing. She got to play outside quite a bit and loved playing in the grass. She did not enjoy the ride in the swing. She cried until I got her out.

 Miriam has not been a super great sleeper this month. She likes to sleep in our bed with us and she sleeps well in her bed and in someone's arms but she is not liking her bed as much. She does sleep super well in her car seat but it is getting harder to transfer to for a nap into her bed. We are going to have to break her of this habit so she will start sleeping better. I do love cuddling her but it is becoming a problem.

Miriam is constantly putting things in her mouth. She crawls all over the place and is constantly finding little things to put in her mouth. We had one scary choking event. I don't know what she had in her mouth but I saw it for a second and it looked like a little white bead of some kind. She ended up swallowing it and then seemed to be just fine until a few days later when she started throwing up. She threw up all that night and into the morning. She was pretty miserable and it kind of freaked me out because I was worried whatever she had swallowed was stuck in her stomach. Especially after I did some research on the computer so I took her into the doctor where they said she looked just fine. Turns out she just had some kind of stomach virus that Kyla ended up getting later that day. As soon as Kyla got sick I felt much better. I still hated to see Miriam feel so miserable. She kept wanting to nurse but when then just throw everything right back up. She was back to her normal self the next day luckily.

Miriam is fascinated every time she sees an animal and likes to crawl after them and try to grab them. She likes to crawl in little tight places like in the girl's doll house and has gotten stuck in there a few times. She is getting busy and I love seeing her little personality shine through. Kyla asks to hold her the most but the other girls constantly ask to hold Miriam all the time. We all love holding and hanging out with this cute little baby. It is so fun to watch her learn and grow new things.

Spring Break!

     Towards the end of March the girls got a week off of school for Spring Break. It was a fun filled much needed break for all of us. I wanted to have something fun to do during the week so I signed the three older girls up for swim lessons. They were pretty excited about them. 

     We started off Spring Break with a trip for Annalyn to the doctor. She had a high fever that Saturday. Her throat didn't start hurting until the next day so while we were at the doctor we didn't check for strep throat. Joel took all of the other girls with him over to help my parents while I took Anna in. My parents set up a room in their basement as their new preschool. It is a much bigger spot but it needed some work which is where Joel came in. After the trip to the doctor I took Annalyn to their house to go pick up the other girls. She was feeling much better by then so we ate some hotdogs and smore with them and I helped my mom to move a bunch of stuff down to the preschool room. 

     The next morning Annalyn woke up with a sore throat. I bought some strep throat tests online and we gave her one and it came up positive. Joel wasn't feeling well so he volunteered to take her to the doctor this time while I got to take the other kids to church. I think Joel ended up with the better end of that deal because Summer was terrible for me at church. Luckily Joel was able to get Annalyn some medicine and since we got it early that morning she was feeling better that night. 

Everyone was feeling better by Monday morning so we drove to swimming lessons. We got some books on tape and enjoyed listening to them all week as we drove to lessons. Summer was determined that she was going to go swimming that morning as well so I figured I could pay for her to go swimming in the kiddie pool. She had her swimming suit in a bag and was literally stripping as soon as we walked in the door. I got the girls to their lessons and then tried to pay for Summer to go swimming but the pool was full so they wouldn't let her go. Summer was pretty mad. After that it was almost impossible to get her to cooperate and watch the girls and get out the door at the end of lessons. After changing we went to my parent's house again to see my aunt Shirley and her grandson. My dad had a barbecue that night so we stayed and ate dinner. My brother had his puppies over there so we got to get a few puppy snuggles while we were there.  

On Tuesday morning I called before swimming lessons so that I could get Summer into the kiddie pool. We got there early so I could pay for her to go and then we dropped off the girls with their groups. Summer had a blast in that water. I ended up paying for her to have a day pass even though I only wanted her to swim for 40 minutes. Then after only 25 minutes they made everyone get out of the pool for a 10 minute break. Summer did not want to get out of that water. She tried to run away from the lifeguards and was pretty mad that it was time to get out. This time Summer requested that I bring the stroller for her to ride in and she promised to be good so she did much better and the morning was pretty smooth after we got Summer out of the water. 

After swimming lessons we cleaned up a little bit and then we met Joel at Chick Fil A for some lunch. It was fun to see him in the middle of the day. The girls had some friends over when we got home. As soon as Joel got home from work we took the kids out to my parents house to teach them how to go night crawling. It was a lot of fun. Joel noticed that there were a lot of worms there the night before and since it had rained a lot on Tuesday we figured it was the perfect time to teach our kids how to catch worms. Summer refused to touch the worms but loved holding a bucket of them. We had fun playing late outside with flashlights trying to find and sneak up on those worms. Each of the kids had a big bucket full of worms that they took home and released in our backyard.

 Wednesday started out with more swimming lessons. This time Summer wanted to bring the ipad and she happily played on that while the girls swam. Then my sister Alesha came over along with my sister in law Heather and Brian and Elowyn and Heather took some pictures of our sweet babies. Alesha had a little set up with a milk bath so she could get milk bath pictures of Kyren so we took some of those of Miriam as well. Heather took Annalyn on a little drive and went and got several picture of Annalyn for me too. They turned out to be super cute. I will share some of them in a future post so stay tuned.

 On Thursday I let Summer go swimming for another 25 minutes. I didn't even bother paying this time since I knew she would get such a short time in the water. She was pretty happy and the other girls enjoyed swimming some more. After lessons we ate a fast lunch and then I dropped Brynlee and Kyla off at a friend's house where they got to go to the local roller skating rink with some friends. They had a great time and really enjoyed skating and playing with their friends. Since Annalyn got left out we tried to invite a friend over. At first no one could come so we went to the library and had fun playing with the stem stuff they had there. As soon as we got home Annalyn's friend was able to come over so they played for a few hours until it was time to get the girls from skating. Then we ate dinner and called it a night.

On Friday the girls had their last day of swimming. They all enjoyed lessons this year and had fun learning some more skills in the water. I let Summer swim again and after swimming we went to the park with some friends. It was a little bit windy but we enjoyed a picnic lunch and had a fun afternoon. A little before dinner time the girls' cousin Madison came over and got to spend the night. The girls had a bake off and baked cupcakes and cookie cakes and then my dad brought over baby chicks that we got to hold. We set up a tent in the living room and the girls enjoyed staying up late and watching movies.

 On Saturday we took a walk to the park and had a little picnic and the girls had fun playing together until Madison had to go back home. It was a fun filled week full of lots of things to do. We were almost too busy but this week sure made me excited for summer when we can have lots of days like this.

Annalyn's Unicorn Birthday!

Annalyn wanted a unicorn party this year. This year her birthday fell on a Wednesday which was super devastating to her. I wanted to do the party for her on Saturday but she insisted that would not work. Joel ended up having a camp out planned for the day we wanted to do the party so in the end we made Annalyn's wish for a party on her actual birthday come true. Luckily the kids get out of school early on Wednesdays and my sister Alesha doesn't have to work on Wednesdays so I decided to do the party right after the kids came home from school. Annalyn helped to make a unicorn cake, she did a fabulous job at decorating it and did most of the decorations on her own. We  also made cupcakes. Annalyn wanted a pinata but I didn't feel like making one so we bought it this year. 

Annalyn was able to convince my dad to buy a unicorn headband for her and for each of her friends. He ordered in off of Amazon for her but told her it was a secret and she she shouldn't tell grandma about it. He was kidding but Annalyn insisted we could not let grandma know. Annalyn came home beaming about her "secret." She said prayers about her secret all week and on the day they were set to arrive she anxiously awaited for grandpa to stop by all day. She was so excited about those unicorn horns. I love how excited she gets about things and she sure gets excited about birthdays. She had been talking about and planning her party for months. She made a chain to count down the days and had decorated for it days in advance. She also had an outfit picked out to wear for her birthday and it was laid out on her bedroom floor for weeks. Annalyn had me print out some invitations and I told her to just sneak them to some of her friends at school. She invited two girls from church and five girls from her class at school as well as one boy. Her three best friends from school all came as well as the boy and the girls from church. Kyla's friend Eden also came to hang out and Anna's friend Collin brought his little brother so he wasn't the only boy at our house. Joel showed up not to long after the party had started and he was able to get the pinata set up for us. 

We started the party off by doing some crafts. The pinata was a huge hit and then Annalyn had some games and prizes set up for everyone to play outside. It was a windy day but luckily is was still nice enough to play outside. Brynlee drew a unicorn on a poster board and we played pin the horn on the unicorn and then we played a game with a hula hoop and some orange cones. One of Annalyn's friends can't have candy so we put a few prizes in the pinata for her and there were several disappointed kids that didn't get one of the toys they wanted but we worked it out. Next we sang to Annalyn and then watched her open presents. She got lots of fun things that she loves. Presents are one of her most favorite things in the world and she loved every single thing she got. 

We finished the party by eating cake and fruit. Then the kids all played until it was time to go home. Annalyn had a pretty fun party and enjoyed getting to spend time with all of her friends. I am glad they were all able to come. We ate pizza and my parents came over for cake after the party. It was a fun day of celebrating Annalyn. I brought donut holes into her class at school as well so she got plenty of sugar that day.

Miriam at Seven Months

Miriam is now seven months old and is officially crawling. She still isn't super fast which I am grateful for but she can officially make it all the way out of the living room with a combination of crawling and scooting. It has been a challenge to keep things up and out of her reach these days. She loves to go for all the little tiny things the girls leave out and puts them straight into her mouth.

Miriam is now wearing size 3 diapers and nine month clothes. She learned how to wave and it is the cutest little thing. She loves to "give kisses" and says "dada" all the time. She has said "ma" a few times but has yet to say mama. The last few times I had someone else hold her she stared at me the entire time and kind of whined at me so that phase might be coming soon. She loves her daddy and her sisters but when she is tired or hungry she will only go to me.

Miriam is the best at just going with the flow and fitting her day into whatever we throw at her. Most days we don't really know what we will be doing and Miriam is content to sleep in my arms or car seat, or baby carrier, or bed. We were so busy for a while and she got out of the habit of falling asleep in her bed so I usually have to rock her to sleep and then put her in her bed. 

Miriam sits really well and can go from crawling to sitting to crawling again with ease. She loves to play with toys and she loves bath time. She still sticks out her tongue all the time. She likes to be exploring on the ground but she also likes to be held. She loves to stand on my lap and to hold onto my finger and walk around the living room.

Miriam has gotten to try lots of new foods and so far I have yet to find something that she really likes. She seemed to like applesauce and mixed veggies at first but kept spitting them out last time. Whenever I feed her she insists on holding the spoon all on her own. I usually give her a spoon that she can hold but even then she tries to take mine after every bite. She would much rather feed herself. She does seem to enjoy eating things like eggs and crackers more than other things and she likes to feed them to herself. Only about half of them make it into her mouth but she doesn't try to spit them out. 

Miriam got to go outside and play in the grass for the first time this month. She looks sad in the picture below but she seemed to like the grass. She got to cuddle with a puppy and was super intrigued with watching it. She likes to watch animals. We gave her a little ride in our swings outside and she didn't seem to love it but she didn't hate it. I am excited for warmer weather so we can take her outside even more next month. 

Miriam is such a sweet little baby. She is super easy going and happy. She makes being her mom lots of fun. We are all enjoying getting to watch her grow and be a part of her life.