After the dog food

Evelyn has suddenly developed an appetite for the dogs' food. She's crawling so fast these days, I can't keep up with her. She screams if I try to put her in a swing or exersaucer. She's like a baby shark-tries everything out in her mouth & it appears as though she'd die if she sat still!!

Anyways, on to the story. I put her down for five minutes while I started getting things out for dinner, and I came back to see her glancing at the dog food suspiciously.

When she saw me, she gave me an innocent smile and stayed still.

One minute later, when my back was turned she had her face and the dog food bowl and two pieces in her mouth.

After scrubbing her clean, and hiding the dog food bowl back behind the dogs crate, I went back to my dinner preparations. Less than a minute later I heard some dog food spilling on the ground and sure enough, she had crawled around the crate to get to her prize! I'm pretty impressed with her determination to get what she wants.

Boys will be boys

Alec tried to convince James that if they put stickers on their tummy they automatically became tattoos. James thought it was funny, but I'm not sure he believed him.

They are both still huge fans of the iPad. James is still young enough to enjoy watching his brother play for now. I'm sure that won't last too much longer.

We have been trying to come up with Sunday games to play, and the boys' favorite is what we call the 'Gospel Game'. I throw a few towels on the ground, and the boys become the game pieces. They answer questions for me (naming people from the Gospel Art Kit or details of scripture stories or reciting Articles of Faith), then move a space and for each correct answer. When they reach the end they can have a skittle!

James and Evelyn came with me to my department when I signed my contract this week, and James absolutely loved the hominid skulls! Staring at his ancestors. :-)

I was a bit worn out this evening, and wanted to lay down for a few minutes. I immediately had two "cuddle buddies" by my side. I love that side of them!

First group bath!

I finally let Evy hop in with the boys tonight & she loved it! Alec was very conscious of assuring she didn't drown (super cute!) & James kept wanting to cuddle her. I Probably won't make it a regular thing, but with Paul out teaching three nights a week, it really saved on bathtime for me.

She's all over!

Evelyn started army crawling at seven months old and doing what we call 'revving up her engines'. She would push-up to a proper crawl and sort of wobble back-and-forth like she was going to move, but not actually go anywhere! Now that she is eight months old, she is crawling all over the place and into everything. I keep catching her with pieces from the boys games (like battleship) in her mouth. She can stand if she's balancing on something, but she can't pull herself up by herself.

She absolutely hates to be left in a room if everyone else is in the other room. She definitely prefers to be held, but she will settle for being on the ground as long as people are around her.

She just finished cutting her upper two incisors this week, and it was a painful, horrible process for her! Now, she enjoys grinding her teeth.

She's a very happy, and smiley baby. It's quite easy to coax a laugh out of her. I love that when Paul or I walk into the room she gets so excited, that she flails her whole body, wiggling her arms and legs as hard as she can.

She loves spitting and blowing raspberries right now, and especially loves it when the boys do it back to her. Not sure that this bodes well for my hopes for a total girly girl.

Church is a chore with her now, because she refuses to sleep much in public. Occasionally, Paul can get her to sleep during sacrament meeting (her normal nap time), if he walks her around enough, but it never lasts long. James is still a bit shy in nursery, so sometimes I just take Evelyn into nursery with him and we hang out there.

More cousins!

The Tams came out to visit (my sister Kari & her family), which means we spend as much time as possible at my moms house so the boys can enjoy their cousins!

We all got sick Friday night and had to quarantine ourselves on Saturday, but we still had Friday and Sunday with them. Little Ben is James's age, but absolutely adores Alec! He follows him around everywhere and tackles him as soon as he slows down. I think Alec really enjoys the attention.

Bethany and Evelyn are just two months apart, but Bethany is such a calm and mellow baby whereas Evelyn is all over the place.

We took the boys to the park several times, to allow them to run around. The weather was great!

January 12, Kinderland

The constant cold weather has been really hard on the boys, they don't like to be indoors-they get a bit restless. Paul had some training for the college he teaches at, so I packed up the kids and took them to Kinderland. It's a really nice indoor play area that we visited last year on Alec's birthday. It's rather pricey for us, $22 for both of the boys to play, but they go out it forever!

We got there a little past noon, then Paul met us there around three. At that point, Evelyn was done, so I took her home to start on dinner and Paul stayed with the boys in until close to five!

The boys loved bouncing from toy to toy and climbing all over the place. It really help them burn off some energy! Evelyn loved to the toys, but hated being trapped in the baby toys. They have a large slide with a ball pit, some remote control cars that the boys love, and a mini-roller coaster toy.

James 101

James is my cuddle bug. He is so much more shy than Alec ever was! He hates going new places or playing with friends-he would much prefer to be with family members. He absolutely loves both of his siblings, and is always trying to help me with the baby, and spend more time with his brother. If Alec ends up in a timeout, James will be there within a minute to cheer him up and bring him a toy. He has reached the imagination stage, so he's begun having nightmares which makes bedtime a bigger chore. It's awfully sweet though, when he just wants to be cuddled until he falls asleep. I love those moments!

Last week, he wandered into my bedroom one morning & when I asked what he was doing I got, "Distracting you so Alec can sneak downstairs & get us some lollipops." Haha. Five minutes later I heard Alec defining the term 'distract' to his little brother.

Another funny moment was when he came downstairs after his bath with his shirt half pulled up and cried, "I'm Samuel the Lamanite!"

He is definitely a 'terrible two' with tantrums arising at the most inopportune moments, but he's slowly learning to control himself, which is great. He's not as readily motivated as Alec was, so it's a learning curve for me also. He can cry on demand and that tends to be his threat, "if you do, I will cry," he tells me daily. He even cried when he saw daddy had been super glueing his LEGO sets together (otherwise he tears them apart & we lose half of them).

James is incredibly smart. He's memorized his first three articles of faith & is working on the fourth. He's great with his alphabet & sounds already.

New Year's Party!

We decided that the boys were old enough this year to start celebrating New Year's Eve. So Paul put some pictures on the television of them during the past year to reminisce. I blew up some balloons and put them in a garbage bag to drop over the boys as they counted down. And finally, we toasted the new year with sparkling cider. At dinner, James still wants to do cheers with all of his cups. Technically, they rang in the New Year's at 8 PM our time, but they have a lot of fun!

Christmas Celebrations

We stayed in Vegas for Christmas this year, just enjoying a simple break with the kids. We were able to spend time with my parents, my brother Christopher & his family, & my aunt, uncle & cousins.

We were trying really hard to put the focus on Christ this Christmas for the boys. We used a 'Christ book' each night, where we would review the previous lessons and go through the saviors birth and life. The boys really liked that, since we used a lot of pictures. We also decided to not do as many gifts for them this year, as they really wanted a trip to Disneyland and agreed to put most of their Christmas money towards tickets to that in March. It made it a lot more fun we felt. So they each picked out one toy. James wanted some more Star Wars toys & Alec wanted a Bakugan.

To the snow!

Paul has managed to take the boys up to Mt. Charleston twice in December to sled & play in the snow. They love it but, being my little desert babies, get cold pretty fast.