I asked Hyrum more than a month before Halloween what he wanted to be and he knew right away.  He wanted to be a scarecrow so he could “scare away all the birds” and be “really scary.”  He got the idea from Bob the Builder and his only requirement was a long pointy nose like Spud the Scarecrow.  So I made one for him.  It was orange even though it looks yellow in this picture.

At the end of the night Adam told him he was the “best scarecrow” and Hyrum said, “I don’t want to be the best scarecrow.  I want to be the scariest scarecrow!”

And introducing the terror of the seas… the dread Pirate Annie!

Wouldn’t this picture be so neat with her standing on a cliff over looking the ocean?

And here is my favorite picture of the day. 

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Annie surprises me every day with her new words and phrases.  She is 17 (close to 18) months and I think she says somewhere between 50 and 100 words.  Her pronunciation is often not very good, but she will usually try to say anything we ask her to.  I’ve been meaning to do a post like this for months.  So sorry if it is long, but I’m catching up a bit.  Here are some of Annie’s latest words and phrases:

When we tell her not to do something or to do something she doesn’t want to do, she often responds with “why?”  I think she learned it from Hyrum and I’m still not sure if she knows what it means.

She showed me a tail that had broken off of a toy cat and said, “meow bwoke.”

She wants to be able to do up her own seat belt on her high chair and sometimes even her car seat.  A couple days ago when I was doing up her seat belt she said, “Let me do it!”

Probably the longest combination of words she has come up with is “baw-ul dweek moke all gone”  (bottle drink milk all gone) which doesn’t exactly make sense, but got the point across anyway.

After she had gotten tired of eating frozen veggies (she likes the frozen mix still frozen), she was squishing the peas one by one with her finger and saying “doowish.”

She was excited to find a new package of diapers and said “Annie bappers!”  Then she picked them up and said “bappers  hewee” (diapers heavy).

“Swee-oot gone” It took me a minute to figure out what she was saying, but then a realized she was looking for her swim suit.

When she hears anything that she thinks sounds like the garage door opening or the front door unlocking she says “daddy home!”  And she runs excitedly toward the door.  But then as soon as the door opens and Adam walks in (if it really was him), she turns around and runs away.  It seems like either she wants him to follow her or she doesn’t want him to know how excited she is.

Here are some of my favorite words she says now:

• Hi-um (Hyrum)
• mama
• da-ee or daddy
• baby
• “unch” (lunch) and “nack” (snack—what she calls a granola bar)
• happy (I’m not sure if she knows what it means but it is cute when she randomly says it)
• “wash hans” or “hans  duh-ee” (hands dirty– she does not like dirty hands), ees (please)
• “hankoo” or “dindoo” (thank you)
• okay or more often “okaaeee” (“Do you want some more milk?” “Okaaaee”)
• bed hime (bedtime)

I love watching her learn and grow!  She is still my little snuggle buddy and loves to give me hugs and be held.  She loves playing with Hyrum, doing what Hyrum does, reading books on our laps, playing with dolls and toys and exploring but staying close to mommy.

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The rest are more updates on the kids.

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First, my entire family.  We finally got everyone together for a picture.  Note to family members, if you want a nice quality copy suitable for printing (without the logo, etc) let me know.

Next, a peaceful morning up at the cabin, I liked how the trees were casting some neat shadows.

And here is one of Annie at the Davis Count Fair. They had some child toy cars setup with a little course for them to drive in. She loved it.

Enjoy!

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Sorry that I haven’t posted again on the previous string.  We’ll see if I decide to later.  I haven’t decided if I should or not.  In the mean time, I went to girl’s camp for my calling in Young Womens.  We were able to work it out so that I could spend most of the day there but still help with the kids at night, so I got the best of both worlds in a way.  At least I was able to sleep in a bed that is.  It was so fun to get to know the girls better that way.  I appreciate Adam for taking care of the kids during the day so that I could do that.  It felt strange to be away from them for that long and not thinking about them so much like I usually do.

Other than that we have been doing lots of extra cleaning and preparing the house (and staining and sealing kitchen chairs and re-caulking the shower…) for a visit from Adam’s family.  We’re so exited to get to see everyone again and for our kids to get to play with their cousins again

Here are a few recent pictures of the kids.

We often have a few extra girls at our house. Aren’t they cute?  Hyrum is definitely out numbered.  But I don’t think he minds, do you?

Actually he loves it.

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In my search for information, it is quite surprising how many experts claim to know what is “normal,” some even using phrases like “studies show,” and yet, the ONLY sight that I found with specific research regarding  normal infant sleep (in terms of night waking or sleeping through the night) was this one: http://www.kellymom.com/parenting/sleep/sleepstudies.html

According to the information I was able to gather from these studies, my situation (of having a baby who is over one year old that still wakes at night and needs my help to go back to sleep) is probably not at all unusual. Here are some relevant quotes, most taken directly from the abstracts of the studies.

“However, even in the 12-month-old group, 50% of infants typically required parental intervention to get back to sleep after waking.” Goodlin-Jones BL, et al. Night waking, sleep-wake organization, and self-soothing in the first year of life. J Dev Behav Pediatr 2001 Aug;22(4):226-33

“The findings confirm that night waking at the end of the first year is a common developmental phenomenon.” Scher A. Attachment and sleep: a study of night waking in 12-month-old infants. Dev Psychobiol 2001 May;38(4):274-85.

“Sleeping through the night: 71.4% did this on at least one occasion by 3 months of age, but many of these relapse into more frequent waking in the 4 to 12 month period. It is not until after 24 months that regular night waking (requiring attention) becomes much less common.”  Armstrong KL, Quinn RA & Dadds MR. The sleep patterns of normal children. Medical Journal of Australia 1994 Aug 1;161(3):202-6.

According to another study, 55% of 12 month olds wake at night (58% of 9 months olds but interestingly only 39% of 6 month olds). (Scher A. A longitudinal study of night waking in the first year. Child Care Health Dev 1991 Sep-Oct;17(5):295-302.)  And another study found that only 16% of 6 month olds slept through the night (Sadler S. Sleep: what is normal at six months? Prof Care Mother Child 1994 Aug-Sep;4(6):166-7).

Sorry to write this like a college research paper, but I want to show where this information came from.  Anyway, the point is that this research is not in line with what “experts” say is normal or expected and certainly not what most parents seem to expect.  I am left to wonder if what I have read in some places is true– that many of the sleep problems in infants and even small children are more related to unrealistic expectations than actual problems.  I also wonder how much cumulative grief those unrealistic expectations cause for both parents and babies.

Part of the reason that I wrote my first post was to hopefully help other parents be aware that if they are getting up with an older baby or toddler every night, they’re not alone.  And in my opinion, guilt and embarrassment should not be part of it (easier said than done in our society).  There are probably more of us out there than we realize.

Interesting related article: http://roughdraft.typepad.com/dotmoms/2006/10/author_intervie_2.html

*Stay tuned.  I’m planning to do a third post in a few days…

I have a question and I would appreciate your comments.  What I want to know: How old was your baby/child/children (or those of which you know) when they started sleeping through the night?  When I say sleeping through the night, I mean going to bed at bedtime and staying there, asleep, most nights until its time to get up the next morning.  Or has this never actually happened?  Or did it happen for a while only to be followed by a relapse of regular wakings?  Did your child reach this state (of sleeping through the night) on their own or did you use some sleep training method? 

Here is how things have gone for us if you are interested:

When Hyrum was a baby I assumed sleeping through the night meant going to sleep at night and waking to feed but then easily going back to sleep after his feeding.  So I counted myself lucky that he did so, waking every two hours but then going back to sleep.  But by the time he was about 8 months old it was getting really, well, exhausting.  He did get better around that time after some very stressful attempts at teaching him to go to sleep without me feeding him.  He eventually woke much less (I think one or two times) and would take a bottle.  I’m not really sure how old he was when he started sleeping through the night most nights.  I think it happened off and on until he was about two.

When we had our second baby, I assumed that my luck would be better and that as long as I followed the “expert” advice, my baby would start sleeping through the night much earlier.  Well, several times she got close and even slept through the night sometimes.  But it never lasted.  I had read that most babies sleep through the night by about 2-4 months old (which doesn’t seem to be true but I would like to find out) and I assumed that by the time she was 6 months for sure she would be sleeping through the night.  So I didn’t worry about it too much until that age got close.  But then it was rather stressful and frustrating when we tried to teach her to do so but instead she was back to waking many times (at least 4 times most nights). 

Well, she still isn’t sleeping through the night but she has gotten closer and will finally take a bottle of milk (she never would take formula) and let Adam help her at least sometimes.  As long as I get enough cumulative sleep and don’t have to get up more than 3 times it really isn’t too bad.  Two times is definitely better than three though.

I am writing this because I would like to know what others’ experiences are like and what age most babies or children really sleep through the night (not that this will really tell me about “most” babies but at least some others).  I think that if I hadn’t been worried about meeting an artificial deadline I would have avoided a lot of stress and worry, not to mention frustration and disappointment.  I wonder if this happens to other moms as well.

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I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: our baby is growing up.  I still call her baby, (baby girl, Annie baby…).  I have really noticed the last few days how much she is not a baby.  She tries to be grown up just like Hyrum, or sometimes even just like her parents (for instance, sometimes she wants to sit on a big chair at the table instead of her high chair).  She’s still my baby even though she walks and, yes, talks.  Of course, Hyrum is also my baby and he talks in paragraphs, quite literally.  He has decided recently that he is a baby.  He tells me so and I indulge him.  Extra loves and cuddles are a good deterrent to undesirable behavior.  I think he’s also noticed (a long time ago) that the baby gets not only a lot of extra attention but also gets away with a lot.  The baby does something and everyone laughs and smiles and says “how cute” but then he does the same thing and gets in trouble for it.  But probably the best benefit for both of us in my thinking of him as a baby is the way you can just savor every moment with a baby and find yourself falling in love with them over and over.  You see how adorable they are and look right past the imperfections.

We were playing with the camera in the next pictures.

As for the one which can be called a baby, as I said she is talking.   She is 13 (almost 14) months old and we keep asking, “Did she just say what I think she said?”  Granted, some of the time she probably didn’t, but the crazy thing is how often she really does.  Some of the more entertaining or interesting things she says are:

“MY!" or “Miiiine!” which she says when she sees something she wants or especially when something she wants is taken away from her.

She says, screams or yelps “ow!” when she is upset, even though she’s not usually actually hurt.

“Bee-boo” or “ah-ooh” or a variation on this while putting her hands over her eyes or somewhere else on her  head and then pulling them away (peek-a-boo).

She tickles herself on under the arm and says something that vaguely resembles “tickle tickle.”

“Eye” means eye and light, both very interesting to her.

She just started to say “no” and she definitely knows what this one means.

She pulls up her shirt and says “buh buh” when asked where her belly button is.

Other words she says include dada, mama, uh oh, hi, bye (means bye and bite as in “I want a bite of that food you are eating”), “wowah” (flower), “dow” (down), “bah” (which means ball, bird, and maybe bottle), toe and other things of which I am less certain including some version of “Hyrum.”  I know it seems crazy, but she’s really saying these things.  And there is no question that she understands a lot of things as well.  A sweet thing that happened today is that I was trying to get her to calm down and take a nap and she just wasn’t settling down until I said, “You need to go to sleep now, Annie.”  She hugged her blanket and closed her eyes (and played with my hair), calmed down and went to sleep on my lap. 

Looking at the developmental milestones or expectations for her age I wonder if “they” would count all these as words like I do or if I misunderstand what they mean by “2 or 3 words.”  Either way it is really fun!  Sometimes I have moments of wishing she would slow down or pause at this age.  She is at such a fun age!  But I try to just enjoy it and be glad I don’t have to worry about her being delayed.

The weather finally got hot enough to get out the kiddie pool today.  Hooray for warm weather!

What Hyrum does when you tell him to smile for the camera. 

And Annie playing peek-a-boo.

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**First, for my promised explanation for my last post: Adam was on a business trip this week and I wanted to show him my haircut, especially how it looks when it is styled right.  I don’t like announcing that sort of thing to the world (that he isn’t home) until after the fact. But before he had to leave…

Last week we had our first ever official staycation. Adam took the week off of work and he was able to do so and only miss 3 days because of the holiday and Friday being a “Friday off.” We started the week off with my birthday and a family celebration. We had family over and Adam made pizzas for everyone. They were yummy, as was all of the other food. Thanks It was a very nice birthday. Thank you to everyone for making it special and helping me celebrate.

Then on Monday, we went to Lagoon in the afternoon. It was very fun, especially considering that only Hyrum went on any rides. We were able to get in for free and only paid for a few tickets to let Hyrum try a few rides.   It was nice to just walk around and be together and watch Hyrum have fun. Hyrum loved the boat ride (the little girl next to Hyrum in the picture isn’t Annie—you can tell since she actually has a lot of hair).  And once he saw the car ride he begged us to go back to it until we finally did. Then he tried to airplane ride and just had to go on it again. The biggest hit was the water fountain near the front of the park. Once we knew we were going to be leaving we let the kids play in it (its the kind that is meant for kids to run through and get soaked). Hyrum actually took quite a bit of encouragement. He didn’t want to get his clothes wet. Annie, on the other hand, was a different story. I didn’t want to let her just run out into it since I thought she would fall down or get lost or otherwise need me to run in and rescue her. So I held her hand and really had to work to keep her from running out into the middle and getting both of us completely drenched.

Tuesday we went swimming. It was a little cold, especially considering it was an indoor pool, but still fun. Adam took Hyrum and Annie down the very tall water slide. I was a little nervous but he managed to keep their heads safely out of the water when it dumped them in the pool. Hyrum didn’t want to go down at first but thought it was fun in the end.

Wednesday we went to the zoo. Adam forgot to charge the battery for the camera so we don’t have pictures. (Correction: Adam says he did charge it, he just forgot to bring it. Sounds like something I would do.)  Annie enjoyed seeing all the animals. Hyrum wasn’t really all that impressed, but he did really like playing on the playground. We would say, “Look Hyrum! Do you see the {tiger, elephant, giraffe, etc}?” He would look for a few seconds and not care much. Mostly he was just upset that he couldn’t push the stroller wherever and whenever he wanted or ride the carousel.  But he loved playing with the swarms of kids in the playground. His favorite thing was the big snake slide. He kept telling us about how he and the other kids were “clogging the slide with a mouth.” The kids at the top were going down faster than the ones at the bottom could get out.

Thursday we drove up the canyon and had a picnic. Then we went for a hike to a waterfall. It was a beautiful area and nice to be in a quiet, peaceful place. After we got back to the car Adam wanted to find some lakes he had read about and so we drove a while more until we were almost to the very top of the mountain and hadn’t found them. It was a really nice day, aside from my fear of roads on the side of the mountain with really steep drop offs.

And Friday we went to the “castle park” and the kids had fun. Our favorite thing was the little house in the sand pile since it was so much cooler inside of it than out in the sun. Then we went out to dinner to finish our week of staycation.

Annie watching the sand sift through her fingers.

Annie thought walking through the tunnel was pretty exciting.  It was pretty hot as you can tell from her rosy cheeks.

She also really likes the tickle-your-tummy feeling in the swing for a few minutes.  Then she’s ready to get out.

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Here are some pictures.  I will explain why I am posting so many in a day or two, lest you think me completely vain.  Sorry, I had a hard time getting the focus and the frame right since I wasn’t behind the camera.

Hyrum helped me take some of the pictures.  Here’s a fun one with him, even though it isn’t the best of my hair.

From the front

I love the look of concentration on Hyrum’s face.  He was concentrating on pushing the button.

From the side

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Here’s how it looks when I’m holding a cute baby.  And as a bonus you get to see how cute and big Annie is getting.  She’s learning so much!  That’s another post though. 

And here is how it looks when I’m withholding the privilege of pushing the camera remote control button from Hyrum and standing in the perpetual mess that is our kitchen.  I do clean it, pretty much every day.  But you wouldn’t know.  Okay, so it doesn’t get entirely clean everyday but I work on it everyday at least.   And there are fleeting moments when it is entirely clean (as entirely clean as our kitchen ever is, that is). 

I did eventually let Hyrum push the button. 

And looking at these pictures reminds me… I received some starter for Amish friendship bread if anyone would like some.  I’ve developed my own system so I don’t have to make as much or find people to pass it along to every time (you make it every 10 days).  Plus I also tried making it more healthy this time and, at least in my opinion, it turned out yummy.  So if anyone would like some starter, I’d be happy to pass some along. 

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Annie turned one yesterday!  How is it that babies grow so fast?  That year of babyhood sure flies by.  Funny, with Hyrum I felt by the time he turned one he was already more of a toddler than a baby.  With Annie I just want her to keep being a baby for a while. 

I can’t believe it has been a year since that amazing day when Annie was born.  I look back on that day and think, if I was able to do that… If by trusting in God I was able to face something I once found terrifying and discover that the most frightening thing about it (for me at least) was fear itself… I can face whatever challenge comes my way if I move forward with faith and trust in God.  I need to remind myself that often.  There is one other thing that I  (re)learned that day that I want to mention because it is so important.  God loves all of his children, in particular, God loves his daughters.  Through an experience which has been contorted by many throughout history to mean that God somehow doesn’t love his daughters as much as his sons, Heavenly Father reminded me that He truly does love all of his children equally and immensely.   

This year… A bug has been making the rounds in our family in the past week and a half, so we didn’t want to invite anyone over to catch it, too.  Instead we will have a bigger celebration later and on her birthday we picked up some food and went to a park for dinner.  We figured Annie would enjoy that just as much.  She shared my triple layer nachos, one of very few things that she seems to really like to eat.  And the kids played on the playground.  Annie loved the slides and the dandelions.

I made cupcakes earlier and that night we gave one to Annie.  She was REALLY excited to get it—very upset about waiting for us to be ready to give it to her.  She picked it up and smiled and beamed when we put it on her tray.  But then she didn’t know what to do with it.  She put it frosting first to her mouth and got frosting from her chin up to and in her nose.  She seemed to like it at first, but then she just kind of nibbled some more frosting and looked at it until she squished it into a mess on her tray and left it there.  Then she seemed upset that her hands and face were all frosting-ed. I think she had one bite of the actual cupcake.  Funny girl.  We love her!

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These pictures were taken, oh, 2 months ago, but I really like them and intended to post them, oh, two months ago.  I love these two kids, especially when they make each other laugh.

The day Hyrum decided to play with his dinosaur toy and Annie thoroughly enjoyed it

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If you have questions about it let us know.

-Adam-

Annie Walks Video

Annie just keeps on growing.  She is ten months old now. Her little personality becomes more apparent all the time.  She is just turning into such a little person.  There is a lot I could say about her, but since its getting late… the real purpose of this post is to document something that is WAY overdue to be documented.  More than a month ago, (one month and two days to be exact), Adam helped Annie to get stable and then encouraged her to walk to me.  And she did!  With a look of deep concentration, she slowly and steadily took one step at a time, pausing to ensure her balance, over to me.  Unlike Hyrum she didn’t get overly excited about our cheering and try to walk too fast and fall down.  And also unlike Hyrum she has only slowly made progress toward being “a walker” and still prefers to use her already mastered fast crawl. Or to insist on holding our hands.  But she has made progress.  She can walk halfway across a room, maybe more, if she decides to.

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