Cabin fever

Well, we have almost made it through January! Too bad that after January comes February. Yuck. The only good thing about February is that it is short. I get mad on leap years, because if there is any month of the year that I would rather NOT have an extra day added to, it is February. Why don't we add it on to the end of June? I can always use another day of June. Are you with me? Who is in charge of these things? I think I will send them an email.

I am having a hard time thinking of stuff to blog about lately...we are just doing the day to day stuff that makes up most of our lives! We mostly stay in the house because it is COLD (at least the inversion is gone...yay!) and can't wait until it is park weather again, I am getting a little bit of cabin fever!

Arden is a good big sister, but we are coming to the end of the easiest days for her I think. When Dax was little, Arden could just take toys away from him and he kind of just watched them go and moved on. Then when he was a little older, he wouldn't protest too much as long as she replaced the toy she took with another one. But for the last few weeks Daxton has really started sticking up for himself and Arden doesn't like it one bit. If she comes to take his toy away, he starts yelling before she gets there so that I will be sure to look over and try to save him. He hangs on to the toy for as long as he can, but Arden can usually shake it free if given enough time. If she manages to get the toy away from him, he will yell "AAARRRRARRRARARRRRR!" until Mom comes and sets is straight. Arden isn't loving it, because she has quickly discovered that the only toy in the whole house she wants to play with right now is whichever one is in Daxton's chubby little hands at that moment. Funny how that works out. Toys she hasn't looked at in months suddenly become irresistible because Daxton is drooling on them. They usually play together pretty well though, and no one can make Daxton laugh like Arden can.

By the way, Daxton started saying "MAMA!" in these last couple of weeks! Hooray!! It seems to me like he really means it, too...probably because he is looking at me while he says it. I am probably just deluding myself about that, but that is ok...I am really good at deluding myself about any number of things (If you cut the cookies in half all the calories fall out, I am really only 28 years old even though the math gets a little fuzzier every year, if I wait long enough, maybe Preston really will empty the garbage can without me asking him to do it...stuff like that).

Hope everyone enjoys the Super Bowl!!!

My new wall (door) mural, courtesy of Arden

I found this on my door earlier in the week. I saw it and said "AAAAAHHHHHHHey, that is pretty good!" Arden has been trying to draw people lately, and this is one of her better ones. She was already in bed so I couldn't confront her about it just then, so I took a picture (my flash did something weird on the door, sorry). Thank goodness for magic erasers, they really are magic!

Grrrrrrrr!!!!

Isn't he SCARY!!! Daxton got this dinosaur bath towel for Christmas and LOVES it. Anyway, I just had to post it...it is pretty much the only picture I have taken all week. Now that Christmas and the holidays are over and we aren't doing tons of exciting stuff, I just forget to break out the camera for the everyday stuff, even though most of my life IS made up of everyday stuff. Somehow scraping peas out of Daxton's hair and cleaning up Arden's plastic food from her kitchen for the 10th time in one day isn't as photogenic.

Arden was making me laugh just now as I was putting her to bed. She loves to sing, but she sometimes squishes her songs together. She started out singing the ABC song, but ended up who knows where. She sang: "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV, how I wonder what you are...up above the world so high, like a diamond in the rough!" (diamond in the rough is from Aladdin, in case you were wondering). Hilarious!

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I am looking for some advice on my silly little girl. She has been potty trained for months now, and is doing great during the day. However, I still put her to bed in pull-ups because every morning when she wakes up she is wet. Every. Morning. Not just most mornings, every morning. Once she falls asleep, she is a really heavy sleeper, and has hardly ever (I can count on one hand) got out of bed to go potty in the middle of the night. Should I just not give her any liquids after dinner? I would hate to wake her up in the middle of the night every night because I know it would take at least a half an hour to get her back to sleep. She won't be 3 until March, so should I just wait for a while and see if it starts happening by itself? Help?

Future Olympic Swimmer?

Over the last couple of weeks Dax has finally started to get up on his hands and knees. I was starting to wonder about him because by the time Arden was as old as he is now, she was already crawling. Here is the big guy up on all fours:

He kind of rocks back and forth a little, but not close to crawling yet. He much prefers to be down on his tummy, with both his hands and his legs up in the air, in the position that we call "the swim:"

He balances there on his tummy and waves his arms back and forth and kicks his legs, just like he is swimming. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tries (and he tries HARD) he just can't seem to swim anywhere. To try to encourage him to crawl, we put a toy in front of him just out of reach, and then we put him up on his hands and knees, and each and every time he does the following:

1. Smiles at the toy and makes happy noises, trying to convince the toy to come to him. Gives up quickly.
2. Rocks back and forth for a little while. Gives up quickly.
3. Plops down on his belly and tries to swim to the toy. Takes a small rest. Tries to swim to the toy again. Takes small rest. Repeat. Again. and Again.

I am not sure why he thinks that the swim is worth trying over and over when he gives up on his other methods so fast. Oh well. He'll figure it out all too soon.

Dax is growing up really fast all of the sudden, and now has 4 teeth! Two on top and two on the bottom. Here is a picture of his newest teeth (sorry, he is drooling and has garden vegetables all over his face).

If you have known me very long, you know that I LOVE to travel and I always like to have the next trip planned so I have something to look forward to (especially in winter!!). I was trying to decide where we could take our little family on our next vacation and I am kind of figuring out that everywhere that I would really like to go sounds really hard with a toddler and a baby and all of the stuff that must go along with them. Any suggestions? Oh well. I guess we will just have to take it easy for a while in the trip department. I came across a poem the other day that made me feel a little better, hope you enjoy:

To My Child by Anne Campbell
You are the trip I did not take;
You are the pearls I cannot buy;
You are my blue Italian lake;
You are my piece of foreign sky.

Even if you are drooling and covered in garden vegetables.

Farewell, George.

Here is a recent picture of George the Snowman (see previous post).

I have been told that George had Jack Nicolson's looks, but unfortunately, George did not have Jack's longevity, even in snowman years! It has been in the balmy mid-40s for the past two days (woo-hoo! Break out the short and flip flops!), and it was just too much for George to bear. Farewell, George, you will be missed.

Arden told me she wanted to make another snowman to replace George (she's so fickle!), and I told her we would try next time it snows. If that isn't until next winter, that would be ok with me...I am ready for spring already:)

Arden's First Snowman!

Arden has always been kind of a wussie when it comes to being cold. Not as big of a wussie as I am, but pretty close. Last winter, she would usually last about 5 minutes outside in the snow before crying to go back in the house. This winter she been a little bit better (except for the time we went to see the lights at temple square, see my previous post!) and has enjoyed playing in the snow a couple of times while I have been shoveling the driveway.

Tonight it was so warm (33 whole degrees!! Seems warm after the single digits we had a couple of days ago) and I noticed while shoveling the driveway that the snow was perfect "snowman snow." So, I bundled Arden up and we headed outside to build her first real snowman. She immediately named him George (even when he was just a snowball) and was very excited about the whole process since she had seen snowmen in other people's yards. She was a great helper and loved to roll the snowballs around the yard. Here is George-the-snowman!

It has been quite a few years since I last made a snowman, and I think I made his head too big. But, after we were all done I asked Arden how the snowman looked, and she said "he wooks pitty good!" I guess that means I did ok. Arden did great, but by the end she was ready to come inside. As we were putting in George's arms, Arden was chanting "Wets go in a house! Wets go in a house!" It could have had something to do with the fact that she took off her gloves so she could eat some of the carrots we used for George's nose out of and some of the pretzels we were using for his mouth. Oh well. I saved enough to make some kind of face. By the way, what the heck do you make snowmen's mouths out of, I can't remember!

What a difference a year makes!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! As we have turned the calendars to 2009 this week I have been thinking a lot about how quickly time passes and how much difference one year can make! Last year at this time, Arden was still only 1 year old, and we had no idea that Daxton was even coming to our little family! Arden barely had enough hair for what we then called "pigtails," but what were really more like "antennae" (see picture below from just 1 year ago):Last January, Arden still slept in a crib, used diapers and was still a baby in a lot of ways. Now my baby girl is a baby no longer. But lucky for me I have little Daxton to fill the baby void! He was such a great surprise for our family in 2008 and by far the best thing that happened to me last year! We couldn't love the little man any more than we do, but it is all flying by way too fast. It makes me sad to think that next year at this time, he will be 19 months old. He will be walking and talking and I won't have a baby anymore! Next year I will have an almost-4 year old girl and a full blown toddler boy.

Has anyone heard that new song called "It Won't Be Like This For Long" by Darius Rucker? I heard it for the first time last week while I was driving home from work. The song talks about how some parts of having kids seem soooo hard and seem to drag on forever (staying up all night with newborns, trying to take screaming toddlers to preschool etc.) but how none of those phases last very long. The last part talks about a father trying and trying to put his little girl to bed (like we often do with Arden) and goes like this:

He lays down there beside her

till her eyes are finally closed;

and just watching her it breaks his heart,

because he already knows

It won't be like this for long

One day soon that little girl is gonna be all grown up and gone.

This phase is gonna fly by so he's trying to hold on,

because it won't be like this for long.

It might have been that I have been thinking about this subject lately, (or it might have been sleep deprivation), but by the end of the song I was crying because I know it is so true! (I have turned into a total crybaby since becoming a mom. It is embarrassing!)

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A couple of weeks ago during our church Christmas program, Preston was out in the foyer feeding Dax a bottle, and Arden and I were doing our usual Sunday routine (which mostly consists of me trying to keep Arden from coloring in the hymnbooks, trying to keep Arden from crawling under the seat to her friends in the two rows back, trying to keep Arden from singing the alphabet song at playground volume during talks, shushing Arden after she has asked "Is it over?" for the 20th time, etc.) and I thought to myself how nice it would be to be able to just sit quietly and listen to the Christmas music that the choir was singing. And then the thought struck me (hard) that before I know it Arden will grow up and I will have years and years, DECADES even, to sit quietly and listen to the Christmas music. But this was the only Christmas that I will have a two-year old Arden. Now I am sure that when I am 50-something and Preston and I are sitting very quietly in church I will be envying those young mothers struggling with their babies and toddlers in the bench in front of me and wishing that I could have some of these days back, as frustrating as they sometimes are. So, it is one of my 2009 resolutions to try and enjoy the journey more, and try to soak up as much of these baby and toddler days as I possibly can, because they will be over all too soon.

Anyway, enough of that! we have had a really fun week. We had a little party at our house for New Years Eve, and had a great time eating yummy food and playing on the Wii until well past midnight. Since we were playing games that involved drumming and dancing and generally looking stupid, there isn't a lot of photographic evidence. However, I did put the picture of Arden and I in our party hats (Thanks for sending it to me Manda!) at the top of this post.

I hope that everyone has a great 2009 and enjoys whatever part of the journey you are travelling this year!!