Since I last wrote.....

Henry got his first haircut.

He ate a lot of food. He's now in the 40th percentile.

He turned 9 months.

He reaches out for everything. He gives a good fistbump too. 

Sarah earned her umbrella.

She can make this weird sound with her mouth.

And she fell asleep on this chair.  She never falls asleep anywhere weird. Naptime has been dead since Christmas but sometimes we have a 5 o'clock crash when she can't quite make it.

Big baby Sarah.

We went to St. George to visit my parents and my sister and her family. During our trip Sarah cried that she wanted to go home, that she didn't want to go home ever, that she wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed and on the drive home she stated she was never going to St. George again.

Sarah asked my mom if she had a boat. Through a long and confusing conversation, Sarah finally understood that my grandpa had a boat but when he died, my grandma sold it.  Through a completely different conversation, Sarah learned that my grandma's name was Bardella.  Hours later, I heard Sarah singing, "Bardella, Bardella, Bardella sold the boat." Here's video I took when we got back.

I never knew about the boat or the selling of it before this trip and yet this is the only thing Sarah knows about my grandma.

Brooke and Sarah are just a couple of months apart.  They play so cute together.

Zion National Park. Justin won't let me call it Zion's like everyone else does. Okay I still do because asking me to say the full name all the time is unreasonable.  And you can't just say Zion.

Taking picture of deer.

I don't know what this pose is.

 Sarah got a postcard of a baby bobcat and couldn't be happier.

 Sarah loves to eat snow. She tastes it everywhere we go.

 I don't remember why I took this picture. Probably because she's cute.

Not a pumpkin, just a girl.

Sarah was brushing my hair for me today and she was asking about my hair when I was little. Then she said this:

Sarah: When I'm big I will have a little girl.

Me: What will her name be?

Sarah: {Thinking hard} I can't remember.

Me:  Diana is a good name.

Sarah: No not Diana! {Thinking hard again} Punna. Like a pumpkin. But she's not a pumpkin, just a girl.

It's funny because it's true.

Stuff Sarah Says

Justin: {seeing all the Cheerios under Henry's highchair} Henry, you need to sweep the floor.
Sarah: Henry can't sweep. He has baby fingers.

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Me: Sarah, Henry is getting a tooth.
Sarah: Like a shark?

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Me: {singing Old McDonald at bedtime}...and on that farm he had a.....?
Sarah:  A horse with a chicken face.

The Great Indoors

January feels so long. We spend too much time indoors.  So I've been trying to be a little more creative. Sarah plays "Bean Blanket" which means she plays with a jarful of dried beans and measuring cups and a funnel and they must stay on the blue blanket.  When that got old I squirted a bunch of Justin's shaving cream on a cookie sheet and let her go to town. 
She didn't really like it. 

These pictures pretty much captures real time.

Less than 2 minutes later she was done.

Ignore my messy living room and just notice how tiny and sweet my baby is.  He will sit and play for long stretches at a time all by himself.  He's just so sweet! After I took this picture, he turned around and gave me a big grin. Then he wanted to be held and kissed all over his cheeks and neck. "Stay little," I whisper to him almost every night before I lay him down.

Henry does this crazy Stevie Wonder head shake.  You can get him to do it if you do it to him, thus the crazy camera work.

Sarah is pretty much obsessed with umbrellas.  I blame Mary Poppins. 

She wants one of her own so she is doing jobs around the house to earn the money.  I made her a chart to keep track of how much money she needs and a jar to put her quarters in. Here she is washing windows.

I've decided it's way more work to help and supervise Sarah than to just do it myself. But she's learning a valuable lesson, right?

She lined up these dolls on her little doll couch and told me she was taking a family picture. Then she held up an imaginary camera and said "click." So I got out my camera and took one for reals so I can always treasure her cuteness.

Left to right: Kelli, Jane, Michael, Kelly

Henry went Steve Irwin on this water bottle. It really looked like he was wrestling a crocodile. The pictures make it look like he's having much more fun than he actually did. He was getting pretty mad that it wouldn't hold still.

He cut his first tooth today.  I have mixed feelings about it.  He will never have a gummy grin again. And nursing will never be the same either. But I guess the kid's gotta have teeth.

8 Months Old

Time sure is flying with this kid.  I can't believe he's so old.  He cracks me up with his grunting.  He has a very specific grunt that means "more Cheerios" and another grunt means "I'm bored." He grabs at stuff and will lunge from my arms if he sees something he likes. Using my phone while holding him is a test in my wingspan.  How far apart can I hold him and my phone and still make a call?
I only got one good picture (and by good I mean looking in my general direction) before I lost his attention to the grass just beyond the blanket. Check out these blue eyes.

What a sweet face!



 Oh my drool.

 This is from last Saturday when it snowed. Sarah went with Justin to his parents' house where they and Nate....

built this snowman. This is the kind of snowman 2 civil engineers make.

6 days later it looks like something out of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. His half-melted head scares me. Poor thing needs to be knocked over out of his misery.

 One thing I didn't expect from having 2 kids is how much they entertain each other.

 Sarah enjoyed this more than Henry.

Gosh pictures where Sarah looks old freak me out.

Twenty-o-twelve

12 Things I'm looking forward to in 2012 in no particular order.
1. Justin finishing graduate school.  April 19.  107 days. Okay, this is definitely number 1.
2. Henry's first birthday. It's quite an accomplishment. For both of us.
3. Electing a new president. 
4. Discovering if the trees we planted in September survived the winter.
5. Watching my kids grow and listening to them whine.
6. Maybe a new job for Justin.  New city? New house?
7. Using my new pressure cooker.
8. Maybe (maybe) I'll run a 5k.  I'm thinking about it.
9. Justin doesn't know this but we are going on a vacation. A good one.
10. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Hunger Games, and The Dark Knight Rises
11. My sister Rachel having a baby boy in April. My kids need more cousins that live close.
12. Sarah going to Sunbeams

Me: Sarah, what did you talk about in your class?
Sarah: (in her story-telling voice) I want snacks! I want snacks! Yay goldfish.  That's what I said to my new teachers.

Happy Birthday Justin. 28 hasn't looked so good since my birthday.

Justin has this horrible habit of singing awfully for everyone else's birthday.  He made Sarah and Henry cry on my birthday. So Saturday it was payback.

Unfortunately he liked it. We should have known.

The motto for these two is, If it's not going to snow, better get ready for spring fishing.

I will Text Twist it up in a minute.

Play Text Twist or update the blog?  Update the blog then play Text Twist. Oh yeah, Tuesday night at the Dye house.
Let's start things out right.  Here's some up-close and personal Henry face.

The messier, the cuter.

A week before Christmas, we went to SLC to see the Christmas lights at the Gateway and to see the Jazz's open practice.  Sarah loved it all. I like that she gets excited when we tell her what we're going to do even though she really doesn't have an idea.  We ate at In 'n Out on our way up so that made the night even more magical.

Lights at Gateway.  There was a picture of Sarah looking at the camera but I look better in this one.

Henry was up way past his bedtime but he did great.  I think it helped to be a place with so many distractions. 

 I made Sarah a booster seat out of our pile of coats.  This made her hair constantly staticky.

My 2 basketball nuts.

Love love love this girl. Christmas is all magic to her.

Sarah usually comes right into my room when she wakes up.  One morning I heard her in the bathroom for like 30 minutes before she came in.  She was doing her hair.

I  need to blow up this picture really big and put it in my house so next time my kids are both crying, whining, clinging and making messes, I can remind myself that they can be calm, quiet and beautiful.

I took mostly video Christmas morning and I don't feel like undertaking the endeavor of editing and posting those so I'll just post pictures.  Sarah was so funny.  She got her Starbursts in her stocking and was satisfied.  We had to prod her along to get all her presents open.  It took forever because she wanted to stop and play with each present. But towards the end we had to watch her because twice she grabbed a present and opened it and it wasn't hers.

Henry liked his dump truck and his Junior Ranger shirt.  He's looking at Justin, Senior Ranger.

We got to Skype (is that a verb?) with Dallin in Brazil.  It was nice to see his smiling face and for him to see all of us.

Sarah got this fishing game.  It says 4 and up but I find it a challenge.  I get so dizzy.  I end up cheating like Sarah does by holding the fishing pole way down near the fish.

Check out this bedhead. 

Check out this pretty face.

Not pictured: 1. The return of the fishing pole game at my mom's house on Christmas Eve.  Still a hit. 2. Henry not taking a nap all day Christmas Eve thus I didn't get around to making rolls and I thought my family was going to disown me. 3. Sarah dancing to Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" 37 times. 4. Justin finishing his second-to-last semester. 5. The Syme family conducting a very scientific taste-test of hot chocolate and I determined Stephens and Auguson Farm brands are most delicious. Swiss Miss is weak sauce.

My Favorite Developmental Milestone

Henry turned 7 months old yesterday.  Have I mentioned how much I love this age? Motor skills emerging right before our eyes...what can't be done yesterday is done today.  Henry and I can barely contain our excitement.

He can now sit up like a champ. 

I don't leave him alone for too long.  He's known to spontaneously tip.  But he gets bored with what he's playing with long before that happens, usually.

But as impressing as balance is, my favorite skill is this.

Is there anything more delightful than a baby feeding himself?
For every one in his mouth, two Cheerios end up on his lap.

I had to eat my words at the doctor's office last week.  I always complain to anyone who holds still long enough that Henry tires out my arms.  Arms, shoulders, back, hip, elbow, wrists. He likes to be held. "He's so heavy!" I always declare.  Well at the doctor's office, I discovered he weighs 13 lbs 14 oz.  That puts him in the 1st percentile, says Dr. Tipton. 1%! I walked out of there wondering what you all do with your average or above average sized babies.  Do your arms fall off? I've kept a little quieter about my aching arms since then.

He may be in the first percentile for size, but he's in the 100th percentile for cute!

I want to be 3 again

The longer I'm a mom, the more I realize I undervalued my own childhood. At least once a day, I see what Sarah has come up with to do and I think, I want to be 3 again. Sarah has a great life despite her dramatic claims of injustice each night before bedtime.

Sometimes I wonder if I shelter her too much.  She's never had a Happy Meal nor been to McDonald's and she has no idea who Barbie is.  She can quote Sound of Music and Mary Poppins but has never watched Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel.  All these things I knew as a child and I turned out okay. She lives in this bubble where bad people only exist as the villains in Disney movies and the topic of "bad words" hasn't even come up. Don't we all wish we could live in that sort of world?

I don't trust any presents under the tree yet so Sarah covered all her little cooking dishes with lids and plates and put them under the tree as presents.

 What's not to love about this? Sitting in a tutu and underwear, in a doll stroller, cutting a slice of cheese into tiny bites with a toy knife and cutting board. Sure beats folding the piles of laundry on my bed.

Sarah and I are having an ornament war.  And she's winning.  Anything in her reach gets moved to the bottom.

While sitting on the toilet today, she asked me to look at her sneeze and opened her mouth really wide. "Did you see it?" she asked when she closed her mouth. "Nope." "It's in my mouth, Mom. and it will come out and be loud." Oh to be 3.