Skills

Sarah climbed up onto the counter (my least favorite of her newly acquired skills) and began writing "annection" for her dad.  We still don't know what she meant.  Not instructions; that was my first guess.

Either Hitchcock totally understood the creepy factor of birds or he created it. My backyard was like the scene out of a horror movie. This picture doesn't do justice to the number of birds back there landing and swooping and chirping.  Oh the sound! I hate birds.

Sarah making her bed. I like this skill. Family, recognize the picture and wall hanging? Half of the stuff in Sarah's room is from my childhood room.

Saturday we went to Salem Pond to fish.  It was cold. 2 minutes after we got there, Sarah had to go to the bathroom which of course were locked for the winter. Want to know something weird? The mosquitoes were alive and well, nesting in the snow all along the bank. 

The 10 minutes of actual fishing. Sarah would yell "Cast!" when she cast.  She caught a stick and some seaweed.

Henry's first tooth looks so dang cute.  The second one is coming in fast so I wanted to get a picture of him one-toothed.  While he was eating was not the best time to do it.

Wait for it.

Oh there it is.

We went to the park on Monday.  The weather was awesome thus the park was very crowded.  When we were on the swings, Sarah said, very loudly, "When are we going to get an airplane and fly up and get Jesus?" She got some funny looks. So many things wrong with that question.

Sarah's Quote of the Week.

Me: Sarah, you're not the boss.
Sarah: I'm just bossy?

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.