Early present for me?

How many activities can a 7-year-old, 4-year-old, and 9-month-old do together??

Came downstairs this morning to find this.

Merry Christmas!!

Scooter McGee

Seth has finally started scooting around on his tummy in the past week or so. Today he got up on all fours (hands and knees) for the first time. He's on the verge of being a maniac on the move, just like my other rugrats. This is my favorite age. They're so fun and learning so much. Can't get enough of him right now.

(Nothing like goldfish crackers to get a person moving)

Plain Silly

We had just finished family prayer and were going to put the kids in bed. We turned around and found Luke like this - a midget in his dad's jeans.

Mace anyone?

So I'm teaching a piano lesson when I hear Luke start screaming. I figured he bit his tongue because he was in the kitchen and this scream usually goes along with a bit tongue. So I walk over and check on him, while my student keeps playing, and realize he's got something in his mouth that hurts. It smells like windex or some sort of cleaner. So I quickly have him rinse his mouth out, while he is crying and my student is still playing, and chew on some bread and spit it out hoping the bread will absorb whatever was all over his mouth. I have no idea what it was and he is still crying. His mouth is cleaned out so I give him a popsicle hoping it will ease the pain. It works and my lesson is still going, but I keep asking Luke what it was that hurt him. He keeps saying, "I don't know". I can't tell if he's afraid of getting into trouble or he doesn't know. I'm getting frustrated because I need to focus on my piano student, but I want to make sure a repeat doesn't happen - especially to Seth who puts everything in his mouth. Luke calms down and I figure I'll investigate after my lesson.

So after finishing up my lesson, I notice my pepper spray by the front door. I'd gone on a jog yesterday. I carry it with me because there are a lot of stray dogs in the area and I feel safer with the pepper spray if I need it. Anywho - it dawned on me. Luke sprayed the pepper spray in his mouth! Sure enough there is liquid all around the little container. He must;ve thought it was like banoca or the sour spray that the kids like to squirt in their mouths. It aggravated my mouth just breathing it in as I cleaned it up. Luckily, according to the container, I cleaned Luke's mouth out properly.

He'll be just fine and hopefully a little more cautious about sneaking into things.

Seth

Hope this shot makes you smile. It makes me smile.

I love how babies fall asleep on their tummies with their bums in the air. I don't why it's cute; It just is.

Seth is a little over 7 months old now. I love this age. He is a very smiley baby. He started clapping a couple weeks ago. His giggle is fantastic! I love how excited he gets when he sees me and he just grabs me and snuggles into my neck. I love when my kids do that. He can sit on his own, unless he's reaching for something and then he topples right over. He not crawling yet. He rolls and pushes himself with his feet to reach things. He loves getting to eat solid foods, including trying to grab whatever we're trying to eat. He is so much fun. Maya and Luke love their baby brother. They're always ready to help him feel better with hugs and songs and toys if he's crying.
He loves to smile for other people. He'll smile at you and start clapping - it's how he shows off. Then when you smile back he gets excited and shy at the same time andsqueals and hides his face in my neck.

I wish my family was closer. You all are missing out on the cuteness. I know you've got cuteness of your own to enjoy, but Hey! I like to share.

One of those moments

This was one of those moments that takes a parent by surprise. I walked around the corner and saw this happening, so we grabbed the camera and caught it. (Please ignore my lame comments on the video.)

My sunshine

It's a boy thing

Luke, you are such a BOY!

Need I say more?

(Picture explanation: He thought it was so funny to put the flashlight in his pants and make them light up. I can't remember what exactly he said, but I remember it cracked me up and made me think "You are such a boy!" This thought is thought pretty much everyday, sometimes several times in one day, thanks to events like this one.)

Time to play catch up

I've fallen a little behind on my posting. It's been a pretty busy month for us. When I do get a chance to sit at the computer I usually have a baby in one of my arms leaving one hand for typing. I hate typing with one hand. It makes the task take way too long. So tonight with Seth in bed I'm forcing myself to start playing catch-up with all that's happened in the past month.

Let's see: End of August: Maya started second grade at a new school. She likes her teacher and her class. Instead of being out the door at 6:30 am to catch the bus, my friend and I are taking turns driving week by week. We don't have to be ready til 7:20 which makes a big difference. She also lost her first teeth but I'm pretty sure I already posted about that.

September: The 2nd of the month was Luke's 4th birthday. I can't believe he's already four! We did a little family party on his actual birthday and a small friend party on the weekend. Transformer theme of course. This boy is all about the Transformers these days.

He loves his new Transformer so much he fell asleep playing with it.

Luke is a ball of energy. He goes goes goes until he crashes. I'm working on finding productive ways for him to use that energy so he doesn't get himself into trouble (He likes to rip and smash and draw on everything). His new favorite toy is Magnetix - yes they're dangerous if you swallow them but we're willing to take that risk. Along with that energy he has a lot of love to give. If Seth is crying he'll go lay down next to him and start singing to him (which usually calms Seth down - that boy LOVES music.) He loves to give hugs and protect us from the Decepticons (the bad transformers for those of you who don't have little boys/husbands around to teach you the difference) Aside from his toys, some of Luke's favorite things are: ice cream cones, string cheese, playing with his big sister, following and copying his daddy, helping cook/bake (and licking the cookie dough bowl), reading stories, building things, painting. He can drive me crazy, but I'm still nuts about him. I love that boy!

Here he is after sining to Seth

The boys and I keep busy by playing at the gym every morning and running errands in the afternoon before Maya gets home from school. Luke doesn't start preschool until next year because he misses the cutoff here by one day. I'll just focus on enjoying this extra time with him. I'm still teaching piano a few afternoons a week. Matt's into his last year of residency. Who knows where we'll be this time next year. Our list of options is coming out soon and by mid-November we'll have our preference list put in. (Justin - we need to coordinate with you guys and try to get sent to the same base.) They told us to plan on Matt being deployed 6 to 8 months after we get to wherever they move us next. Not looking forward to that, but we'll deal with it when we get there.

Seth is growing so fast. He's 6 1/2 months now. He can sit a little bit on his own unsupported.

He's a very smiley baby. Maya and Luke love trying to make him laugh. A few days ago he started clapping his hands together. It's so fun to watch him grow. He is definitely a momma's boy (for now at least). As soon as he sees me I always get a big smile and he reaches out for me. My arms are worn out from having him in them all day, but I'm enjoying the snuggling while it lasts.

Laughter is the best medicine

It's not often that all my children are laughing together - mainly b/c Seth is still selective with what will make him laugh. Up until now, it's mostly been me that been able to get him to laugh. Matt could sometimes, but for now anyway, Seth is a momma's boy.

We were on our way home from the pool today and Luke was being silly and he figured out what gets Seth to laugh, a lot! This is the most Seth has ever laughed at once.

What is it about a baby's laugh that can put everyone in a good mood?

I HEART THE POOL

I love summertime and swimming. Growing up we lived in our swimsuits during the summer. We'd go inside for lunch and bathroom breaks, otherwise we were in the water. Here in Texas we have a great community pool that is rarely busy (which is shocking considering it hit 100 degrees everyday). We hit the pool almost everyday Monday through Friday this summer. Maya mastered the freestyle thanks to a frien of mine who came and taught lessons at the pool. Luke learned to swim this summer (as long as he has goggles on). He even got to the point where he'll jump in and swim to us. I'm so glad my kids love the pool as much as I do!

Who doesn't love being silly with dad?

Maya and Emi practically lived together this summer (above)

Luke and Jaike are great buds! (below)

Seth after a good swim/nap in the water

Silly jumping

Daddy "hearts" Maya

Summertime entertainment

Remember the games you used to make up with your brothers and sisters? Avoiding hot lava and crocodiles, steam roller, getting the bad guys. Good times. Here a little look at Maya and Luke - choreographed by Maya.

Last to get em, last to lose em

Maya finally lost her first tooth yesterday. It seems like the tooth has been loose for several months - it's got to be a record. Maya has a dentist appointment next week so it's been loose for 6 months. I remember the dentist mentioning that it was loose at her last checkup. We've heard a lot of detail from Maya on how loose the tooth is and what she can or can't bite into and times she was having so much fun thinking or doing other things that she forgot about the loose tooth. Seriously. I was more ready for it to come out that she was. She didn't get her first tooth until she was 14 months old. Her teeth like to take their sweet old time doing whatever they are going to do.

It's been dangling in her mouth for a few days. We thought it was going to come out on Tuesday night, but it was a false alarm. Yesterday we went to the pool with our friends. One of them is an oral surgeon resident. When we got there I said that he should just yank it out. He'll called Maya over and said: Hey Maya! Show me your loose tooth. She opened up and he reached right in and yanked it out. Thank you very much, Mike!

Maya was very excited. She put it in a safe place in our pool bag (after showing all the kids) so she wouldn't lose it. She put it under he pillow for the tooth fairy. Unfortunately, the Tooth Fairy was a no show last night. She'd better come tonight or else I don't think Maya will be able to hold back the tears of disappointment. She was very brave this morning and blinked back her tears while picking out cereal for breakfast before school.

The one next to it is loose. I'll start taking bets on how long it'll take for this next one to fall out. Maybe the dentist will just pull it out when we go.

What the . . !

There is just something wrong with looking up the bus schedule for the new school year at the new elementary school and seeing that the pickup time is 6:48 AM!!!! That means we have to leave the house a little after 6:30 AM to walk down to the stop and wait. No 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10-year-old should be walking down the street in the dark morning hours to wait for a bus while the high school students sleep in and get picked up around 9 am. It just isn't right!!!

I think this year we'll be driving to school in the morning. At least then we don't have to leave the house til 7:15.

The usual

My birthday

Last month I hit the big 3-0. I'm still waiting for my breakdown, but so far it isn't so bad. Through med school and residency, I haven't bothered to really get my hopes up for anything or even bother to make plans because we have no control over Matt's schedule. This year I made plans. I had a babysitter lined up and planned a yummy dinner and all. (Normally I just ignore the day.) Unfortunately Matt got stuck in the OR with heart cases so he didn't get home until after midnight. So much for my plans. Cancelled the babysitter and didn't know what to do with the food. Should I bother preparing it? Maya and Luke have very little appetites. Luckily, I have a good friend down the street who came to my rescue. She brought me my favorite Jamba after I got the news from Matt that he wouldn't be home in time. Then, since her husband was working all night at the hospital as well, we banded together and made dinner and we and all our kids ate together. They even stayed and sang me Happy Birthday. Not that Matt didn't try. The night before, he made my birthday cake so I wouldn't have to make my own.

Lighting the candles on my cake, which Luke blew out immediately after I finished lighting them.

*A little side note. I'm reluctant to post these pictures of me. I'm still in the process of losing the baby weight. But I should be proud. I gain 65 lbs with each pregnancy, so I literally have to work my butt off after the baby's born. Seth is 4 months old and I'm down 55 lbs. Not too shabby. I still have work to do, but I'll take a moment and pat myself on the back.

Having a little fun with the camera and winding up to blow out the candles.

~WARNING: This next section is pretty cheesy!~
So now that I'm 30, I look back on where I've come from and what I've done with my life thus far. I was raised in a big family. I have 10 brothers and sisters. I don't know how my parents did it. But I wouldn't change it for the world. I love having 6 brothers (5 of them older than me) and 4 sisters. In a family like that you always have someone to play with. We could go out in our yard and play any sport we wanted to. They kept me out of trouble as well. I was on swim team and track team in high school. I still jump in the pool and swim laps a couple times a week and love a good workout at the gym. I sang a lot in high school, and I still do now (in the privacy of my own home) when my kids request their night night songs. My mom taught me piano and now I'm a piano teacher myself. For me - music is therapy. Some people might say I married young ( a month before I turned 21) but I've loved every minute of it. 9 years (4 kids, 4 states/7 moves, BYU, 4 years of med school, 3 years internship/residency, all kinds of church callings) later and I feel blessed to have experienced it all. Some of it's been difficult or sad, but there have been so many more happy moments. I'm healthy, my kids and husband are healthy and we all get to be together everyday (kind of). The only thing I wish I could change is that we were closer to family. Oh well, I guess I can't have everything.

Seth's First Haircut

Before

(4 months and a day old - 7/26/09)

As you can see, Seth was starting to get shaggy. Not a "missionary appropriate" hairstyle. His Dad was ready to trim around the ears when I walked in our room. I suggested it was time for a full on cut. We pulled out the clippers and there you have it.

After

I think he looks handsome, but I was sad for a few days. I felt like the haircut made him look older and took away some of his "baby-ness".

And We're Back

So, Matt and I have had a couple of weeks where things just weren't really going all that smoothly. Matt had a few days where he'd lost his wedding ring after a jog and lost his wallet somewhere between work and home, and a few frustrating days at work. He found his ring (he'd put it in a random drawer before going on a jog/swimming) and his wallet (it had fallen out of his bag outside the hospital and a good samaritan turned it in, money and all), and the work stuff blew over (lame boss at an outside hospital Matt was rotating at for the month). Then I had a day where the computer just stopped working, the vacuum stopped working while I was using it, and then Luke got a bloody, fat lip when he face planted on our floor - all while Matt's working crazy long days during this rotation. Luke's lip healed, the vacuum magically started working again (I think it had over heated - I was doing some serious cleaning; moving the couches and all). But, the computer decided not to work. I called one of my electrical engineer brothers. Basically, our hard drive died. This was 2 weeks ago. Next decision: buy a new computer or try and save money and hope putting in a new hard drive ourselves works. We went the less expensive route.
The pain about a new hard drive is that you are starting completely from scratch - no operating system, processors, drivers, or programs - NOTHING. We had to reinstall everything and slowly discover what we needed to find and download. We reinstalled windows. Got the basics going. Then we tried to get online - we had no local area network driver on the hard drive. That took us a few days to get figured out. finally we hooked up our wireless card to the desktop and got online that way and downloaded a driver. Finally we have internet again. But no sound. We've spent the last few days trying to figure out how to get sound. A computer is pretty sad with no sound, no music. We drove to a specialty computer store to buy a sound card today. Stuck that to the mother board and put the installation disk in. It wouldn't work and kept causing the computer to freeze up. So Matt took it out. He was getting a few things at Walmart tonight and decided to check out their sound cards. He came home and installed it and we have sound again! Thank you Walmart! You never let us down!
So - we think we're pretty much up and running again. We have a lot of programs to reinstall on the computer, but we're in pretty good shape for now.
Thank goodness for our external hard drive which backed up all our files every night. Our pictures and music are safe and we don't have to spend $200+ to try and retrieve them from our broken hard drive.
Anywho - this post has been much more longwinded than I was planning. Computer's been driving me nuts the past few weeks, but I think we're back. Picture posts might take me a few days because I need to trust my computer again, but hopefully they'll be posted soon.

10 Seconds

To all you parents out there, you understand how time alone with your spouse minimizes exponentially with each child. Especially when your husband has to be up at 4:30 am every morning (give or take a half hour) for work - meaning, he goes to bed at about the same time as the kids, so we lose that time to hang out after the kids are in bed. During the day, there are always children pushing their way in between us, and I mean physically pushing their way between us, wanting their own attention. Now, Matt and I just laugh at it. I mean, it's a good thing really, to have our kids wanting us so much. In a few years they'll be hiding from us. And with Matt gone so much, I try not to take away their time from him. Anyway, to the point. . .

The kids were getting ready for bed. Luke had just started brushing his teeth, so I went to my bedroom to have a few moments alone with Matt before the kids came in for family prayer. I said as soon as I walked in the room "We've got about 10 seconds of alone time." So we just snuggled on our bed, a small moment to ourselves. It really only lasted about 10 seconds, enough time for us to say "I love you" to each other before Luke runs into our room and shouts, "HEY! I WANTED HIM!" and jumped on the bed with us and proceeded to squeeze his way in between us.

Tastey Toes

(Maya's on the left; Seth is on the right.)

Water Baby

Seth got to join us in the pool for the first time on Saturday evening. He's not aloud to wear sunscreen yet, so I've mostly had him hiding in the shade while we play at the pool. But, it's still very hot in the shade. There's a little shade in the toddler section of our pool, so we got him in his suit and took him for a swim. He likes the water. Spent a lot of time trying to eat it. Looks like I've got another fish.

Blessing

Seth was blessed the first Sunday this month. It was a beautiful blessing. I had woken up that morning in a bad mood and stayed in a bad mood for no good reason all morning. I got the kids ready and went to church and met Matt there. As soon as the first words of the blessing started, my bad mood melted away and I got all teary eyed and listened as my husband gave Seth a wonderful blessing.

(Can't resist a good crying picture)

Now, I have to say that I am so disappointed with the clothing stores. There is a serious lack of dressy clothes for boys. You have tons of PJs and rompers to choose from, but there arent' pants that aren't denim or sweat pant material. No sweater vests or plain button down shirts. I had gotten Luke's blessing outfit from JCPenny. When I looked for one for Seth, they had nothing. Luckily, last minute, I found a cute little plain white polo onesie at Walmart at 10 pm the night before the blessing. The pants are from Luke's blessing outfit. The top half of Luke's blessing outfit had that yellow stain that develops over time from spit up. Time to go get that dry cleaned. This all was part of my bad mood on Sunday. I was mad at myself for forgetting about the blessing until the night before (things have been pretty hectic) and mad that I didn't have an outfit just for Seth. I wanted all my kids to have their own blessing outfit to have when they grow up and have children of their own. So much for that plan. I'll just keep it as my own keepsake and they can use it down the road if they want to. I'm over it.

At Last!

A post by Maya:

Yay! It`s summer! You know why I'm excited? Because it's summer and no more school! I've got good news and bad news. I'll tell you the good news first. The good news is that I don't have to wake up at 6:30 anymore. The bad news is that I won't see all my friends next year because I'm going to a new elementary school. But, I'm excited still. I can hang out with my family and hang out at the pool and do some exercising! Bye! See you next time!

Brothers

Here is a video I took to try and get Seth smiling. Luke came along and started acting like a T-rex. After Luke roars a few times you'll have to watch Seth's face when I pan back over to him. So sad and so cute at the same time.

Dance recital video

Here's a video of my favorite of the 3 dances Maya did. It takes too long to post all 3.

Maya is in the silver skirt, in the back row on the left. One of the girls in front of her kept getting right in the way from the angle I was at, but you can see Maya most of the time.

A lot to catch up on

It's been a busy week. We'll see how much Seth lets me get done right now. We got some more smile pictures. I love his little double chin in the first one.

A friend of mine came over last weekend and took a whole bunch of really cute shots of Seth with her nice camera. We're getting those ready and I'll post them as a slide show soon. If anyone wants a copy of any of those photos, I'll have them posted on Walmart.com and you can get them. When the slideshow is on here, they'll be posted there.

Maya had her dance recital last weekend. She did a really great job. Girl loves to dance. We have the dance music on CD for Maya to practice with. When she practices, Luke is right there next to her copying her every move (as well as a 3-year-old can). It's really funny. I'll have to try and get that on video.

On Monday, Maya got a really cute haircut. Here's the before:

and the after:

I love it! She loves her neck not being hot anymore. The only drawback is she doesn't have a ponytail to hold her swim goggles strap in place while she swims.

Yesterday morning, I was watching my friend's boys. One of them loves to birdwatch. Good thing too, because otherwise I never would have noticed the ducks in my trees. That's right. ducks in my trees. I can't recall seeing ducks hang out in trees before.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger. You'll see the ducks with the bright orange beaks. My camera's zoom sucks. Everything looked tiny and far away in the camera even though the trees in my backyard are not that far away from my house.

Tonight, Matt and I are going to see "Wicked" with a bunch of friends. I'm very excited, though leaving Seth caused a lot of anguish. Not because I don't want to leave him home for the evening. I'm just worried my babysitter will be miserable if he cries and won't go to sleep. I'm not sure if he'll take a bottle. Hopefully he'll fall asleep within an hour at his usual bedtime and she won't really even have to deal with him. I'm sure it'll be fine.

YAY!

Matt comes home tonight!!! Need I say more than - YAY!

SMILE