Eliza- Eliza is a bundle of fun and personality. She is talking a lot and starting to put words together. She has a sweet voice and is really good at saying thank you- "tank oo mom" is my favorite :). Most of the words she puts together are hi, bye, or thank you added to someone's name. She'll also say "where's ..." when she's looking for someone or something. She'll still nod her head yes instead of saying yes and she just started saying please "pee". She loves animals and birds- she calls a bird "bee" for some reason and she calls hopper "bun" or "bun bun" for bunny I guess (but she used to say hopper). She also loves dolls "babies" and books. She likes to give hugs and kisses and she likes to sing. She'll sing along at church (la la la sounds) and at home she'll often fold her arms when she sings like she's saying a prayer. Sometimes she'll sing someone's name- usually Hannah, but when she says Andrew or Ethan she mostly says the "an" sound and it ends up sounding like "Hannah" so sometimes its hard to tell. She loves her siblings (most of the time) and they adore her (most of the time). She can definitely stick up for herself and make her desires known (loudly). She is usually sweet but can be a stinker. When she's mad she makes a scrunched up face that is pretty funny. She'll throw a tantrum when she wants something that we won't give her but she gets over it quickly. She can get into mischief when she's in the mood. She'll grab something she knows she shouldn't have and run, or dump something out to make a mess. She knows how to open the refrigerator and doors. Overall though she's a pretty easy one year old. She has won over the doctor and the dentist. The dentist said she's the best baby he's ever teeth checked and the doctor and nurse loved working with her. Whenever the nurse would finish doing anything (measuring her, weighing her, checking head size, etc...) Eliza would say thank you to her. She doesn't love being left alone in nursery but she's getting better. She still nurses once a day- hopefully she'll be weaned someday. I keep getting sadder thinking about not having another toddler coming up so I'm enjoying this stage as much as I can, and taking lots of pics of my happy, sweet girl.
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| Eliza wiping her face with a napkin- doesn't she look big? |
Ethan- Ethan is another bundle of fun and personality and also a bundle of energy. He is obsessed with the seahawks. He'll play seahawks for a long time each day. He'll put his jersey and helmet on and run around or throw the ball or roll on the floor for a tackle. If Andrew is home they'll sometimes play it together but he'll usually play when Andrew's at school and has me watch and cheer for him. He'll usually pretends he is either Matthew or Karter :). Most of his sentences begin with the word pretend. "Pretend the seahawks are running onto the field". "Pretend I'm a dinosaur and ...". He loves books! When we get new books from the library he'll spend a lot of time looking at them. He studies the pictures- especially people's facial expressions or other indications of how they're feeling. Then when we read the book he'll ask "why is he making that face?" Often times you can tell more by the picture then the words tell so he tries to piece everything together. He also likes to act out books and he has a good memory and can do a good job retelling stories (or making up stories). He does have some OCD's. He'll always put away his stuff and he'll take care of the stuff that everybody uses. He always makes sure the remote control is put away and drawers and cupboards are shut. He qualified for and just started going to speech. Although I think he has some social anxieties with new people he overcomes them pretty well. I can see him choose to be brave and after he does he gains confidence. He does great going to speech and he is awesome in primary (he just started sunbeams). He also does really well at the doctor and dentist and people always comment about how easy going he is. At home he goes through stages of being super sweet and being a stinker (mostly in the form of aggression- usually not angry aggression, more like too much energy aggression). Overall he is sweet. He is always telling me "my love you" :). He can be pretty clingy to me, or is often climbing on me, so I'm trying to work on that. He likes to cook and make smoothies and play with nerf guns and his siblings. He loves taking pictures and uses my old camera. He is very giving and thoughtful.
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| Ethan playing seahawks |
Hannah- Hannah and Andrew are gone 8 hours a day at school so I feel like I don't see them enough. Hannah loves school and is doing well. They recently got their first report cards and her teacher talked about how sweet she is and how she works hard and is especially awesome at Math. She loves to write and spends a lot of her time at home writing (and doing art). Her writing is getting more readable but sometimes her excitement to write is so big that she doesn't slow down and think about letter formations or sentence structures. She has some good friends at school and a great teacher. She is still going to speech and is getting really good at her "l" sound and "s blend" sounds. She is a really good thinker. I think her memory is similar to mine. The things she stops to think about she has a good memory for, but without consciously committing something to memory it doesn't stick. She doesn't remember peoples names but remembers well the topics we discuss and she applies what we talk about to other things. She also likes the seahawks and her cousins. She loves her dolls. The other day she was bringing all her dolls from her bedroom to the basement to prepare them for a tornado. We hadn't talked about tornados yet but we decided to talk about them for our family home evening lesson that night. Hannah loves the American girl books (I do too...they are well written historical fiction books that bring up good discussions because the characters go through real struggles- the boys even like most of them). Hannah loves her pet Hopper and takes good care of him. She can have strong ideas and doesn't like anyone getting in the way of them (especially if she is tired or hungry). She is a great helper though (if it doesn't involve cleaning) and I'm always impressed with her bravery and love and determination. She is a fun girl to hang out with and is excited about life.
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| Hannah with the beloved nutcracker |
Andrew- Andrew is growing into a great guy. (Not that he wasn't great before, I just like watching who he is growing into as he gets older...although I want these growing older years to go very slowly.) Andrew is doing very well in school. He has a great teacher, a guy, who wrote some good stuff about him. He said he excels in all academic areas, is a good example, participates in discussions, makes friends easily, and he said he is "thrilled" to have Andrew in his class. I can tell his teacher is good and has a healthy classroom environment because Andrew comes home happy and not stressed out and he likes school. Andrew still loves sports although he's not currently doing any. We go swimming a lot at a city pool that is right next to us and is a lot of fun. I'm signing the kids up for swimming lessons and he'll probably do indoor soccer sometime soon. I like not having a lot going on so it's hard for me to sign him up for stuff but I know he wants to. He is in cub scouts which he loves. I've heard him say a couple of times recently when doing something hard "I can do it, I'm a cub scout" :). He has one good friend in the neighborhood and several at school but he still talks about his cousins all the time. He is a good brother- he usually enjoys playing with his siblings and even though he often fights with them also, he is very protective of them. I love watching him walk home from the bus stop with Hannah because he is always walking right next to her making sure she isn't too close to the street. He often takes things too seriously (overreacts, is intense) and he still gets scared pretty easily, but he is responsible and a fun person to talk to and be with. He has really good ideas. He loves archery and seahawks (it is so fun to watch him and listen to him as he watches the games) and pokemon and imagine dragons and clash of clans and playing wall-ball with dad. He is a good kid and he cares about people.
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| I love this picture of Andrew |
Daniel- Daniel loves his new job. He is either working from home or out at different clients. His boss really likes him which is great. When he is home he gets the kids up for school, makes breakfast, and takes them to the bus stop which is very nice for me (and them). He enjoys living near his sister and we’ve been watching all the seahawk games over at her house. Daniel just started physical therapy for his knee so hopefully he can start running again soon. He is a wonderful husband and dad!
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| A fun day at the park playing with Dad |
Jill- I have been working on a project making different family picture collages through costco. I wanted to make one for each holiday, season, etc… So for Christmas I picked out a few Christmas pics from each year, made the collage on costco’s website, printed it and hung it in a big frame. January doesn’t have a holiday (although I do want to make a winter one) but for now I made a “sibling love” collage. I decided I don’t like winter too much but I was thinking December is easy to get through because of Christmas and then Valentine’s Day is in February so I thought January needed a holiday to help get through it. I made one called family fun day that we’ll celebrate the last Saturday in January. (Feel free to celebrate it also if you need an extra holiday!) Anyway, that is the inspiration for making the sibling love collage. I also made a parenting goal for each month and January is family love so I thought if I displayed the kids being loving to each other they might remember they love each other and act accordingly J. I also made each kid a mini collage for them with each of their siblings (Andrew has one with him and Hannah, one with him and Ethan, and one with him and Eliza, etc…). I want to make one with each parent but I don’t have many pics of me with the kids so I’m trying to work on that. Ethan took a couple of me and Eliza the other day. In other news, my new calling at church is Sunday school teacher for 16-18 year olds which I was scared of doing but I have really loved it. My trials right now are 1)Keeping the house clean/getting the kids to do more work. Daniel is wonderful for always doing the dishes but the rest of the house is usually messy. (That is going to be my parenting goal for February) 2)Getting a good night sleep. Each of the kids sleeps OK but with 4 of them there is usually at least one that wakes up in the night…it seems like it’s getting better lately but I’m afraid to get my hopes up. 3)Feeding my children- they are each picky with different things so thinking of meals and trying to get them all to be somewhat healthy is stressful.
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| Ethan took this picture |
This is a forever long post- let me know if you actually got through it J. Anyway I’ll end with a funny story that has to do with healthy food. Andrew is learning about healthy food at school and has been trying to be a little better. Last night though he declared that he did not want to go to school today. His class is doing a fruit and vegetable tasting and his teacher said they had to at least try each one. Andrew was so scared that he was going to have to taste a strawberry. I picked him up this morning to quickly take him to get his flu shot and I asked him if they’d done it yet. He said no but he wasn’t as worried because the teacher told them what foods there would be and there was only stuff like spinach J. He did say (I think jokingly) that he was trying to be a little bad today because the teacher mentioned that if they weren’t good they wouldn’t get to do the tastings…I guess the other kids aren’t having panic attacks about it J.
