Santa 2011

Rylee did so well when we went to visit Santa at the mall this year. She waited all month for Santa to be finished building toys so he could come to our store to visit her. When we got there she ran right up to him and jumped up into his lap without any hesitation! (Can we say magic medicine?) It was amazing to see the difference between this trip and last year's.

She told Santa that she was a good girl, that she was excited for Christmas and that she wanted a coloring book this year. When he asked what else she wanted she just looked at him and said "I don't know." I guess it hadn't occured to her that she could ask for something other than a coloring book! So Santa told her that he would make a very special present for her to have on Christmas morning. Then he gave her a candy cane and a little book.

After she was done we took Jayden up to sit by her to have their picture together. He turned around to look at Santa for a few seconds, then turned back to look at us like "so what's the big deal?" He wasn't very impressed after all the hype we gave it. It was a very calm, stress-free event, though. I even told Grandma afterword that it was too easy, I almost felt a little gipped - no tears, no screaming, no long lines and no bribing kids to sit still long enough to snap a picture. Our little world has changed very quickly in a very short amount of time! Rylee seems to be handling it a lot better than I am, luckily.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE!!!

Baby Feeding Adventures

Jayden has turned eating into an extreme sport around our house. He can down a full bowl of baby food with cereal mixed in and drink a bottle of formula in seven minutes flat. And believe me, he will let you know if you are the one slowing down his progress!

Busy Boy

Mommy woke up with a miserable migraine this morning, so Jayden hung out at home with me while daddy and Ry went to church. He was such a good boy to entertain himself and only cause minimal destruction.

Chocolate Morning Routine

Isn't December a great month? Rylee sure thinks so. This is how her morning starts each day. (P.S. Big, no HUGE, thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Alderman for supplying this delicious tradition!)

Christmas Details

I don't normally do this kind of thing, but when I saw this "blog quiz" I thought it would be a perfect way to record some of the details of our Christmas traditions that don't ever get recorded in my normal Christmas posts. (Someday someone might like to look back and read this kind of thing, right?) Anyway, here goes nothing.

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Definitely egg nog. Yummm! We drink hot chocolate all year round but egg nog means Christmas time. On Christmas Eve we always leave a plate of cookies and a glass of egg nog (a tradition carried over from my childhood because Santa preferred egg nog at the Shelton house, too).

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa leaves presents on the couches/floor around the tree. We each have a designated "spot" (usually where we normally sit for TV watching) and Santa lays our presents out so we can see them first thing when we come out on Christmas morning. Interestingly, though, Santa always wraps the presents in the stocking. ??? Another tradition in our family is that Santa always leaves each child an outfit to wear on Christmas day, some kind of treat and new socks or underwear along with a "main" toy.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Colored so far, but mostly because all our lights are hand-me-downs and colored is what we got. I think they will probably stay colored, though, until the kids are older (kids like colors so much better).

4. Do you hang mistletoe? You can actually buy real mistletoe? I thought it was just something you sang about in Christmas songs.

5. When do you put your decorations up? The day after Thanksgiving! I restrain myself that long, but I like as much Christmas as I can squish out of the season.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Everything! (It's hard to pick a favorite when you love food so much.) But really it would probably be a tie between the peanut brittle my Grandpa Shelton used to make (and now we make to carry on the tradition at our house) and the pink popcorn balls that Grandma Alderman makes!

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? No specific memory, just spending Christmas day together. Dad never had to work and we always had a hot breakfast. Then we played and enjoyed our presents all day, watched movies, read books, took naps, etc. It was always so nice to have a day where everyone was home but there was nothing that had to be done and no one was stressed out about anything.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't remember for sure. I have memories of my dad coming home from work and telling us that he had run over Santa on his way home from work so Christmas was cancelled and looking at my mom for reassurance that it wasn't true. Then I have memories of him coming home with the same message and rolling my eyes at him because Santa wasn't real, duh Dad. I'm not sure when the transition happened, though. At our house, we are trying very hard to keep Santa alive for at least a few years. Even though Rylee is only 3 years old it has already been a struggle. She was with me a couple of months ago when I bought Jayden's Christmas Day outfit for Santa to leave. I didn't think she would even notice but when I got some presents out to wrap last week she asked me if I was going to wrap Jayden's clothes. So now I have had to make sure everything that Santa leaves has been bought in secret (even down to the socks and treats). It's going to be hard to keep up with this girl!

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We've started the tradition with our kids of opening one present on Christmas Eve - always a pair of jammies for them to wear that night.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Hodge-podge style with whatever ornaments we can find. We each get a new ornament every year, so we have a collection of those. We also have some hand-me-downs that we have inherited. When we got married we also bought some cheap ones to fill in the blank spots. Rylee prefers to hang as many on the same branch as she possibly can.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Snow is great from Christmas Eve until New Years Day. Any other time it just turns into a dirty, slushy mess.

12. Can you ice skate? We love ice skating! When it snows enough early in the season and then gets cold enough to freeze ice, the city makes an outdoor skating rink in a park just below the temple. It is a ton of fun and I have a million great memories of going there when I was a kid!

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I really don't remember many of the gifts, just the experiences (which is probably better anyway, right?) We did go to Disney World as a family one year for our Christmas present, though. That was a very fun Christmas.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Happy, relaxing, quality time together with family.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Anything with chocolate. Or toffee. Or fruit. Or sugar in general.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Spending Christmas Eve at Grandma Shelton's house. We have done this for as long as I can remember. We have dinner and exchange presents. Now that the family has expanded to 17 grandkids, 5 grandkids-in-law, and soon to be 6 great-grandkids we have adjusted the tradition to just dinner and giving presents to Grandma Shelton.

17. What tops your tree? A very sad little silver star. But it still lights up!

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? Giving - I love watching our kids run/crawl into the living room and see the presents under the tree on Christmas morning. What's even better is to see how excited Rylee gets when she gets to give someone a present.

19. Candy canes: yuck or yummy? Mostly I can do without.

20. Favorite Christmas show? The Grinch

21. Saddest Christmas song? That one about the little boy that wants to buy shoes for his dying mom (it's a great song, but it always makes me tear up)

22. What is your favorite Christmas song? Homeless when Voice Male sings it (they do amazing live concerts - we go every year as another Christmas tradition)

That was maybe more than anybody really wanted to know, but at least I now have it in writing in case I ever forget.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

A Season For More Firsts

Having a baby in the house means there are always "firsts" to experience. Over the Thanksgiving holiday Jayden cut his first tooth. (He is now working on his second.) Unfortunately, it was while we were staying at Grandma Joycie's house so he was pretty fussy for the festivities. This is how he spent most of the weekend:

Jayden also started crawling just before Thanksgiving.  He has been into everything ever since! His favorite place to be is in Rylee's room. He loves taking all of the toys out of her toy box. He also enjoys tipping over all the garbage cans, pulling all the books of the bookshelf and pulling on anything with a cord. His latest discovery is that he can crawl underneath the kitchen chairs. Unfortunately, he hasn't figured out how to free himself from this magical new land yet, so every ten minutes or so I get to crawl under the table to rescue him.

Jayden is also starting to pull himself up on the furniture. I'm tempted to start pushing him down again, but I've just given up. My kids seem too determined to grow up before I am ready, no matter what I do about it. I suppose I will just have to focus my energy on enjoying the few moments they do give me!

Rylee also got to experience a first this past weekend (not quite as frequent for a 3 year old). Each year my mom and I go to the Voice Male Christmas concert and this year Rylee was finally old enough to come with! We had a great time on our "girl date" eating french fries, shopping at the candy store and watching the show. Ry seemed a little unsure at first but by the end she was laughing along with everyone else and said she can't wait to go again next year! I am very excited to share this tradition with my own daughter and hopefully they will continue performing for many years to come. (Again, sorry for the poor quality photos. Cell phones are just so much more convenient than real cameras.)

Thanksgiving 2011

Since I am a world-class procrastinator, this post is obviously very late. (At least it isn't Christmas yet!) It was our year to spend Thanksgiving with the Larsens. Chad got up early that morning to bake an apple pie (made from scratch!) then we packed up the car and headed to Sandy. Dinner this year was hosted at Sally and Connon's church - it's hard to find a place that seats 40 people! - and the kids loved it because the gym had a stage to play on. The food was delicious, as always, and Rylee had so much fun playing with her cousins (so much that I couldn't get her to sit still long enough to get a clear picture on my phone).

A side note on Rylee: at her 3 year check-up with Dr. Firth he expressed concerns that her extreme shyness was more than just a normal young child amount of shy. After asking me several questions about her behavior (and attempting to get Rylee to communicate with him in any way) he decided that she has some severe anxiety. She gets so nervous around strangers and large groups of people that she "freezes" up. He said her brain knows that she should talk and react but the signals don't make it to her mouth, eyes, arms, etc. So he has been treating her for a couple months and we have been working with her to try to help with the anxiety. Thanksgiving was the first real "test" we had to see if she was improving or not. It was amazing how different she was around Chad's family! Before, she wouldn't talk to anyone (I'm not sure any of Chad's family had actually ever heard her speak before) and it took a long time of sitting by her and letting her slowly get used to them before she would even get down on the floor and play with anyone or give her grandparents a hug. When we went down there she clung to my legs the entire time and stared at the floor. Over the couple days we spent in Sandy this time, though, I didn't see her for more than 5 minutes! She played with everyone; she talked to everyone; she even left Chad's parents' house, where we were staying, to go with one of her aunt's to play at another house without us! We were so proud of her and relieved that she was doing so well and excited for everyone else to finally get to see her real personality coming out.

Jayden, unfortunately got sick right before we left with a bad cold and also suffered through the holiday trying to cut his first tooth. He tried to be brave, but it was a pretty rough weekend for him. He spent most of the time passed out in the swing hopped up on Tylenol.

When we came home Friday evening we got to bring one of Rylee's cousins home with us. (Before her recent changes this is something we never would have been able to do. Rylee would not have been able to handle that kind of major change in her home environment without a lot of time for us to prepare her for it.) Oaklee is the same age as Rylee, but since she lives in Nevada they don't get to see each other very often. So Oaklee came home with us Friday night for a sleepover then we all went with my mom to see the new Muppets movie Saturday afternoon while Chad went with some of his family to the USU - Nevada football game. The girls had so much fun together playing and giggling all night long!

Sunday we put on the Grinch (a favorite tradition) and put up the Christmas decorations.  Rylee was much more helpful in hanging the ornaments this year! Jayden helped by taking care of the tape on the boxes. Aren't these two little Santa's helpers too cute?

It was such a great weekend and we can't wait for Christmas to come at our house!

Babysitter Mindset

Over the last few months I have come to the realization that babysitting is a lot like waitressing. Or maybe waitressing is a lot like babysitting. Either way, they have many things in common: there is always a million things to do and not enough hands to do it with; at the end of a shift all surfaces have to be sanitized and all floors need to be swept, mopped and vacuumed; and, no matter what I do, I always end up with food on my shirt.

During the years that I spent waiting on tables I had a recurring dream (sometimes I still have it) about work  The details would differ from night to night, but the basic idea was always the same. The restaurant was packed full of people who all needed something from me (drinks, salads, food, checks, etc.) and I didn't know where to start. Every time I got a table finished and out the door, another group would magically replace it and I would have to start all over again. In my dreams (as in real life during many shifts) I told myself over and over that I just had to keep pushing through it and eventually the night would end and everyone would go home.

My recurring dream now goes more along these lines: a house full of babies that need diapers changed and bottles fed, toddlers that need toys fixed and help going potty, and every room ankle deep in mess. As in the waitressing dreams, I find myself thinking that I just have to push through and eventually the day will end and everyone will go home - just like at the restaurant!

The two professions are also similar in that you have to keep a running list in your head all day long of things that need to be done. The tricky part is trying to decide what order to do things in when everything needs to be done now and you can only do one thing at a time. With waiting tables the list went like this: "take drinks to table 4, clear table 7, print checks for tables 9 and 5, check in with table 6 to see how the food is, etc." My babysitting list includes: "changes baby 1's diaper, fix toddler 1's toy, feed baby 2 a bottle, take toddler 2 to the potty, put baby 1 down for a nap, make lunch for both toddlers, etc." (P.S. Toddlers that need to go potty always get bumped to the #1 priority spot on the list!) I have no idea how I would manage all of this if Rylee wasn't such a fantastic helper! She can help me do almost everything that has to be done during the day, and she gladly does it. The babies love her and she knows just how to calm them down or keep them busy while I finish another chore. She also has a blast playing with the older girl I babysit. (They start each day running up and down the hall laughing hysterically because "we just need to laugh", as they tell me.)

The whole point of this post is to tell all of you out there who do daycare how much I admire you! During school the professors told our classes over and over how it takes a certain mindset and a specific way of thinking to do computer programming. They said a certain amount of this behavior can be learned, but part of it is a natural personality trait that some people just don't have. I believe this is exactly the same for running a daycare business. Some people have that natural talent to juggle multiple kids for 10, 11, 12 hours a day and still wake up smiling each day. So hats off to you out there! My experience waiting tables has given me much more sympathy to servers when I go to a restaurant, and my recent experiences with babysitting have likewise given me much more sympathy and respect to those people who take care of our children when we can't be there to do it ourselves.

On a completely different topic, Jayden is starting to crawl!! He only makes it one or two "steps" forward before throwing himself down on his stomach, but any day now he is going to be moving all over the place. (I am reserving his "first time crawling" post until he actually makes it continuously from one point to another.)

6 Months & 3 Years

Last Friday Jayden and Rylee had their regular check-ups with the doctor.  They were both tall and skinny for their ages (which I hope they stay for a long time) and the doctor told me again that we make the most gorgeous kids!

Jayden at 6 months:

• weighs 17 lbs and 3 oz
• is 27.25 inches tall
• can sit up and amuse himself for hours at a time (can I say how much I love this stage!)
• rolls across the floor and all over the crib
• gets up on his hands and knees and rocks like he is getting ready to shoot off into space (when the doctor saw this his only response was "I'm so sorry")
• eats baby food three times a day (and hates all of it!)
• sleeps 11-12 hours at night and naps 5-6 hours during the day (yipee!!)
• still looks very much like a mini Chad (although I am starting to see little glimpses of mommy in there) and definitely has Chad's temperament
• and his very favorite person in the whole world is still his big sister!

 

Rylee at 3 years old:

• weighs 31.5 lbs
• is 38.5 inches tall
• can do a somersault in perfect form
• has finally grown enough hair to put into a pony tail (and actually had her first haircut a few months ago)
• loves playing Legos, watching Super Why on PBS, and playing board games
• her favorite movie is Dumbo (which is one that mommy hates watching over and over and over ...)
• is very protective of her little brother (she is such a good little mommy and such a huge help to me in babysitting!)
• speaks amazingly well for her age (when she is not scared into silence by the presence of a stranger)
• has the temperament of her mommy (which I'm sure will cause us to bash heads many, many times in the future - as it already has)
• and her favorite person in the whole world is still Grandma! 

 

P.S.  This is such a funny movie I just had to put it somewhere.  If you didn't believe me about Jayden getting ready to launch off into space here is the video to show it:

Family Pictures 2011

We finally got everyone together, presentable and willing to take a picture.  Since the last time this happened was before Rylee was born, this is a pretty momentous occasion.  (A big thank you to Aunt Kellie for being our photographer!)

The Sheltons

We also got one of our little family together.  (It took many, many shots to get these two pictures!)

The Larsens

Halloween Pictures

I know that Halloween isn't until next week, but doing Halloween costume pictures before Halloween is one of the best ideas ever!  The kids are so much happier because it is something fun to do on an otherwise boring day and it means we get to avoid the inevitable "picture meltdown" on Halloween night.  These turned out so cute that I just couldn't wait another week to post them.  Rylee was such a photogenic little Princess Presto and Jayden was the cuddliest little teddy bear!!  I couldn't decide which I liked best so I just posted them all.  Enjoy!

Pumpkin Walk

Last week we took the kids to the Pumpkin Walk!!  It was the first time for both of them and we had a great time with Grandma.  I have great memories of going to the Pumpkin Walk as a kid, so it was fun to see it through Rylee's eyes this year.  She was a little nervous at first, but Grandma had her warmed up in no time.  (Doesn't she look so grown up?)

Her favorite exhibit (which was built by our awesome neighbors across the street, by the way) was Tangled. She even stood by "Punzel" so I could take her picture ... grudgingly.

Jayden got to experience the Pumpkin Walk from the baby carrier so he could have a good view of everything. (P.S. Six months is too old to be hanging out in the baby carrier - at least for mommy's back!)

Rylee's absolute favorite part, though, was taking pictures with these cardboard cutouts! She wasn't so sure about it at first, but once Grandma and Daddy jumped in there with her she was all for it and wanted her picture taken with all of them!

We had such a fun night and finished it off with dinner at Costa Vida (one of my favorites lately)! It is so fun to start a new tradition with my little family, especially one that I had with my own family when I was a kid. Stay tuned for more Halloween pictures. Rylee and Jayden both have super cute costumes and we have been preparing Ry for weeks in hope that she might actually say "trick-or-treat" when we knock on the neighbor's door!