Jane at 15 months

(This picture is actually a few months old, but she looks so cute in it I had to put it up.)

Things Jane loves right now:

Shoes: She loves to have you put them on her feet and she loves to bring you your shoes and then wait for you to put them on. We try to hide them from her, but she's a pretty smart little girl and will bring them to you again if you don't hide them well enough.

Peek-a-Boo: This is her favorite game to play. The more you can startle her the funnier she thinks it is. I just love those deep baby belly laughs!

Her Belly Button: Jane loves to show off her belly button, and loves to have it poked. She'll even help you poke her belly button if she thinks you aren't poking it hard enough or enough times.

Dancing: Jane loves bouncing herself up and down on her legs to the music and "running" around the room while her siblings dance. She also loves it when you dance with her in your arms and will bounce in your arms squealing in delight.

Swinging: This girl loves to swing and can already use a big swing.

Being With the Family: Jane loves to be part of whatever is going on around the house. She loves her big brother and sister, loves to dance with them and to play in the play kitchen with them.

Her Thumb: I don't know what it is with our kids and their thumbs, but all three of them have been thumb suckers. Jane also loves to rub her hair while she sucks her thumb. Maybe she picked it up from Emily, who loves to twirl her hair while she sucks her thumb. (It makes a funny sight in the morning while I'm fixing the girls breakfast.)



One thing Jane still doesn't love is snuggling, but I still try to get her to snuggle with me several times a day. I am determined to turn her into a snuggler. This little girl definitely has her moments of fussiness, but on the whole she is such a sweet and pleasant baby and really just brings so much joy into our home. What did we ever do without our Baby Jane? I am so excited to see her little personality really come out this next year.

15 month stats:
weight - 25 1/2 lbs. (85%)
height - 33 1/2 in. (99%)
head - 18 1/2 in. (87%)

Over the last 7 months........

Jeff, Jane, and I went to Washington DC to visit Jeff's parents before they came home from their mission. (We also got to spend a day walking around New York City.)

We celebrated Easter and Jane just kept getting cuter!

I ran the Dirty Dash with my brother, his fiance, my sister, and my mom.

My brother got married, and we are so excited to be able to officially claim Jessica as family!
(I made four flower girl dresses, and they turned out so beautiful.)

My Dad turned the big 60 and we had a very fun party for him at our house.

Jane turned one year old, and started walking two months later.

Max learned to ride a bike.

We went to Bear Lake with Jeff's family and had so much fun in spite of the mice and bat in our cabin. (Actually, Sherry's reaction to the mice was half of the fun!)

Max started kindergarten and has loved it from day one.
(I guess I didn't need to worry so much last year!)

And we carved pumpkins and celebrated Halloween, which involved more sewing.

Now we are getting excited for the holidays and LOVING the fact that my sister just moved back to Utah and is only minutes away instead of a 12 hour drive. Max is on the verge of loosing his first tooth and I am not so excited that he is growing up so fast! (Too many big milestones in too short of a time!) And I'm hoping that maybe I will finally be able to stick with blogging again, although I don't promise anything. Having three kids has limited what I can get done in a day, although we would take Jane over the extras any day, she brings so much love and joy into our home. I am constantly looking at my little brood of children and feel so happy and content with our little family right now. We are definitely blessed!!

6 Months Old

Jane turned six months old last week. What a sweetie she is with such nice big cheeks! We just love our Baby Jane!! Her new trick is rolling onto her belly ALL THE TIME. She can't remember how to roll off her belly, and is quite a spitty baby, so her belly is not my favorite place for her to be, but if I roll her back over she immediately rolls back onto her belly. Silly girl. She loves to stick out her tongue, especially when we are feeding her baby food or rice cereal, and she loves watching her big brother and sister. Max is always performing for her and she just watches him all the time to see what crazy things he is going to do. She loves her Daddy and is always smiling when she sees Jeff and loves to grab his beard. To be fair she loves to grab everyone's faces. She is getting pretty close to sitting (if only she would understand that she needs to BEND at her waist to sit) and is starting to babble words like "dada". She also loves holding toys and, of course, putting them in her mouth. She is still not consistently sleeping through the night and seems to have an anti-snuggling gene, but she is just so sweet tempered that it makes up for those little things.

6 month stats:
length - 27.5 inches (96%)
weight - 16.4 lbs. (58 %)
head - 17.1 inches (78%)

On a side note: I took Max and Emily for their yearly check-ups at the same time. Max was a little leery of Dr. Kathy. He went second for both his exam and his shots. Emily, on the other hand, was not shy at all. She spent the whole appointment jabbering on to the doctor about everything. I am constantly amazed at how different they are in personality and temperament. When I decided to take all three of them together I planned on it being a little chaotic, but my kids were so well behaved I wondered whose children they were! I actually left feeling like a good mom. ;) I'm sure they'll make up for it some other time.

Halloween

Since the kids have so many dress up clothes I decided to not make any costumes this year to cut down on my stress. Max decided early on that he wanted to be a pirate and Emily was a fairy. She wanted to be a princess, but all of her princess dresses are too big on her and after one of them got ripped at my dad's Halloween party I was pushing hard for a costume that fit on her. My neighbor had a little cheer-leading costume that we borrowed for little Janey to wear.

We had our neighborhood trunk or treat and chili cook off on Saturday early in the evening so that everyone could get home in time to go trick or treating, which I think is silly because why do we need to do both? I'm not a fan of trunk or treats anyway because I want my kids to have to WORK for their candy! ;) (I do think they serve a purpose if you live in a place you would not feel comfortable taking your kids trick or treating in, but that just doesn't apply to our neighborhood.) However, since it started raining during the chili cook off I was glad that we had the option of not taking the kids trick or treating.

A little after we got home the rain calmed down and the kids wanted to go out trick or treating so Jeff took them out for a little bit just up and down our street. Apparently Emily started doing a little diabolical laugh when people would give her candy.

It was a fun night but it just didn't feel like Halloween to me. I think the fact that I didn't do anything to get us ready for Halloween played a big part in that, because not only did I not sew any costumes I also never bothered to get out my fall decorations this year. Oh well, I think I'll just wait to decorate until Christmas!

Magic Grandma's Carnival

The theme for this years Halloween party was magic. The kids got to make wands, get tattoos, and have their fortunes told. Then they got to watch Magic Grandma's magic show.

Max went as a pirate this year and Emily decided she wanted to be Belle.

And of course, it is always fun to hang out with cousin Ellie. I'm sure it will be even funner when Brock and Isaac are big enough to play, too.

Jane isn't big enough to participate yet, but she's a cutie anyway. I can't believe how big she is getting and how lucky I am to have such a sweet baby!

Thanks for such a fun night, Dad and Sharon!!

*Erin - I hope you don't mind that I "borrowed" some of the photos off your post!*

Baby Milestones

Little Jane is just growing so fast and just gets cuter and cuter every day. She has gotten to that age where I really start to enjoy my babies. (I'm sorry, but I just don't love the newborn phase.) In the last couple of weeks Jane has started sleeping through the night (no more night feeding - yippee!!), found her thumb (what is up with our kids and their thumbs!?!), and today she laughed for the first time. She is just such a sweet and happy baby. She really only cries when she is hungry or tired. She is such a great third child who is happy even though I don't get to hold her as much as I would like and she is constantly having to take naps on the go. We love you baby Jane!

2 Months Old

Jane turned 2 months old this last Wednesday. She is such a cutie and is getting so big! A couple of weeks ago I had to move her into her 3-6 month clothes because all of her 0-3 months were two small for her. They mark a lot of 3-6 month clothes as 6 months and it just felt strange dressing a seven week old baby in clothes that say 6 months!

She has such a beautiful smile. She kind of lifts up her tongue when she smiles and it is just so cute. She is also a great sleeper. She only gets up once a night, usually after a nine hour stretch, but has gone ten or eleven hours a few times. She is still a really sleepy baby and can barely manage to stay awake for two hours at a time, which has made it hard to get her on any kind of schedule, but it also makes life more flexible, which is often really nice with three kids. Max and Emily just love her. I have to watch them because sometimes they love her a little too much, especially Max, who loves to pick her up or roll her onto his stomach when I'm not watching.

Apparently Jane likes to tilt her head to one particular side which is causing her to get a little flat spot and has made her cheeks a little different shaped. Because of this I have to stretch her neck to the other side several times a day. It's kind of cute because her one cheek is more flat and wide and has a teeny tiny dimple in it. We just love having this little sweetie in our family!

2 month stats:
Weight: 13.1 lbs. 95%
Length: 24.5 in. 98%
Head: 15.9 in. 88%

Welcome Home, Jeff!

Things have been pretty nice around here the last few days. Jeff got home Saturday morning from rafting the Grand Canyon for three weeks - with my family. To be truthful, it felt like almost twice that long to me! I sure missed him while he was gone, not only because it was hard taking care of our three little ones all by myself. I am amazed at all the single mothers, military wives, etc. who do this all the time. Evenings were especially lonely without Jeff around. Jane being so little was definitely the hardest part, but luckily she has been a pretty good sleeper, only giving me trouble a couple of nights and has been getting up only once at night to eat for a couple of weeks now. I guess I should say that Jane being in the hospital while Jeff was gone was the worst part, because to be honest that was AWFUL. (For those of you who don't know, Jane got viral meningitis about three days after Jeff left. She was fussy and had a high temperate so my pediatrician told me I needed to take her into the ER. There they did a bunch of tests to find out what was wrong and I spent a lot of time crying and praying that she would be okay. Viral meningitis was the outcome we were hoping for, since, unlike bacterial meningitis, there are hardly ever any side effects from getting it.)

While Jeff was gone:

Jane started smiling and gained some chubby little cheeks and legs. (This is actually the day after Jeff left, so you can't see how chubby she is getting, sorry!)

We made an enormous paper chain a couple of days after he left. I almost cried after I made it, it looked so long. Max and Emily loved taking off a chain each morning.

And I got used to having three kids. I feel like I've gotten baths and the bedtime routine down pretty good and we still run around doing errands and going to the park, it just sometimes takes us a little bit longer to get there. Doesn't it always take a little longer with a newborn?

I also felt like I grew in a lot of ways while Jeff was gone. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't been very good at regular scripture study and prayer the last few years, but I knew I would need all the help I could get and have gotten back in the habit while Jeff was away. I also feel like I'm more patient and am better at letting things go. Things still get done, just not as quickly as they used to and that's okay. I was also very blessed with wonderful friends, neighbors, and family that helped take care of us while Jeff was away. People brought us meals, helped watch my kids, kept me company, and even came and helped me out at home. It is a wonderful feeling to know that I have so many people around me that are looking out for me and my family. I'm sure glad it's over, though. Jeff had a great time and I've been told by the others on the trip that he has turned into quite the oarsman. Hopefully the next river trip we'll get to go on together.

Baby Jane

Our little Baby Jane arrived yesturday at exactly 5:00 pm. I have to admit that I have been very impatient for this little girl to arrive. I blame a lot of that on the heat, which led to a lot of swelling, and my desire to be able to spend time with my family in the next couple of weeks when all of my siblings will be together for the first time in almost three years. She is a little chub, weighing 9 lbs. 9 oz. and 22 inches long.

She is also our first baby to not look just like Jeff. I wondered if my genes would ever be able to get past his super dominant ones! :) We decided to skip the hospital this time and had her at home with a wonderful midwife. I had both Max and Emily natural and don't really enjoy staying in the hospital so it felt like a good decision for us. There have been a lot of really nice benefits to having her at home. I got to sleep in my own bed last night and was able to let Jane sleep as long as she wanted - no nurses came in to poke me and the baby every time I just fell asleep or to tell me I needed to feed a baby that had no desire to eat. Max and Emily spent the day at Jeff's sisters and came home last night. Max was so excited to see his new baby sister! He has spent all day looking at her, holding her, "helping" us with her and trying to get Jane to play with him. Emily's been a lot more indifferent about the new addition to our family. We got to have a big celebration breakfast this morning with the kids and I loved having them be more a part of welcoming Jane into our family.

We definitely feel very blessed that Jane is here and is healthy. I couldn't fall asleep last night because I kept thanking Heavenly Father for our new baby and all three of our beautiful children.