My Kids

So with being a mom you are very forgetful, no matter how many kids you have! So I wanted to write these two stories down before I forget as I know there are a lot of stories I'm sure I've forgotten. So the other day we were at Silver Dollar City (another post with pictures to come soon) and we were walking around, A LOT! Cora was walking a lot that day without sitting in the stroller and she turns to me and says, "Mom I know what walking is." me: "what" Cora: "exercising" me: "You're right Cora, you are so smart!" Cora: (She turns to me holding up her fist that has her CTR ring on and says: "Choose the Right!" She is in this phase where she loves her CTR ring and thinks that everything she does that is good is because she is wearing the ring. And of course a couple of days ago apparently she had hit one of her siblings (I was at mutual, so this is through Nick) and he was talking to her about why she hit her sibling. He reminded her about her wearing her CTR ring and choosing the right and how hitting her siblings was not choosing the right. She responds to Nick with: "Well, I wasn't wearing my ring then!" She is quite the cookie! And Kayley the other day says to me, "Mom I think it's going to be Spring soon." I asked her why she knew that and she says, "Well I just know there will be flowers out and baby birds hatching out of eggs soon." I replied with a "you are exactly right and so smart!" She is learning about spring and things that hatch out of eggs in school. They even had scrambled eggs for her snack the other day at school and I asked her if they were baby bird eggs they were eating, she looked at me like I was crazy! So, is it me, or are my kids just the smartest!?!? Rex is also learning how to sort of wave, clap, and of course loves to give kisses now on command even. They are open kisses, but sweet as can be!!

Lil Kickers

So, I grew up doing sports. I did soccer when I was little, didn't like it so much. Then I did T-ball/Softball...it was just ok. Then I started doing basketball and volleyball and loved both of them. These were the sports I stuck with throughout my junior high and high school years. Our family had a 2 sport rule otherwise I think I would have tried to do track as well as I like to run. So, I've never been one to like cheerleading/cheerleaders (no offense to those reading this entry that was/are cheerleaders...it's just not for me!) So, I REALLY don't want my girls to be one and I want them to develop a love of sports as I did. Lately Kayley has been talking about how fast she is at school. She is in a class with all boys and one girl. She has really started to talk about loving their recess time lately. I guess they play Mario Kart and race each other. Kayley tells me that the boys can't ever catch her because she's so much faster than her. She has also started getting her play balls out and showed me how she can kick them with her knee or kick them outside, etc. So, I thought maybe we should try to get her involved in soccer and see if she's interested in the sport (because as most of you know, Kayley has never seemed to be the sport type.) The other day Sports City had an open house for their Lil Kickers program. We decided to try and take Kayley and Cora and see how it went. They had it divided into three age groups 18 months-2 1/2, 3-6 years, and 7-8 year olds. I was glad they would be in the same group however the groups were only divided by a 6 in tall net so there wasn't much separation. Cora just ate it up! She loved being able to run around and kick the ball, etc. Kayley had a hard time with it. She came over to me and started complaining about hitting her hand or something on the ball. I tried to be sympathetic but still wanted her to toughen up a little and still play. That's hard for Kayley as she is definitely a drama queen and very sensitive. Well as I was consoling her, the 7-8 year olds were down at their end trying to score a point and the ball came and hit Kayley in the back. That just set it off completely! Trying to cover my laughs (I know I'm a horrible parent, but come on, what are the odds!?!?) I tried to be silly and took a ball and tried to get her excited about kicking her ball and what happened, I hit her in the head with the ball! Again tried to console her and cover my histerics at this point, it seemed impossible at this point. Luckily their time was over and we could head over to the bounce houses. Kayley continued to fuss about the littlest things so I'm just hoping this incidence was because maybe she was too tired or hungry or something like that. At any rate, how do you toughen up a kid!?! If she doesn't want to do sports, I can handle that, it may just not be her nature, but I don't want her to be a woose? Oh well, I will try to praise her for her character that she does have! She really does have a lot of great qualities and they may just not be the same talents as me and that's the beauty of having children! They share a little bit of you and your spouse, but there is lots more great characteristics about them that you get to learn about! Overall it was a fun experience and maybe she will want to do something else later!

March Festivities

So, here it is March 31st and I've realized I haven't taken very many pictures this month, much less posted very much. So, here are the pictures that I did take and the fun things that we did do this month. Coming up at the end of April the Kansas City Temple will be doing a Temple Run. Nick and I are going to be running it, but so are a lot of our family and friends, so we will need to be running with our kids. I had to start somewhere to get Rex acclamated to running the jogger, so here is a pic of the kids before the first run of the season with them in the jogger. Let's just say it wasn't a long run...only a mile and Rex cried pretty much the whole time, but we made it. Since then I've ran the full 5K distance by myself quite a bit, but only once more with the jogger, only the single jogger and Rex. He still cried and I was still slow, but it's progress. I'm one up on Nick though as he hasn't run at all for the race, much less with any of the kids! But I am really looking forward to the race as we've been trying to get all the YW to do the race and most all of the leaders are doing it! I'm excited! Then our friend Kaelyn turned 5 this month! I can't believe our kids are getting so old! She had a Tangled party and the girls had a blast! Cora was so excited for the face painting and as you can see it was quite the face painting! Kayley doesn't like that kind of thing so she didn't get anything. But she loved playing with Kaelyn's new Tangled toys. Rex enjoyed playing with Anderson's toys. They are only 2 months apart and it's been so fun to get together with them every now and then and have our kids play!

A couple of days after the party the kids all got sick. Kaelyn was actually sick at the party and no one knew it so almost everyone there got sick. The kids had fevers and nasty coughs and a little bit of throw up all week. Nick and I even got it, but it was luckily a small bug and only Nick and Kayley threw up.

This picture below is from the same night after Kaelyn's party. We met Michelle & Kendall at Rib Crib for dinner. Rex was ready to eat him some ribs! Well, he didn't actually eat the ribs, but he did get to eat baked beans, which he LOVES now! It was cute!

This is a picture of him falling asleep for his nap. I never get to get a picture of his sweet face after he falls asleep, so I had to snap it. Luckily he didn't wake up! But I just love this sweet little boy and I can't believe he is already 9 months old!

Here is Rex playing with Einstein. He loves his Einstein! It's cute because he makes all this effort to crawl towards Einstein and then he reaches out to pet him and Einstein will let him for a little bit but then move away and Rex starts moving towards him all over again.

Then earlier last week Randy got to come into town from Utah for Brady's blessing. I sadly didn't get any pictures of the weekend but it was fun with all the cousins. On the way home from picking up Randy from the airport we stopped by the temple site. They had just put Moroni on top that day so we took a picture of Kayley in front of the temple (she's in the lower right corner)...it's not the best picture as it's from my phone. But when Kayley saw the temple with Moroni on top, she told me all that was left was for them to put in the grass and then it will be finished! I wish it was that soon Kayley, but it's getting closer for sure and we are so excited!! I'm sure the girls will miss our St. Louis trips though!

Other than this we haven't been up to much. I had my birthday last week which was fun! Nick got me breakfast in bed before work (well, he brought me my spoon and napkin to my yogurt that I had for breakfast...he leaves for work really early so he didn't want my yogurt to get warm!) Then the girls woke me up with my presents of a running shirt and some yummy snacks from Sams club. Then they wanted me to go downstairs to see my big present, but I waited till Nick got home, which he was able to get home for a half day that day. I got a new bedspread, but it was actually not the color I originally wanted (which Nick knew beforehand, but they were out of the color I wanted)...so instead we went shopping that night for some more workout clothes and then went to eat at 54th street. It was yummy and great just spending time with my little family!

Then yesterday Rex went to his 9 month appointment. He weighed in at 19lbs. 8oz...only putting him at the 33rd percentile. Is it just me, or does that seem wrong? If my girls were that weight at this age, they would have been at the 50-75th percentile...I guess boys are just that much bigger!!? Crazy! He is still growing like a weed. He's now crawling on his knees instead of his beached whale crawl where he would get up on his hands, move forward and then fall flat on his stomach to get forward. It was cute and I got it on video just in time before he stopped doing it. He also says "mama" and "dada" a little bit and he plays peek-a-boo. He still refuses to eat baby food so we are venturing in to eating table food now and he's doing fairly well, it's just hard to find him things he can eat well. We sure love our Rex though!

My Kids are growing up

Cora still likes to try to hold Rex just like he is a newborn baby. Sometimes he's ok with it and other times not. The times he is ok with it is very limited and short-lived as shown in this picture. It probably has to do with the fact that the boy is about the same size as her!
I wanted to get an updated picture of the three kids together. The girls love to be on the floor with Rex now that he is crawling, well army crawling. This picture shows their relationship almost perfectly right now. Kayley can't get enough of Rex and always crowds him. Cora loves him and he naturally flocks to her probably because he knows she doesn't get into his space as much as Kayley does. However frustrated he gets with Kayley getting in his space, he still loves her to death and loves to be around her and Cora as much as possible.

Kayley has been losing her teeth almost left and right now. It all started with that front tooth lost on Christmas Day, which as you can see by the picture is already almost all the way in now. She has also lost both bottom teeth. The other top one is loose and right after this picture was taken, I believe a day or two afterward I got a call from Kayley's school saying that she had knocked this loose top tooth out during recess. She told me she was playing Mario Kart with the boys in her class and she ran into a boy's shoulder in her class. She said she cried but not that much. I was really proud of her for handling it so well as she has been really emotional about losing her other teeth. It reminded me of when I was in 2nd grade and I chipped my adult tooth on the monkey bars. I just hope this doesn't mean that she will be chipping her adult teeth or worse knocking them all the way out! So she is really not trying to look mean in this picture she is just trying to show me all of her missing teeth.

Conversation with Cora

Cora lately has had this emphatuation with Cops (probably due to myself getting my first ticket on New Year's Day! I'm still fuming about it!) Anyway, she will often ask what cops do and she refers to getting arrested as getting "copped." So earlier tonight she asked me a question:

Cora: What do you have to do to get copped?
Me: Well, when you do wrong things sometimes the police will come and "cop" you.
Cora: Well, I'm never going to get copped because I have my CTR ring and I will always Chose The Right because I'm never going to lose my CTR ring!

I think I'm going to have to save this conversation for later in her life when maybe things change! But until then, I'm going to bask in my sweet Cora!!

St. Louis Trip

So about two weeks ago, this is what our poor little Rex was working on. Three new teeth coming in at the same time. Poor guy! If you look at one of his teeth coming in, it's a bit bloody...but you actually wouldn't tell he was teething except for the nasty boogies he had in his nose all week as he still slept amazingly well (still an average 8-9 hours a night and then once he wakes up, I nurse him and he goes back to sleep for another 2-3 hours) He is such a happy baby with everything, I just love it and love him!!
Also this last week we got to go to St. Louis for a little mini trip. It kind of got planned last minute as Nick was trying to get someone to cover his call for him and it wasn't covered until the day before we left, but either way it was fun. We went to the Temple before it closed for cleaning for a few weeks, which was nice and then got a hotel for the night to have a little party. The girls were SO excited for the pool. I think we seriously spent 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the pool/hot tub. Kayley and Cora actually got in the hot tub with me and Kayley decided that she now loves hot tubs! This was Rex's first time in his little floaty device and he seemed like he had a blast watching the girls play! He did splash a little bit in the water, but he was really tired!

As you can see from this picture as he's about to fall asleep sitting up...poor guy! But he stayed awake the whole time while the girls played and then slept great at the hotel! Then the next morning Nick was very sweet and got up and went to go get us McDonald's breakfast and brought it back for us to eat in the hotel room (the hotel sadly didn't have breakfast, which is one of my favorite things to do in a hotel, don't know why, but it is!) So I was REALLY appreciative that Nick went out and did that for us!

Then we went to a few stores in St. Louis and made our way home, but on the way we stopped in Columbia to see our newest nephew/cousin Brady. Cora was so excited to hold him. Kayley was excited to see him, but for some reason didn't want to hold him.

He's already very expressive!!

And he's SO tiny compared to chunky cousin, Rex! Quentin about broke his back picking him up! Rex just loved playing with Butters...he absolutely loves dogs! Butters was very cooperative letting Rex play with him too.

Then we started to head home, but decided to stop at Pizza Hut (because my husband loves me so much again!) as this is one of my favorite places to eat! (Don't worry, he got one of his favorite meals the night before with Chick-fil-a!) Kayley the night before got her tooth knocked looser a bit from Daddy once again! He was playing with them, holding them up and dancing, etc and I guess she hit her mouth on Daddy's leg, knocking one of her already loose teeth a bit looser. So as she's complaining/tired at Pizza Hut about not wanting to eat pizza for lunch, she says to me with a disgusted look on her face, "This pizza has peanuts in it!" Then tries to pull the 'peanut' out of her mouth only to find it's her tooth. She was again a bit upset as she doesn't like losing her teeth as it hinders her eating, etc (I can relate as I remember feeling this way as a kid), but the tooth fairy did come and give her $2, so she was excited to put that money away to save up for a toy!

Another funny thing Kayley said yesterday about Rex, "Mom he got cute from the cute factory in your belly!" She will also say things like, "Mom he's so cute I want to die!" And then she'll ask me, "Mom, when you look at him, doesn't it make you want to go to Heaven?" (spin off of her previous favorite thing to say about Rex making her want to die.)

Knickles, etc

So I'm sitting at the kitchen table tonight across from Cora. I had my hand shaped in a fist and my face was leaning on my fist. Cora says to me, "Mom I can see your knickles." I asked her to repeat what she said and she said "I can see your knickles." She meant my knuckles. She is so cute and so funny with her words sometimes! Today she was very much into telling me the things she could do when she gets older. Some highlights to her were as follows: jump on her bed, have a tv in her room, drive me around in my car (I even asked her how old she had to be to do this and she told me 16, I asked her how she knew that and she said Kayley told her!) She said some other things that aren't coming to mind right now, but she sure is funny!

We made Monkey bread tonight for FHE and Kayley was watching them in the oven as they baked and said, "Oh I see why this is called monkey bread, because the rolls look like monkeys when they get big like that." Then in the opening prayer of FHE she blessed the banana things in the oven (monkey bread).

Rex has officially started moving forward in his crawling. I found him tonight pulling himself forward in a type of army crawl. He only did it a few times, but it was cute! I also have to get a picture of how his teeth are coming in...his two front teeth look really cute! I'll hopefully get that tomorrow and post it! Four teeth and this boy still refuses to eat baby food! I guess he's just waiting for the rest of his teeth to come in so he can eat the real stuff!

The House That Built Me...and more....

So here is what our family has been up to the last month or so...

Cora got her first official haircut. A couple of months ago I tried to do her first haircut myself...didn't get any pictures of that time as I was busy trying to bathe three kids at once and trim her hair, it was probably a good thing as I did a horrible job! So thanks to my friend Jenn who does a great job at cutting hair she looks much better now with a cute short hair haircut. She loved it even though she was really scared to do it at first.
Then we have had all this snow in the last month..tons of snow days, which I'm not going to lie, have been nice! Kayley has liked them too, but I'm sure we'll say differently when our summer gets delayed making them up. Nick got out in the snow with them one night and helped them make a snowman and do some sledding on our makeshift sled/shovel. They had a blast and we even made a little slide from all the snow from the snow plow. They had a blast!

Then we headed for a massive trip filled with lots of fun times! We went first to Sikeston to stay the night with the Sanders. The girls had a blast with them, especially with Caroline and Julia. They also had fun finding out how much Andrew loves Toy Story....they didn't know someone loved it as much as they did till they played with him. Notice Jesse and Woody make it into almost all four of these pictures.

Then Saturday morning one of my best friends Jami came up from Memphis and we met at Bo's for breakfast with her husband so she could meet Rex. It was great catching up and I guess we didn't realize how much our husbands had in common! It was a fun catch up!

Then later in the day we went to go visit Aunt Tootie and Cousin Carrie. We took Einstein with us for this trip so he could meet Liberty and Carrie could see him. I think Einstein probably wished he could have stayed there as he was treated like royalty there! Aunt Tootie and Carrie had not met Rex yet, so it was great to get to see them and as always it was a great visit!

Then we got to go through the house I grew up in, which was very surreal! The people who live there now were good friends with my mom and dad and I used to babysit their kids when I was younger, so we knew them and they were more than willing to let us walk through their house, which I was VERY grateful for! Pretty much everything had changed cosmetically with the house, but it was still great to go through everywhere and put a place with the memories and stories I had told Nick and the girls. Throughout the whole time I felt like singing Miranda Lambert's song, "The House that Built Me." There were so many memories in that house and it was such a blessing to be able to relive all of them with my family now. The next day during church Kayley was drawing pictures of each part of my house and I was surprised at what she remembered. I had a picture of me when I lost my first tooth in front of my fireplace that I gave Kayley to comfort her when she lost her first tooth earlier this year. So I took the girls picture in front of the fireplace for them to have a picture of themselves in front of the same place.

Them together...

Then separate....Kayley wanted her own since she has lost her first tooth and now has a picture like mine.

Then the handprints by the pool. They aren't my handprints as I wasn't born yet or either was too small (don't know when the cement was laid for sure), but they are still there, very faded, but still under the slide. The girls handprints fit perfectly in some of the handprints.

Then we of course stopped by the graveside of Dad, Kathryn, Grandma and Grandpa...but it was freezing outside so I only got video of it and didn't get any pictures.

Then we headed to Farmington for the rest of the weekend to attend baby Lucy's blessing on Sunday. It was great fun to get together with all the family (minus Mary and Jessica and their families, whom we missed greatly!) There was lots of play time with all the cousins!

Playtime with Daddy! Rex just loves Daddy! It's cute because I know the girls loved Nick, but not nearly as much as Rex...he just adores him!

More fun with cousins. We got some of the babies together born this year, minus Emme (who was already asleep and Audryn, who wasn't there). Poor Ruby, Rex could not stop digging in her ears! Andrew below was so excited about his new boots and had to get a picture!

More fun with cousins...it seemed like the front room couch was the target for rough play! Someone was always underneath all the cushions with all the other kids on top...and everyone just loved it!

Then we celebrated Valentine's Day...Rex's first one! The girls woke up to their valentine treat from Daddy, Toy Story chocolates! They were so excited!! Kayley had a blast going to school that day for her Valentine's Day Party and brought home lots of treats and goodies and willingly shared with Cora.

Then we went to Toddler Town with Ashlyn, Preston, & Alexa. The kids had a blast playing with each other and it had been forever since they had seen Ashlyn & Preston too. Rex just loved the blocks, we could barely take him away from it!

Rex has a tooth!

So on this last Sunday during church I was trying to get Rex to sleep before Young Women started and I noticed that he had his first tooth...and not just poking through, completely cut through and somehow I missed it coming through! He hasn't been acting fussy or sleeping less or anything out of the ordinary. So I can only think that he is just a really good baby! And really he is. He is a great sleeper for both naptime and bedtime. All I have to do is wrap him up, and cuddle with him for a bit and then even when he's awake, I'll lay him down and he'll put himself to sleep. Now he does get a bit fussy during the cuddle/rocking time, but I'll take that if he still puts himself to sleep. He rarely wakes up in the night now, so he sleeps a good solid 8-9 hours a night. He's almost always happy, although he is just starting to get a little separation anxiety from me, but I think some of that might have to stem from him possibly cutting his second tooth? I don't know.

He is going to be 7 months in less than a week and I can't believe he is already this big and old. He is eating almost all vegetables now in solids and is doing farely well with them. I have a feeling though that he will really like his fruits when we start those. I started giving him a little bit of water the other day in his sippie and he thought that was pretty fun! He's rolling all over the place and sitting up very well. While on his tummy he'll lift himself up on his arms and then move around in a circle on his belly while trying to reach for toys, sometimes even scooting himself backwards. I'm sure it will only be a matter of time that he'll be crawling! Where has my little baby gone?!?! One of his favorite things to do now is to watch Einstein. Einstein's way of playing is to run back and forth in the same path and Rex just giggles away watching him. I'll also take Rex and act like we are getting Einstein and it just gets him rolling. I'm going to try to get it on video soon and I'll have to upload it for all to see.

He got his 6 month pictures taken the other day and he did GREAT! It was a struggle to get his hand out of his mouth...probably due to his tooth coming in that I had no idea was there! But I think it makes the picture extra cute with his hand there. He's still so chunky to me...but I love it! He really is a very happy baby and I couldn't have asked for a better baby. I was hesitant with having a third baby, but if I had known for sure that the third one would have been like him, I wouldn't have been scared at all. We really have been blessed with such wonderful children, they really are all three good kids now and were/are all good babies too. I feel very blessed and would be lost without them.

My Little Man

I can't get over the fact that Rex is already 6 1/2 months old. Time has just flown by WAY too quickly! He is now eating green beans, a little begrudgingly I might add and still rice cereal. He's rolling around everywhere and when on his stomach he pushes himself up and moves himself around by his hands. I've seen him try to get his legs up in the crawling postion, but he hasn't gotten them there yet. He can now sit up without assistance for a little bit at a time...it took him a while to accomplish this, probably because of how big he is!! At his 6 month appointment he weighed 17 lbs 11 oz...which was about 3 weeks ago. So he probably weighs more now. He is such a sweet baby, very content and happy almost all the time, unless he's hungry or tired. He's a great sleeper, sleeping 8 to 9 hours a night on average and a great napper too. He loves watching Einstein and the girls play...he could watch them for hours.

And here he is in his cutest outfit ever (in my opinion!) He looks just like a little man, so handsome! This was the first Sunday a couple weeks ago that I had him wear this shirt/tie combo...it's actually a 12 month, so it's a good thing I pulled it out, I'm afraid if I had waited until he was 12 months old he would have been too big. As I was getting him dressed he had his shirt on without his tie and Kayley said (without knowing there was a tie), "Mom if he had a tie on with this shirt he would look so cute"...then I put on his tie and she was very pleased and couldn't stop talking about how cute he was all day. Well, you tell me, isn't he just the cutest!?!?!
More cuteness....

Cora had to get in on the cuteness. She's even cute with her candy cane in her mouth.

And I just can't get enough of Rex's blue eyes. This picture doesn't do the moment justice. He was looking out the window while we were eating and they were just so blue.