Interesting Phone Conversation

On Saturday my sister called me to see our mom owned the Janice Kapp Perry music book called Just One Little Light.  She was searching for one song in particular.  I was able to find it in the music collection and we got talking about what it would take to legally make copies of the song for my sister's purposes. The book was published in 1988, and it included a phone number to call if you were inquiring about making photocopies. I called it and a very tired old woman answered with a simple hello. I explained what I was calling about, thinking that the book was so old that this number could no longer be valid especially after the simple hello greeting; as opposed to an official business of sorts that would handle copyright issues. Anyway, after explaining what I was after, the tired sounding old lady said, "Well, this is Janice.  What you need to do is go to janicekapppery.com and click on photocopies".  I thanked her and then hung up.

So now the question is, did I really talk to Janice Kapp Perry?

Sorry Pam

In high school I had a good friend named Pam. Pam had the most beautiful extra long hair I've ever seen. Down past her bum kind of long. It was healthy, shiny, and super fantastic to look at on the random occasion that she would wear it down. All through high school my hair was short. Really short most of the time. I somehow talked Pam into cutting her hair with the condition that I would grown my hair out to a certain length. Pam went through with the hair cut (don't worry, she still left it plenty long) but I, however, have never managed to grow my hair out to that specified length we agreed on.

Giving a point of reference.

 The specified length would be to where my finger is pointing. I really thought I might get there this go around with growing out my hair. But, alas, my hair has been falling out at quite an alarming rate since Siri's birth and James was pretty insistent that I cut it before I go bald. (Only two more inches and I would have done it!)

Now I look like me again. I thought I might be sad to lose those few years of effort in growing out my hair, but not so! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, having short hair again!!!  Makes me wonder why I waited so long to cut it.

Sorry Pam. Maybe, one day.

New Technique

Lizzy's birthday is in a few days, but we are celebrating early. Of course I made her a cake, and I was excited to try something new!

James gives me a hard time because I can never smile normally for a picture.

The birthday girl's cake. 

 Ok, so the new (to me) technique I used is called a frozen butter cream transfer. If you'll refer to the picture below, you will have a better understanding of what I did.

I found a picture of mickey and minnie, printed it out and, put wax paper on top of it, then traced it out with frosting. That's it in a nutshell. If I could do it over again, I would only change one thing. I would make sure I taped down the wax paper super tight on all sides. You can see the waves in the frosting because my wax paper wasn't secured tightly. Oh well. Overall, I'm super pleased with this first time effort. 

On to the next cake.

I made this one for my nephew's cousin. I threw it together in literally a couple of hours from baking to finished. I've seen a lot of pictures of shirt cakes and I've been wanting to try one. There are a few extra things I could have done, but time was short.

Sorry I've been MIA for a while. We'll see if my attendance here improves.

Sweet Siri Monster

James likes to call her the Siri Monster. Nice term of endearment, no?

 Well, everybody says how hard three kids is.  I haven't really thought so, but my blog is showing signs of neglect since I've had #3, which must be proof that 3 is harder than 2.  But if this cute little munchkin is what's keeping me from doing other things, that is just fine with me.

 Clearly she is the center of attention around here.

 We blessed this cute little baby on September 4th. Siri is showing off her beautiful slip that my Mom went overboard sewing and embroidering.

 This is her actual blessing dress which is a miniature version of my wedding dress. I think my mom took a little too much pleasure in cutting up such an expensive gown. It turned out so pretty that I don't regret it for a second.

 Siri hit her two month "birthday" on September 6th.  I've been willing her to stay 1 week old, but it just isn't happening. She is staying smaller longer than my other two babies though. That's a plus for me!

 Logan and Lizzy were both thumb suckers, but I attributed it to the fact that I was stingy giving them a pacifier. (I have nothing against pacifiers other than they NEVER stay in the mouth, therefore I just didn't offer them a lot.) Anyway, Logan broke his thumb sucking habit fairly easily, but Lizzy can't be stopped. I determined to make Siri a pacifier baby, offering it even when she didn't want/need it. Well, guess what happened?

 She prefers her thumb anyway. See the rejected pacifier?  Yeah, she won't suck on them anymore. Gah. Oh well.

Isn't she the cutest? We think so. Really. We can't get enough of her.

Some quick facts about our 12 week old angel.

Turns out she has a slight allergy to milk. I'm hoping this goes away before she's a year old.

She weighed in at 10 lbs 15 oz at her 2 month appointment. That puts her in the 60% for weight. She is 75% in height and her head was 95%.

Siri takes 4 naps a day, eats 6 times and sleeps from 9:45PM until 7:15ishAM. The middle of the night feedings ended completely when she was 10 weeks old. Yay!

She is a pretty happy baby, but she lets us know when it's nap time. She starts to get fussy.

She happily lies on the ground observing everything around her. Don't hold her in your arms cradle style. She doesn't like that. But she is happy to be held over your shoulder.

She tolerates me and her sibling just fine, but she has a definite favorite person in the house and that is Daddy. She LOVES her daddy, and he loves her right back. It's really very sweet. I would be jealous, but how can I be?  Their bond is just too precious.

Hopefully I find the motivation to update more. I know you've all been missing my updates. ;)

Time Flies

I'm not sure I've ever gone so long with out a post. My brain feels like mush, but life has been wonderful for the last 6 weeks. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a big picture taker. The following pictures are nearly all of the pics I've taken in the last 6 weeks. 

3 weeks ago we drove to Idaho to show off Siri to James' side of the family. James took the kids on multiple 4-wheeler rides along with spending a day out on the boat. 

 This is Logan, Lizzy, James and our niece Taylor.

 James spent some time working in the greenhouse. He took Logan with him too. This is Logan, Dalton and Morgan, our nephews. Dalton just got his mission call to the Marshall Islands. Woohoo! We are SO excited for him!!!

 These are my three sweet angels. They don't always act so angelic, but we love them to pieces anyway.

 Siri is 6 weeks old this week. It's hard to get a cute picture of her, especially because she hasn't started smiling yet.

 Logan did Lizzy's hair for her one day. Do you think he did a good job?

 This little girl makes lots of funny faces.

Last week we said hello and then goodbye to our family visiting from Maryland. My sister and her family lives there, but Logan had a blast playing with his cousins for the week they were here.

So now you are pretty much up to snuff on what has happened in our lives for the past 6 weeks. People have been asking me how it has been to adjust to 3 kids, so I'll tell you what I think.

I've been tired. But I was tired before I had Siri, so what's new? Actually, I've been less tired lately, due to a sweet little girl that allows me to get some sleep. For the last week Siri has made it a habit to sleep anywhere from 6-8 hours at a time at night.  I realize some babies learn how to sleep through the night very fast, but I attribute her skills to applying the principles I learned from the book On Becoming Babywise. I've done it with all three kids and I am a TRUE believer.

Let me start this next paragraph by saying that I am a whiner. Everything seems hard to me, and I'm quick to complain about the easiest of tasks. However, the transition to child number 3 has probably been the easiest one. Logan was our first kid, and the hardest in my opinion. But I think that is just because I had NO clue what I was doing or what to expect. Lizzy would have/should have been the easiest to transition to. She was a perfect baby during the day but as soon as 10:00 PM hit she would cry. And cry. And cry. Until she was 12 weeks old. That's when she stopped crying and starting sleeping. Siri would have been an extremely difficult baby for me if she had been my first baby. Luckily, I really know what to expect this time, and I won't be thrown off by her curve balls. She had a very difficult time learning how to nurse, and we've dealt a lot with some major tummy gas issues, but we seem to be past that for the most part. I've never felt overwhelmed with having the three kids, and for that I am SO grateful. After the birth of the older two kids I felt completely and totally done having kids. No more, thank you very much. But, three has been easy enough that I am readily admitting to wanting more kids. (Just give us 1-2 years please.)

The main message I am trying to convey is that I feel SO blessed. Heavenly Father has held my hand through this transition and has made it very easy. Logan and Lizzy have made the adjustment well and without a doubt, James and I are closer and more in love with each other than ever before. It truly baffles my mind that you can love a person more and more the longer you spend with them. (Seems like you should get more and more tired of them.) There has never been another person in my life (besides my parents, but that's a given) who has loved me so thoroughly, given so much of themselves to ensure my happiness, and told me multiple times on a daily basis that they love me than James has and does. I am a lucky, lucky girl and my kids are lucky, lucky kids. I'm not sure there is a better daddy or husband out there.

Baby Siri is Here

We had Siri yesterday. Everything went really well, thank goodness. James was more nervous than I was the whole day. He just kept saying he would feel better after it was all over and he could see that we were both OK and healthy. 

When the doctor came in to break my water, he asked James if it would make him sick to watch. I laughed and said that James had delivered tons of cows, so this should be nothing. I think that impressed the doctor, so when it was time to deliver (just shy of 4 hours later), the doctor told James to put gloves on. James assumed he was wearing the gloves because the doctor would let him touch the head, or something similar, during delivery. He was surprised when the doctor took my leg and told James to stand in where the doctor was supposed to be. 

 The doctor supported my foot against his hip so that he was still hands free in case James needed some assistance delivering the baby. James did great, but was uncomfortable pulling on Siri's head per the doctor's instructions. The look on James' face was hilarious and I was laughing the whole time I was pushing. (Not easy to do at the same time.)

 I wish the pictures of James pulling Siri out were appropriate, but they're not. Oh well. James loved that he got to deliver the baby. It was much more than just catching her, he had to pull her head, turn her, push down, then pull up and then handed her to me! That was a very special experience for him and I think it endeared him to our doctor forever for letting him do it. :0)

 Our friend Carlee came to watch the birth. Luckily she agreed to come, because (despite charging the battery last week and checking it before we came) our camera battery was completely dead. Carlee took all the pictures with her camera, and she did a wonderful job of documenting the whole thing.

 With her swollen face, Siri looked very alienesque for the first couple of hours. I couldn't stop laughing at her; she looked SO funny to me. She kept making hilarious faces and contorting her face in the strangest ways. Maybe I'll do another post of the many faces of newborn Siri.

 That left eye of hers tend to give you the "What you looking at?" look.

I'm not really so surprised to see my baby. She had just yawned and I couldn't help but imitate it.

It's been a very calm and peaceful day since she's been born. We ABSOLUTELY love her to pieces. The kids do to. Lizzy just wanted to sit by her and pet her head over and over again. I'm just trying to enjoy the remaining hours of peace until I am in charge of all three kids.

Wow. I've got three kids...

Good Friends

Good friends are priceless, which is why it's weird that I really only like to have a couple of really close friends at a time. For some reason, I really struggle with large groups of friends. I like to have lots of general friends, you know, the people you can make polite conversation with whenever you see them, but I really just like a couple of really close friends. 

I feel well established in the close friendships that I do have. They know who they are. I just wanted to give a big thank you to all of you for all that you do for me. I always worry that I never contribute enough to my friendships...but...maybe I do. Because you are still my friends.

Buffy and Barlow

Random story, so I hope it translates well. Oh, and if you don't get the title of this post, watch TV and read a Stephen King novel.  (Salem's Lot in case you are really interested.)

A couple of nights ago, I was in our room, and James was somewhere else in the house. I decided to go work on an upcoming cake, and that required a dowel, which I knew was in my closet. So, I went to grab the dowel and discovered this broken one, with the sharp end. 

I grabbed the dowel and headed for the door. I opened it and was face to face with James who was just about to come in to hang something up using the two thumb tacks also in the above picture. However, he wasn't just holding the tacks in his hand; they were in either side of his mouth, looking like sharp vampire teeth.

We stood staring at each other in silence for a good 3-5 seconds before we both busted up laughing.

Just Wondering...

To preface this, I want to assure you all that I don't write this with an air of self righteousness. Just look at it this way. We all have pet peeves, right? Well, mine is being late.  I was lucky enough to marry a man who feels the same way I do about being on time. (Actually, at times I've wondered if it could be a bad thing, depending on the circumstances.) If I'm even a minute or two late somewhere, I will apologize. It's ingrained in me to be on time; anything less would be unacceptable to me.  But, I recognize that James and I are near anomalies  Almost everybody in this world is late, at least by a few minutes, (some 20-60 minutes) and it seems they think nothing of it.

So, my question is this. If I am going to somebody's house, and this somebody is notoriously late to EVERYTHING they go to, do they expect me to show up on time, or to be late? It's a real question. What are they expecting? If they are late to everything they go to, it seems only logical that they wouldn't expect me to show up on time to their house, right? Or am I wrong. I am genuinely curious. Any of you late type people have the answer for me?

Lost Self Identity

I just scrolled through the most recent pictures I've taken of Logan in the last few months. Let me share a few of them (ok, most of them; we don't take many pictures) with you.

Notice anything in common? Yep, that red cowboy hat.

One day I was at Wal-Mart, saw this hat for $5, and on a whim I bought it. My original thought was that both Logan and Lizzy would enjoy playing dress up with it. In fact Lizzy, wore it pretty much the whole day that day. Somehow, with out our noticing it, Logan started wearing this hat Every. Single. Day. There are very few moments that Logan does not have it on his head, and occasionally, in those moments, Lizzy will get her hands on it. This freaks Logan out to the extreme, and he'll rip it out of her hands, which of course is always followed by hysterical screaming from Lizzy.

One night, earlier this week, James was gone, it was bedtime, and my nerves were frayed. Logan had taken off his hat for the night, and of course, Lizzy got her hands on it. Reacting as he normally does, Logan quickly reclaimed what he thinks belongs to him. Lizzy's screaming was a little too much for my frayed nerves.  I confiscated the hat and told Logan that the hat does not belong to him, it belongs to me. As punishment for being mean to Lizzy, he was not allowed to wear the hat the next day. If I thought Lizzy was crying hysterically, I was wrong. Logan's crying trumped hers.  He tried to argue with me about wearing his hat, but I kept insisting that he would not be allowed to wear the hat the next day. As his last resort of an argument, he said, through snot and tears, "but Mom, if I don't wear my hat, I won't be me"!

Somehow Logan still managed to be himself the next day, but his hat wearing resumed without fail the day after.

Look! He's hatless!

Shnaziversary

8 years ago I married a very amazing man.

Really handsome too, isn't he?

We were officially engaged December 2002 and married April 30, 2003.

We finished up college together, and excitedly looked forward to the rest of our lives together. You can't tell, but in this picture I wanted to puke. (Pregnant with Logan.)

Being new parents didn't stop us from being our young and silly selves.

We moved a few times trying to find the right place to settle down.

We found a great home in West Jordan, and worked on expanding our family to include Lizzy.

Even with a moody little girl in our lives, we are still happy.

And we still act young and silly together whenever we can.

We took our first grown up vacation this last year and now look forward to baby number 3.

Some have asked us if the "seven year itch" got to us, but we can both give that a resounding no. Our seventh year was the best one yet.  I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be married to James. He's 100% invested in his family, so what's not to love?  Year 8 should be great!

The Joys of Pregnancy

I can think of a few. (Keep in mind, I don't enjoy all of these, so I'll put a star next to the ones that I do enjoy at one point or another during pregnancy.)

*Throwing up
*Stretch Marks
*Swollen Feet
*Swollen hands
*Swollen everything
*Eczema so bad you feel like your bones are itching
*Hemorrhoids
*Constipation
*Lack of sleep because you are SO uncomfortable
Broken ribs
*Husband comments on how you look like a beached whale (he meant this in love, and I was not offended)
*Back aches
*Out of control weight gain
"The Mask" of pregnancy
*Having to pee in a cup every 4 then 2, then 1 weeks, and missing the cup because your belly is SO big you can't see what you're doing
*Taking horse pills every day (aka prenatal supplements), and oh yeah, the iron one too because your baby is sucking all of that away from you
*Cavities because the baby wants your calcium too
*The indignity of maternity pants
*Pubis symphisis dysfunction (you don't know it, but it hurts)
*Walking like a penguin
*Averaging 3 trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night

I've missed some. I know it. Why the list you ask?  Because of the last one on the list. The trips to the bathroom. I was on my second trip (it was only 11:15 and I had turned off the light at 10:45) and I realized how BLESSED I am to have indoor plumbing. Seriously, I can't imagine having to hike out to the outhouse 5 times a night, in a foot of snow, just because this baby loves hanging out on my bladder. The thought was almost enough to get me out of bed a third time to give that porcelain thrown a kiss.

I resisted.

 8 months pregnant with Logan

 8 months pregnant with Lizzy

 6 months pregnant now

 Newborn Logan

Newborn Lizzy

And here's where I am longing to see a newborn picture of Siri. 3 more months.

This post may seem like just a long list of complaints, but I followed it up with the most precious pictures you can imagine. I wouldn't trade the gift of being pregnant with my own children for anything. My heart breaks for the way too many couples who are infertile. Despite the many "hardships" of pregnancy, it really is a wonderful, magical experience. My Heavenly Father has blessed me greatly.