Milestones in bedtimes

 

Ruth is an angel of a baby. She is such a sweet girl and I know I say that a lot but it is just the truth!!! Since she started cutting teeth she has developed a habit of getting up in the night. In fact she has been getting up 3-5 times in the night. Often just long enough to get mommy up, latch on to nurse and fall asleep again. So really just a comfort messure that has turned into a habit. So now she is almost 7 months old, she has slept 7-8 hours before and I knew she was not hungry just wanting a tiny snuggle in the night and back to sleep. This is not a great condition for mommy. She does sleep in our room in a bassenet which is great when the nursary is upstairs and I have a brand new baby. But it was feeling like it was time for her to move to the crib upstairs (yes we have a really good baby monitor). So Monday night she made the move to her crib up stairs... or I made it for her. She had napped there a few times and seemed to really like the comfy bed and LOVE the music box. Monday night wasn't as bad as I thought it would be she would go right back to sleep with her music box on, and the next night even better, last night she slept 9 hours!!! I can hardly believe myself. Now we are on nap 2 for the day and all she did was start to get a little fussy after she had nursed so I took her up laid her down and turned on the music box and she just cooed and held on to her toes, 5 minutes later I came up to take this picture. I just love that she is so sweet and so easy to please! I love to rock my babies to sleep and have charished doing it for all of them. But apperently Ruth is done (unless at church). She loves to nurse get drowsy then put me in bed. I just love this angel!

Roll over

 

 

 

 

I think I mentioned that Ruth was rolling over in my previous post but I thought I would put some pictures on here for some proof. She is still such a peanut but the sweetest little peanut around. Everyone just loves this little doll! I feel like I am not blogging half of what is going on in our life right now because we are so so busy but I am trying to cover some of the milestones. Other things not pictured yet are Ethan is in baseball. That takes up 3 days a week (sometimes 4 if he has a Monday game). He has the same coach he had last year which we are happy about. He is really great, works with Ethan well, and he teaches him a lot! They won their fist game which was Saturday. They won 10-6. It was all very exciting. But I didn't take any pictures. He had one hit, and got hit by the ball once. He also got to run in to home once. His second game is tonight.
The girls are both in gymnastics. Tomorrow is their last day for this session but I signed them up for one more month of it because it was so much fun! Amelia is getting closer to doing a cartwheel and Hayden can now do somersaults all by her self clear across the mats!
Ruth cut her 1st top tooth making the total to 3 teeth. The second top one isn't to far behind. Probably in the next week that one should be through.
Brock is turning 8 next month and is getting very excited to start cub scouts, and be baptized. Which won't be until June since we have Stake baptisms here. He was invited to go to scouts today because they are starting to build bird houses and they wanted him to get to pass that off with the rest of the boys. It was so cute when I told him this morning that he was getting to go. He got all puffed up, and excited to go and Ethan went and kind of patted him on the back like "way to go, or welcome to the club." It was so cute!
Last week the Youth had their annual lip sync for mutual and the ward comes and watches. It was so much fun. The leaders got to do one also. It was a lot of fun. I had someone video it for me but I am having a hard time getting video loaded on to my blog lately... I think the files are to big. So You probably won't see any of it on here... but trust me it was pretty fun. I never new that a song about toast could be so funny!
Our chore charts are working pretty good.... we are having the typical things that happen anytime a parent puts their foot down to bad behavior and having some of the rebel ion, but I am certain that as we keep at it things will work out. Amelia has earned her first date night and went to Cold stone with Larry Saturday, and went to get her scrapbook. She was so giddy to spend the afternoon with daddy! This has inspired Hayden who does totally understand the program because she can tell me how it works, she just often chooses not to do her jobs... we are getting there with her. The boys are doing well at earning their tickets.... now we are working on keeping them long enough to redeem them. But I don't want to dog on them to hard on here. But as a few of my friends can testify, there are days that are rough and this is the whole reason I wanted to do this. I don't want to go into to much detail as to not embarrass my child, but we had a day last week that is in the top of probably 5 days of the worst day ever of parenting/kids behavior I can remember! Let's just say I couldn't name the other 5 right now either right now unless I thought really really hard. Maybe because this one is so fresh and it was so public. But I had the battle of all battles with my child in a very public way while my girls were in gymnastics, so I felt like I couldn't just pack him up and leave. Now I know better. But it did come down to this kid getting bread, and milk for dinner, and then going to bed at 6:00 in the evening because he had exhausted ALL other options! There comes a time where you just don't know what else to take away, or what to do to a child who acts so outrageouse! All I can say is things are getting better and he is getting the idea.... Although I am told that I hate him and wish he hadn't been born. So then we have long talks about how that isn't true and that I do love him and he has to be responsible for his actions.... Anyway we are working it out and things will get better.

Funny Hayden!

Hayden has always cracked me up. So many times lately I have wished I could just freeze her at this stage because she is so sweet and funny, not to say she doesn't have her difficult moments either but her funny out weighs the naughty! Anyway we were listening to some "up beat" primary songs in the car while I was working on picking a song for the lip sync and it would come on and Hayden would say, "mom this song makes me happy!" Then "The Itsy Bitsy Spider came on and I was singing along and she would scream "AHHH stop singing I hate spiders!" I kept laughing and later she told me, "Mom I like frogs (only said ogs) and snakes (naks) but I don't like spiders (iders) they are scary!" I am telling you she cracks me up!
Some days she doesn't want to do her chores on her chart and she will just choose not to (which also means no tv, no computer....) then If I get down to her level and tell her Hayden I really want you to do your jobs so that you can earn a ticket. If you have a ticket then you can do fun things. She says "OK" and runs off all excited, "I am going to do my jobs!" If only 10 year olds would get that excited that easy... were getting there. Today was better....
Oh and Ruth had her 6 month check up today! She got 3 shots, poor baby! She weighed in at a whopping 12 lbs 7 oz, putting her in the 1% of her age, and is now 23 inches long putting her in the 0% of her age. We call her peanut, any wonder why. She is growing every time and is perfectly healthy but if you look at her mommy you won't wonder why she is so little. We love her to pieces!!!

Big sister

 

Ruth LOVES her big sister. When she sees Amelia coming to her she just lights up. She does what I call the full body smile, she smiles so big she wiggles. It is so sweet to see this bond that they have! Amelia loves to talk to her sing to her, carry her around, entertain her, read to her... Last night as I was making dinner Ruth was getting a bit fussy and I sent Amelia to hold her. This made Ruth very happy. Amelia sat rocking her and sining to her, when I came to get Amelia so she could have dinner this is what I found. A sweet 6 year old sister who had rocked her baby sister to sleep. I have to admit it brought a few tears to my eyes at the sweetness of it all, I had to capture it on film so I wouldn't forget!

Oh and don't worry about the angle of Ruth's head, she LIKES it like that! In fact she will force it to be like that even in her bed at night!

Birds Nest

Last year we had some birds build a nest in the roof of our sand box. They even hatched eggs there. This spring Larry or Ethan (not sure which one first) got the nest out. We were surprised to see one of the hatched eggs and one that never hatched still in it. It was quiet the find. Our kids were really excited about it. We could see all the cool stuff they used to make there nest (including lots of white hair courtesy of our white rabbit I am sure!) Ethan was thrilled because his class is studying birds and has gone on bird watching field trips. I got a large sour cream container, washed it out and sent it to school with him. It is quit the hit with his class and teacher!

 

 

Easter

Ethan really just wanted to eat all the eggs and not color them but we made him wait till after the Easter Bunny came Saturday morning!

I wrote a secret message to each of the kids on an egg with a white crayon, then I would have them die it so they could read it. It was pretty funny. Amelia liked coloring on them and making them spotted it was pretty cute.

Coloring eggs is one of Brock's favorites! He is such a creative, artistic kid it really isn't a surprise that it is.

The Easter Bunny brought our kids stuff in laundry baskets this year. He must have known that we were desperate for new ones. My kids have broken up all the old ones playing in them.... so now they each have their very own brand new laundry basket! They were pretty happy about it so was Mommy!

This is Hayden's heaven. She LOVES chocolate!

Ruth started getting rice cereal the past couple days. She is alright with it but doesn't act like she loves or hates it. But she acts like she wants to be part of the dinner experiance so we are giving it a try. I love her 1st Easter bib! Oh she also rolled over yesterday for the first time. I kept making her do it to see if it was a fluke but she did it over and over, so she won't stay on her tummy anymore for "tummy time."

Accountable Kids

So earlier in March I ordered these Accountable kids boards and the book that came with it! I was really excited about it because for months I had been trying to come up with some way of doing a chore chart that would have tags that they would move from to do to done, and I was having a rough time trying to figure out how to put my idea into action and have it be something that would hold up... then I got a message from a friend on face book that she was ordering these and we could get a group discount if we had enough orders. I was in a took her the check that day! This was the idea I was trying to do and couldn't get it together! LOVE it!!! So on top of it there is a book that teaches how to use the program. It is not only a chore chart it is a whole program with rewards, and discipline. I love the program and know this will work really well with my kids, they will all want different kinds of rewards which is fine because that is how it works, you make it fit the kids by knowing what is important to them! We have only been at it for 4 days and I can tell this is catching very quick for Hayden, she is more willing to do things because if she doesn't she can't watch Dora (her favorite thing to turn tickets in for!) Amelia is such a sweet girl that is mostly agreeable that I hardly ever had a hard time getting her to do things anyway but now she is seeing the rewards for her good behavior very clearly, not to be to mean to my boys but her good behavior is going to show them the rewards of good behavior too and hopefully they will quickly come to realize that they can have these fun things too. They both do their jobs (Ethan very quickly and hardly ever needs to be reminded either!) But he often looses tickets for negative behavior. I love this program because it is going to help me teach away those behaviors and with out a screaming match. He might still get mad and yell but I feel empowered and don't need to get mad, it is clear cut do this get that do this and loose that! I think he will catch it very very quickly. Last night was much much better already at bed time, but this morning was rough... so I think we will get there soon! Anyway I am loving the program and even bought a board for Ruth so that when she is big she can "get with the program!"
We got to decorate our boards and I got to try out cutting vinyl with my Cricut for the first time. It was lots of fun. I let each of the kids pick 2 things to have on their board other then their name. Well technically Hayden didn't choose hers because I did hers while she was napping. I knew she would love what ever I chose and I knew if I let her choose it would be a battle so I just did it to keep things simple. She loves purple so I did her name in purple and put cute pink butterflies on there. She loved it!

Amelia stuck with princess crowns for her decorations. Which was nice, and easy. turned out cute too!

Brock did dinosaurs OF COURSE! He lives and breathes for Dino's. His was the hardest to do because he has very very clear ideas on how he wants things to be! But we made it simple and got the job done!

Ethan choose sports stuff for his. He had fun decorating and choosing stuff for his board.