Baby in the Home

How I love this new little baby. She's just perfect. She gets constantly smothered in kisses, and not just from mom. The girls dish them out too. She's quite a little roller now. She can roll both ways, but she goes a lot faster from her back to her front than the other, which makes her mad. She doesn't want to be stuck on her tummy, so if she's ready for a nap I can tell because she will quickly roll onto her tummy and be quite angry. She rolled over from her front to her back a little over a week ago with me coaxing her with a toy.

Here's my Brother, Matthew, with Rebecca.

Nathan thought he'd hit the same pose as Rebecca. The open mouthed smile.

I made Rebecca this little headband, but she wasn't exactly a cooperative model at the moment.

I adore babies in cute, little, pink, frilly dresses. The frillier the better. I love to dress the girls up in more "formal" dresses that I certainly couldn't get away with walking into church. :) That does bring a funny picture to mind. :P

I love this picture. She must think that the ribbons on her different dresses are tasty, because she is always bringing them to her mouth.

She really started studying her different toys last week. This rattle is her favorite. It's so easy to get ahold of.

She fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth. She regularly falls asleep on the floor. I feed her when she wakes up, play with her and then put her on the floor while I get something done. Did I mention that she is a really good baby? She is. And a lot of the time she just falls asleep right there. She wiggled mostly off of her blanket and she had her thumb in her mouth. Usually she tries fitting her whole fist in there.

The lighting wasn't good because it was dark outside, but she's even smiling for me before bed. I was putting her to bed and had to come back into the living room to get the boppy, this is when Nathan took the picture.

Playing with Daddy.

A Friend's Birthday Party

One of our friends had a party at a children's gym. The girls loved it.

Rebecca, watching the girls jump on the trampoline. Even she was getting excited.

This was the girls favorite part of the party. The zip line!

This is when the kids were going down the zip line. Meredith was so excited.

Emily loved her butterfly face, until she saw that Meredith got a crown. The face painting lady was nice to redo it for her. I just forgot to take a picture.

Emily buried in the ball pit.

Sweet Baby

I love this sweet face. I'm so blessed to be able to stay home with our girls. I tell Nathan that I think he gets the rough end of the stick. Then again, when I'm gone the house doesn't exactly run very smoothly, so I think Nathan appreciates what I do. And yes, being a SAHM is a hard job, but I love it.

Rebecca met Great-Grandma Stoddard for the first time General Conference weekend. Nathan was trying to take a picture, but she kept looking for me. So, I came over to make her smile. Another perk to the Mommy job, I get the smiles. :)

Birthday Party

Nathan's parents and my parents happened to come to Tucson on the same weekend, so we took advantage and had a Birthday party for Emily. She's turning 5! I don't know how that happened. But she is my big helper and eager to be an even bigger helper. Here's a few of the great big smiles I got from her. She was so excited. She got her beloved, pink scooter and is busy riding it outside right now. I was surprised by all the presents she got. I'm glad I only bought the one for her and one from Meredith for her. She is still talking about her 4th Birthday and carrying around what she got for it.

I've been teaching her how to vacuum. Which means her new job is to not only tidy our Living Room but vacuum it. It's wonderful because now I only have to vacuum about once a week. I let the girls make their own sandwiches now, so lunch is easy. She's also doing a better job at making her bed. And I just have to drop the perfectionism and let her do it. We also simplified the toy mess so that cleaning the room would be totally doable, and mom can still keep some sanity because all the toys don't get just thrown in any bin. Honestly, half the toys are in the garage. When they get bored I'll just bring in one of the bins. This being 5 is going to be great!

The Truth

For the morning session of General Conference on Sunday we went to the church building. I like to do that so it still feels like a Sunday and we don't just sit around in our jammies all day. While we were there Meredith tells Daddy that she has to go potty. Daddy wasn't born yesterday. He asks her, "are you sure? You're telling me the truth." Meredith emphatically says, "yes". So, off they go to the restroom where Meredith does not need to go.

Nathan says, "you lied to me. You need to tell me the truth."
Meredith answers, "the truth isn't good to me."

And there you have it. The truth is hard. At least she's honest about that. :)