What a week!

We put all caution to the wind this week and attempted two life changing events and they both worked!

First we stopped putting a night diaper on Scott. I always said I would not night train him until I had my own washer and dryer. Once I got my washer and dryer and I had no choice, I had to do it and it has gone fairly smooth. HURRAY!

The second is we moved Simon from our room to the kids room. So far Simon doesn't seem bothered by Iris's talking and odd sounds she makes as she falls asleep. Scott is fairly quiet at night and always has been. Sometimes I think Iris is extra loud on purpose, just to see if she can wake Simon up! She is such a stinker!

I have pictures to post, but since we moved I don't know where the cord is that I use to download them from the camera to the computer. So until I find it, there will only be words with no pictures.

Cute Stories:

Since Simon now naps in the kid's room I let Iris take her nap on our bed. I ask her if she wants to sleep on Mommy's bed and she will say "no" then I will ask her if she wants to sleep on Daddy's bed and she says "yes" and jumps over to his side of the bed. This makes Daddy feel very important and loved.

One of Scott's favorite things to do when I play outside with him is to have running races. He tells me where to stand and then he says "ready set GO" and then I follow him around a random path he chooses as the racing path. The great thing about it is he takes off on the "ready" part of "ready set GO" and expects me to wait until "GO".

Simon has started to smile and he especially loves to smile at Scott. Simon usually gets a look of fear when Iris comes close. Iris has good intentions but she just doesn't know her own strength!

Simon Louis is two weeks and one day old today. I am not going to say time has flown by because it hasn't . The newborn stage is absolutely the hardest stage for me, though this one is going better than the first two. I would like to attribute it to my abilities as a mother but most likely I am just lucky and got an easy baby (finally). Mom tells me that Billi (her third) was the perfect baby and she thought she had this mothering thing all figured out and then I came along and proved her wrong! I guess that is the way life goes.

It seems surreal to me that I have three children. I am not sure how I am going to function with more children than I have hands to hold onto.

The back seat of our Camry is crammed with three car seats. At first Simon was in the middle but Iris loves to tear the canopy off his car seat and that is too much for Scott to handle so I switched the car seats. Now Scott and Iris get to sit next to each other and fight! I did though walk to the grocery store today with Scott and Iris in the double stroller and Simon in the babybjorn. Both Scott and Iris were exceptional good and Simon slept the whole way, I couldn't ask for better.

Life goes on and I keep reminding myself that the only thing constant about life is change so I might as well embrace it.

A Fun October

First I must complain. I got the stomach bug five days ago and I am still not better. I couldn't keep down anything but water for two days and now if I eat anything but oatmeal my stomach feels uncomfortable and I get terrible indigestion. I feel totally exhausted and I have gone to bed every night thinking "tomorrow I am going to be all better", but I have yet to feel "all better".

Half of October was spent in Nevada with my family. Everyone in St. Louis tells me I missed two weeks of straight rain and boy am I grateful. The weather in Nevada was beautiful. We played outside every day. Grandpa bought the grandkids two large Tonka trucks and an all-terrain tricycle. Scott and Iris had fun racing the trucks up and down the driveway and filling them with gravel. If we weren't playing outside then we were watching SpongeBob inside! We had lots and lots of fun and wish Nevada wasn't so far away!

According to Scott, this gravel pile is about 20ft high! It is really more like 4ft high, but things seem a lot bigger when you are three.

This year for Halloween Iris was a ladybug (again) and Scott was a black Spiderman, thanks to a last minute loan from our friend April. I was going to have them both wear the same costumes as last year (Iris a ladybug and Scott a skeleton), and save some time and money. So on Halloween morning after telling Scott "Happy Halloween" he said "I want to be Spiderman!", I tried to convince him otherwise, but he insisted that he must be Spiderman. I quickly called April, who has three boys and asked her if she had any Spiderman costumes she wasn't going to use. Thank goodness she did and it saved our Halloween!

This is Spiderman Scott and his good friend butterfly Afton.

Halloween was strictly business for Scott. He would run up to a house, get candy and then take off to the next house, while we trailed along with Iris.

This is ladybug Iris (She didn't really like the idea of halloween until at the first house she got candy. She cried until we let her eat a piece!)

Another Baby

It's a boy!!

I had a feeling this was going to be a boy from the beginning. Though I was also sure Scott was going to be a girl and Iris was going to be a boy. One would think that as a pregnant mother your instincts would tell you if you were having a boy or girl, but this very often is not the case.

Jeff is in charge of naming this baby, as long as I also like the name.

I won't bother posting the ultrasound pictures, because all ultrasound pictures look the same to me. So if you've seen one, then you've seen them all. Now I start the countdown for the next 142 days!

Fun Stories

So much has happened since I last wrote that I wouldn’t even try to cover all of it. My favorite is to blog cute stories so here are a couple since I last wrote.




First the poop story! We were eating dinner, Jeff was gone so it was just the kids and me. Iris was in her high chair and she started to wiggle around and say “poop poop” so I got her down and told her to go run and play and I guess get her poop out. Scott then piped in and said, “she should use the potty!”. This didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time and so I took her diaper off and sat her on the little potty. I could tell she was trying to do something, but she kept standing up and then sitting down. Scott came in shortly after and I stopped paying attention to Iris for a moment. In the short moment she stood up and pooped next to the potty not in the potty and then stepped in it. I cleaned her feet and asked Scott to get me the wipes. Scott, like the good obedient boy he is, went and got the wipes and brought them in the bathroom where on the way out he also stepped in the poop. I put him in the tub and asked him to stay there until I could get all the other messes cleaned up and then I would clean him. While he waited he spread the poop that was on his foot all over the tub. Luckily none of the poop ever left the bathroom and for that I am grateful.

We have been trying to make up stories to tell Scott and Iris at night. We are horrible at it, but they don’t know the difference. Today in the car he was talking to Iris and he said “I am going to tell you a story about a train and a dog” and then he proceeded to tell a story to Iris. It was so adorable.

At our house if you are grouchy then two things are wrong, either you are hungry, tired or a combination of both. So when I tell Scott I am going to take a little nap while he watches cartoons he always asks me “Are you grouchy Mom?”



Lately Iris has been trying really hard to mimic what her big brother is doing. She will try to sit the same way he does and play the same way he does. She just learned how to stack duplo blocks and she loves just to sit there and stack blocks just like her big brother. She is also picking up his bad habits. Scott has started to wipe his mouth on the inside of this shirt. He did this today and Iris saw, she then grabbed her dress and started wiping her mouth with her dress!

This is another bad habit Iris has "picked" up from Scott!

It's Summer Time

I kept telling myself and Jeff that as soon as we got fast Internet that I would blog and keep it touch with every one so much better than when we had dial-up. Well I can’t blame having a slow Internet connection for my laziness any more.

We are getting close to Scott’s birthday. Time has gone by so fast and it seemed to go double fast forward after Iris was born.

Scott I call my cautious child. He won’t go anywhere near a street with out holding my hand and if I forget to hold his hand he screams at me until I remember. He is also very cautious on the playground, it took him until the age of two to go down the slide by himself and about the same age to cross the sagging bridge on the little playground. Iris is not cautious, I don’t know if it is her age or her personality, only time will tell. Since she walked early (11 month) her first slide experience was not with my help but by herself walking down the slide. Luckily I caught her before it became a real accident. A few minutes later, to my surprise, she had climbed up the steps again and was going to walk down the slide again. A short time later she learned not to walk down the slide but to go on her belly face first. She has finally learned to sit on her bottom and go down the slide, but every once in awhile she goes head first just to mix it up. She does the same thing with steps, she walks down them and falls, and even though I tell her and show her to sit on her bottom and go down them she continues to just step off them and fall. Oh and Iris would love to walk in the middle of street if we let her.



Scott loves to force his cautious nature onto Iris. If Scott sees Iris come near a step that he knows she should go down or any other dangerous situation (going outside while the lawn mower is mowing the grass is included as dangerous), he starts to scream “NO IRIS” and runs over and grabs her usually around the head or neck and ultimately pushes her down and she always ends up crying. I am still trying to figure out if I praise him for trying to protect his sister or send him to time out for pushing her over.



A good friend from college came to visit me this last week. She was in my ward and lived across the hall from me when I was in the first floor of the dorms. She came for about five days and we were busy the whole time. We went to see the sites in Nauvoo for the weekend and also to run a race in Quincy, IL. I had so much fun having her visit.



Scott has started do imaginative play a lot. He sits at the dinner table while I am cooking dinner and grabs a couple of utensils and pretends. I always try to listen but not let him notice that I am listening. He is also become a thinker. Lately I have caught him sitting still, usually wrapped up in his blanket, thinking. When I find him like this I usually smile and ask him what he is thinking about. So far he has responded with trains, the Mississippi, and “I want mommy to be a princess”. “Trains” is the usual reply and the “I want mommy to be a princess” has only happened once, after he told me that I “dressed up” by tying his favorite blanket around my waste and we danced.

In the morning Jeff usually stays just to wake the kids and eat part of breakfast with them before he takes off for work. Yesterday he helped Scott get breakfast and I helped Iris. I asked Iris to say Mama, and instead she said Dada. I asked her a couple more times and she would say Dada instead of Mama, so then I asked her to say Mommy and she replied by saying Daddy. What a little stinker!




It is summer time. The pool has official opened. We went on Monday in between rain clouds and we all got in and swam in the cold pool water. Scott is now a swimmer, of course with three different floatation devices holding him up. Iris loved the water. I was sure she would be scared of the pool just like Scott was at that age, but she didn’t even let out a cry when we put her in the cold water.

This is a current post

This picture was taken in the morning just after Iris woke up. She had an eye infection so her one eye was sealed shut with gunk. This didn't bother her at all and I thought it was funny to see her so excited but only able to open one eye. She is all better now.





Iris is walking. At the beginning of the week she could take two steps and then fall and with every day she takes one more. I can’t get over how adorable she is, and she has Jeff wrapped around her finger. He is a sucker for his little girl.

Iris’s first word was “HI”, which she will say to you over the phone and her next word was “Dada”. Jeff was about to leave for work the other morning, but I convinced him to come with me and wake up the kids. Iris was already standing up in her crib looking at the door when we came in. I went in first, so she saw me first and then once I was through the door Dad stepped in behind me to go and pick her up. She got very excited and said “Dada”. That made Jeff’s day, he loved it. One of Scott’s first words was “Dada” too. I have to agree with them, he is a pretty awesome Dada.

It has started to warm up a little and we have enjoyed every second of it. There is a little park not far from our house that I will run to with the stroller and let the kids play, even Iris is starting to enjoy the playground, she is fearless about going down the slide. Scott loves to pretend he is a scary dinosaur and chase Iris and me around the playground.

Scott has also been really into blenders lately. Yes, blenders. His favorite meal is Danish Hot Cakes (aka crepes with butter and sugar), which Jeff makes. To mix all the ingredients well Jeff puts it in the blender. The blender also makes a loud sound that Scott used to be afraid of but has conquered his fear of and loves. Scott can turn almost anything in the house into a “blender” (the upside down stool is one of his favorites). Things that are put into the “blender” consequently become “Danish Hot Cakes” (blankie Danish Hot Cakes is the favorite). In the picture above you can see that even Pooh Bear has not escaped the “blender” and was for the moment a “Pooh Bear Danish Hot Cake”. He had me try some, it was very tasty. ☺

My Dad just sent me a book of photographs of Nevada. I love it. It makes me very homesick. I love the mountains and wide-open spaces, to truly be able to see for miles in any direction, for a person that loves the city that must be a scary thought but for me it feels reassuring. I especially love the Nevada sunsets. I can remember playing outside when the sun would set and just stare at it. I even tried one time to draw it with chalk on the driveway. I remember I had to use almost every color of chalk I had to get the colors just right.

What I should have posted two weeks ago

I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago, but got busy and forgot.

I have had three exciting new things happen in the last couple of weeks. They are in no order of importance, all three are important.

I received my diploma in the mail this last weekend. This makes it official. I applied for graduation and never heard anything back, not even some kind of confirmation or congratulation email from the college. I was worried that I might need a few more credits, but I don’t and I am done! HURRAY!

I also received new glasses in the mail the same day I got my diploma. My glasses broke two weeks ago and I ordered some new rimless ones. I ordered my glass online; they are a lot cheaper that way. I ordered them through goggles4u.com for $60 with shipping. Glasses, because of my strong prescription, would cost at the minimum $400 if I were to go to a regular eyeglass shop. I think I like the pair I got. I would like to order one more pair so I could switch between the two. I highly recommend goggles4u.com they did an excellent job and they have the best prices.

Last but not least, I got some new hair. Yes, new hair, not a new hair-do, but new hair. Jeff likes it and I think it is fun. I wore it to the Valentines dance and to Church the next day. I got a lot of compliments on it. I think I might invest in a couple of different styles.

I think that it is important to post picture of all three of these events, but I don’t have any pictures of them. As soon as I get them I will post them.

Christmas Pictures

Christmas

For Christmas we were with Jeff’s family. Brian and Stacy were also there and we got a call from Jeff’s brother who is on a mission on Christmas Day. Scott and Iris had lots of fun playing with the train and running around the house. I love having so much help with the kids, it makes it hard to come home and be alone with them when Jeff is at work or church.

Brian dressed up like Santa this year and Scott loved it. We haven’t really ever told him about Santa, but he has figured it out somehow. I am pretty sure he doesn’t understands it, other than Santa wears red and has a white beard and looks oddly like Uncle Brian! Scott was a little upset when Santa left on Christmas Eve and didn’t let him open the rest of the presents under the tree. We did open them the next morning and Scott loved it and Iris loved eating the ribbon.

I was able to talk to my family a lot even though I wasn’t with them. We got wonderfully fun gifts for Scott, Iris, and for us. I will post pictures of them.

Scott got a singing “O little Town of Bethlehem” book for Christmas a couple of years ago from Great Grandpa Anderson. The book plays the song and has a story to read, at the end of the book the words to the first verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” are printed. I have often thought about the phrase “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”. With these words the Lord helped me to appreciate why we celebrate his birth. I went to the temple with my good friend the day before we left for Ohio. As I was waiting for my friend I put a few names on the prayer roll and then stood back next to the wall, still in view of the notepad that is used for the prayer roll. Almost everyone that past by stopped at the prayer roll and put a few names on it. As I was in the temple session the phrase “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” kept repeating through my head. I began to think of the many hopes and fears I have for me, for my family, and for my friends, some of whom I had written on the prayer roll. I thought of how I saw many others stop and write on the pray roll those they had hopes and fears for. Jesus came into the world to atone and take upon himself all my hopes and fears, for surely I would nothing without him, but not only for my hopes and fears but all the hopes and fears of all that live, have lived and will yet live on the earth. Jesus was born into this earth as the prophets have testified and lived a perfect life and then gave his life as the great and last sacrifice; he did this because he loves mankind because he desires to take upon him the hopes and fears of all people if they will only accept him.

I will post pictures soon.

Getting Ready for Christmas

I am finished! I turned in my last report this past week, which means I have finished my last class for my degree in Chemistry. What a wonderful feeling it is. For celebration we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Jeff and I both like Chinese food and we knew that Scott would eat it also. Scott loves Chinese dumplings.

We are getting ready for Christmas. This year we are going to Ohio. I have sent all the presents to my family already, it feels good to almost be done with the gift giving part. Scott and Iris got to be part of a cousin gift exchange for my side of the family, they have no cousins on Jeff’s side of the family (we are waiting for Brian and Stacy to have a couple). He was so excited when I told him we could go to Target and pick out a toy for cousin Danielle and Christian. Iris was just happy to be along for the ride.

This last week Iris has decided that she can stay up as late as Scott does. Before this week Iris would go to bed at 7pm and then we would put Scott to bed at 8 or 8:30. Scott would then stay up and play in his bed until 10pm (he reads books and talks to himself). Iris would always sleep through Scott’s loud noises, up until last week. I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t wake up and cry, she wakes up and plays. I think Scott really enjoys it. We often hear her laughing at Scott. Maybe it is just a phase? At least they are in their room instead of running around the house. Last night was the worst, they didn’t go to bed until 11pm. Jeff and I were in bed wondering when they would quite down so that we could go to sleep. The joys of a having a small family in an even smaller apartment!

Scott has been learning how to take pictures with the camera and to my surprise some of the pictures actually turn out. I will post some of the ones that he took.



Jeff and Scott went to the train store to see if they could get Grandpa Anderson's train fixed. Scott loves trains, but he had to sit through a boring adult conversation before he could go around the store and see all the trains (see first picture).




The three pictures above Scott took by himself. The first is a close-up of the Christmas tree, the second is his foot, and the last is Iris.




Iris, even though she is a girl, wears a lot of Scott's old PJ's, she doesn't seem to mind!