Friday, July 29, 2011

4 months old




Our little Ruby Q is 4 months old! 
She doesn't get her fair share of blog attention so I thought I would do a post just about her. 

Ruby is over all a very good baby. She sleeps usually 10 hours a night, but sleeps terribly during the day. ( I was just looking at Zack's baby book and I had written the same thing about him at 4 months as well.)


She is very happy most of the time. I can tell she is going to be on the move soon. She doesn't like to lay down and is always lifting her head up to see what's going on. She loves her bumbo chair because she can see what's going on around her. At her Dr. appointment today she weighed in at almost 16 pounds and 25 1/2 inches long. So average in weight and 80th in height. For the record Zack was 14 1/2 pounds at this age so that concerns me as I remember what a CHUNK he was to carry around between 8-15 months.


Bring on the FOOD!
 I don't quite know what to do with her wild hair. It just sticks up and there is nothing I can do about it!

Finally a comparison picture.
 These aren't the greatest pictures to go by but I don't think they look that much alike.
She looks a lot more like I did. Comparison of Ruby and I coming later. 


She loves to suck on her hands, not any place specific, just anywhere that looks juicy. She doesn't love binkies but I keep encouraging them because they were a life saver when Zack was a chatter box in church.
Ruby has developed an opinion about life, I have several fun videos of her but for some reason they aren't uploading. Last Sunday she was competing with the teacher in church, she's a little bit of a know it all already. 


We sure love our little princess!
( I know i've used this picture before but I just love it)

Thursday, July 21, 2011

It's not Cars, it's Cars 2!



A few weeks ago we went with my brothers family to see Cars 2. Zack and Miles had been waiting for this movie for months! The 2 boys were so funny to listen to as they talked about the movie and pointed out the characters. Early in the movie Miles said "Zack, it's Cars" and Zack immediately corrected him. "It's not Cars, it's Cars 2!!"


I love this picture of Zack loving on the Cars poster. 


Miles fell asleep in the movie and wasn't in the mood for pictures after.
 Zack just could not get enough of that poster! 

Monday, July 18, 2011

Zack's 3rd Birthday (2 months ago)

This is how on top of things I am.... 

Zack turned 3 more than 2 months ago.

For our train lovers 3rd birthday we rode the Front Runner from Salt Lake to Ogden and visited the Ogden train museum. He LOVED the Front Runner, it took us about and hour each way but we planned on being gone the whole day so it worked. The train museum was pretty good for a 3 year old, but I wasn't overly excited about it. 

The pictures are not in order. Blogger is a pain, his birthday was 2 months ago and it's late. 


Giving Matt a huge hug for the giant train track pack he was given. 


Picture from the train museum, they had a lot of hands on things for kids to do.


Patiently waiting to open presents.


Lucky boy got his conductor hat! He is so silly though, 
he will only wear it when he plays trains. 


Riding on the Front Runner, Handsome Devil



Outside the train museum they had an engine and a few train cars you could climb on.


He really did love it despite his enthusiasm in the picture, he hates pictures. 



Me and tiny Ruby 1 1/2 months old


The awesome Front Runner, I definitely think we will take that ride again. 


This boy wanted a RED train cake. I still can't believe I created this! The engine was strawberry cake dyed red and the coal car was yellow cake. He loved it and still asks what happened to it. The round engine part was baked in a can that had tomatoes in it. That piece of cake tasted like tomatoes, despite that fact that I washed it out 3 times with soap. Guess who got that piece?
 THE BIRTHDAY BOY! 


We had a family party at a park near our house. The day of the party a huge storm rolled in about 2 hours before the party. It was NOT looking good. But about the time we arrived at the park the clouds parted and it turned out to be really nice. 





After his birthday party showing off all his loot. Our families spoiled him big time! 
Back on the couch you can see a white Sunday shirt. I told my mom to get that for him and she was afraid he wouldn't be excited about it. Sure enough his eyes lit up when he opened it and saw that it was a new Sunday shirt. SILLY BOY! He is very particular about what he wears to church. It's taken him months to get used to wearing a polo and shorts to church for the summer. 


This was the coolest, this engine is in front of the train museum. 
They got to climb up into it and check it out. 

The boy is 3. Can you even believe it? Here are some things about Zack these days.

*In the last little while he has become quite the little cheese. 
He doesn't like his picture taken, if he lets you he will give you a funny face. 

*He always has to wear socks to bed. 

*He has certain "guys" that he has to take to bed. 
They are: Daddy Doggy, Maxi, Buster, Fish, Nemo, Baby blankie, Zhu Zhu, and baby bear. I feel like i'm forgetting someone.... 

*Zack's favorite color is red. Everything must be red.

*He loves to give the blessing on the food and has become extremely FAST at praying. 
We can't help but giggle every time he prays. LOVE IT! 

*Zack adores his sister and always tells her she is a pretty girl. 
Today he was telling her "good job Woobs" instead of Rub's. 

*This boy is very smart and very loving, using both to his advantage. Every night he has to go around to every single person & animal in our house, (there are 9 of us, including pets) and tell them goodnight. He will not go to sleep until every single person has given him a hug and a kiss and he has given them one in return. This can take up to 30 minutes sometimes. His favorite person by far though is my dad. They have a ritual where they choose what kind of hugs they are going to do. They do baby bear, papa bear, wild cat, rattle snake and much more that I can't remember. 
 It melts my heart to see him interact with my dad like that. 

*Zack loves to ride bikes and has recently learned to use his petal bikes. 

*Zack has tons of friends, or sometimes I call them his fans. 
He likes little friends but he prefers to associate with adults. When he is around lots of kids he would sometimes rather sit and watch from a distance than play. 

*Zack tells me almost daily that he would like another baby. I keep telling him I couldn't handle another baby, he insists that HE could handle another baby.

*Zack likes to text, his favorite people to text are his uncle Jeff and Mickey Mouse. 

*The boy doesn't come out of his room in the morning. He will lay in his bed until we come get him, sometimes he will get out of bed and play. If he decides he is done he will loudly knock on the door until someone comes to get him. I don't know why he just wont come out. Not that i'm complaining! 

*His eating habits are a daily struggle, for the past week I have been very strict and not letting him eat anything other than what we are serving for dinner. He has gone to bed hungry almost every night. (I know, i'm a mean mom) Tonight however, he actually ate some melon, which is AMAZING if you know Zack. He told me he was getting bigger after he ate his melon. I guess he really does listen to us. Hopefully he will continue to try things. This child wont even try rice crispy treats..... 

LOVE this BOY! 
Do not know what we would do without his sweet little personality.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Something exciting is being made here!! (it's about time)

 I bought this fabric months and months and months ago.
 I was looking for fabric to make Ruby's crib bedding and I fell head over heels with this! 
The top 2 patterns will be the quilt that I am quilting by hand with the help of my grandma.
I wanted to machine quilt it but I just haven't made arrangements yet and I don't think I ever will. Maybe next time...
The polka dot on the far left will be the bed skirt and the other 2 are the bumper pads. 

I can't wait to show you the finished project! (And you can bet that my 
mom will be there to help me every step of the way...)


All for this pretty little girl! 

3 days, 6 kids, 1 me....

This week I got the challenge/opportunity to watch my brothers 4 children (ages 7, 6, 5 and 1)  while his wife was at girls camp. I've spent a lot of time with these kiddos and know them like the back of my hand. I knew that without careful planning I would hear a lot of "we're bored" and "there's nothing to do". So thanks to a good idea i've seen on a friends blog I created the "Bucket O' Fun". I have a bazillion formula cans that I can't bare throwing away because I want to create magical things out of them. So I just covered one of those wonderful cans with scrapbook paper and threw a ribbon around it to make it look fun. Inside the "Bucket O' Fun" I punched out paper with my fun punches and wrote things that we could do on them. Some of my ideas were simple, some took more time and preparation. 
Here are some ideas:
catch bugs
swim
play legos
make jello jigglers
read books
make noodle necklaces
play school
go for a walk
make drums (from formula cans!)
ride bikes
color
play soccer
face painting
write letters to grandma
go to library 
crazy hair
make cookies
make tents
and even.......
CHORES! 

Surprisingly they were up for the chores, probably because it wasn't their own house. I had the girls vacuum and the boys wash the front and back glass doors. My mom even got a rag out for 1 year old Luke and had him dusting. It took all of about 7 minutes, perfect for teaching them how to help out! When it was time to choose a new activity one day 6 year old Lily said she hoped it would be chores. Love that girl!


We colored noodles with food coloring and then made necklaces with them. 
They LOVED this. Bernie did too, she took several bites of their 
necklaces while they were wearing them. 
We also made one for my Grandpa who turned 87 this week. 
GO GRANDPA!


Luke has been walking for months and gets into everything so I trapped him one day
in Ruby's jumperoo. He actually stayed in there for quite a while so I was able to 
make dinner. 


Poor little Ruby spent a lot of time in her bouncer. 


Riding bikes naked. 
JUST KIDDING! 
We were waiting for more cousins to come swimming.


Lily, my biggest helper

On the last day I was trying to get some things done and let them run wild in Zack's room.
This is what happened.....

We try to play with one thing at a time, to keep from major clean up chaos. As you can see someone knocked down the pinata and I later found play dough inside, naked barbies are everywhere, legos, cars, puzzles, cards, Ruby's drawers were all open etc etc etc. 

My sister in law asked me to make the kids one that they could take home and i've been thinking of ways to perfect it. There were several times when we chose something that just wouldn't work that particular day or time so we would have to throw it back. They were good sports about it, but I have an idea to fix that. I thought maybe if I color coded "types of ideas". Such as, Things to do with mom, Things to do alone, outings, chores, etc. You could then just tell the child to pick a certain color, appropriate for the kind of activity YOU are up for that day. 

I didn't think Zack really got the concept of the bucket, but today he asked if he could choose something. This is definitely something I am going to continue doing. Since Ruby was born I have felt like our lives are simply to survive and if I do an activity with Zack it is an absolute miracle. I am desperately looking for some structure and I think this will be a good way to incorporate that along with keeping our ideas fresh, especially since we are stuck at the house all day every day. 

I have to pay tribute to my baby sister Emily for being a trooper and helping me those 3 days. 
I could not have done it without her!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Our Pretty Princess


Our pretty little Ruby was blessed almost 2 months ago. 
My mom made her dress so I had some special pictures taken of her in it. 
This is one of five.