Walking!

Greta started taking her first steps around her first birthday (2 months ago) but then took until last weekend to decide she wanted to fully walk.  She still crawls every once in awhile if she falls down or whatever, but starting about a week ago, I'd now consider her a full time walker!  We still think it's funny how long it took her to walk though.  She started crawling in  June so she crawled for almost 8 months!  We were just surprised that it took her that long to start walking.  Finally, Miss Smiley Pants is a walker:).  Uh-oh, does that also mean that she is now a toddler??  No, she's definitely still my baby:).

Gibs' 3 Year Stats

Gibs had his three year appointment in January and I believe he was 75-90th in in everything which surprised me a bit. 
Height: 39"
Weight: 35 lbs (He is now a few pounds more than Layla!)

He is definitely FULL of energy and all boy.  He has been incredibly whiny lately and so we are hoping that this is a short lived phase:).  He can be so sweet which is especially fun to see when that sweetness is shown to his sisters (although, trust me, he can also be not so sweet to both of them!).  We just potty trained a couple of weekends ago (I wanted to wait until after our Disney trip) and it went SO much better than I had anticipated.  Layla was so easy to train that I thought for sure with his strong-willed and high-energy personality that he would be the difficult one.  I am happy to say that I was very wrong.  Other than a couple of mistakes the first few days, he has not had any more mistakes and always tells us when he needs to go.  It's strange now only having one kid in diapers!  We love our little guy and love seeing him interact with is sisters.  He is so sweet yet so tough that I can't wait to see what a great big and little brother he will grow in to.  He can also be such a goofball.  Recently, his jokes often include the words underpants or mustaches.  He seems to catch on quickly to which things people laugh at and apparently those got the best reaction from others, so he now likes to throw them into his stories randomly.  Trying to explain to him that there are times when he shouldn't be talking about underpants seems to only make it worse, so we are now attempting to just not say anything and hoping he drops it eventually:).  He definitely does not understand having a filter.  The other day while waiting at Layla's dance class he announced to those around him that his fruit snacks were making him toot:).  Such a typical odd Gibs comment:).  He loves making people laugh so that will be interesting to see too how that changes as he ages.  I just signed him up for threeschool this week (for next fall) and just last month he started Young Children's Worship at our church.  We love our silly yet sweet little Gibs and feel so blessed to have had in our lives for three years already!!  Time sure flies!

Friends

Can't believe how well this turned out getting so many little kids to smile at the same time!

 

(L-R) Ella, Greta, Layla, Lincoln, Jonathan, Caleb, Alden, Kipton, Maddy and Gibson...

1 Year Stats

Pretty sure I never posted her one year stats so here they are:

 

Height: 29.25" - 50th%

Weight: 18 lbs 10.5 oz - 10th%

Head: 45 cm - I can't remember what % it was, somewhere around 5th% or less

 

She was such a big girl at her appointment and only cried a little after her shots.  She doesn't say many real words yet, but often says "mama" and "dada" and will sometimes say "baba" for drink (since I used to call her bottles "baba's" so that she could say it, "baba" for bye-bye, "nana" for nigh-night, "al-da" for all done, "baby"...hmm...that might be it.  It feel like she's said these for awhile now and still says them quite sporatically.  Oh, and the other day she was trying to get Gigi's attention and said "Geege".   She LOVES baby dolls and her thumb:).  Right after her birthday she started taking about 5 steps at a time and hasn't really progressed since then.  She will sometimes stand alone, but only when she chooses to--not if you try to make her, then she just sits down:).  She has such a sweet demeaner, but you can really tell when she's sick and not feeling well as she becomes very needy and loves to be held.  She loves to sit in little chairs. It's funny because when she was really little she had a little chair that she loved sitting in, then she outgrew that (sad day for me b/c she loved to sit in it and watch Layla and Gibs play) and now she again loves little chairs and loves that she can get in and out of them on her own.  I dropped her morning naps just before her birthday and dropped bottles also right before. Both of those changes went better than anticipated.  She sometimes still gets a little sleepy in the morning and will take a cat nap if we're out and about, but she typically always naps a few hours in the afternoon now and that seems to be enough sleep.  Just recently she's had major issues sleeping through the night.  I don't know why.  About a week ago she started waking up in the night and crying which I can't let her cry in her room because she sleeps upstairs by my dad and Joyce.  We have therefore now moved her to our walk in closet which seems to work better, but she will still wake up and cry.  It is at all different time and only once in the past week has she not woken up.  She hasn't had a cold recently nor does she tug on her ears at all, so I don't think it's an ear infection, maybe it's just her new tooth??  Hopefully the waking up ends soon!  Other than that, she is such a sweet little peanut and so far is actually a good listener when we tell her "no" and such.  I'm sure that will end soon so we'll enjoy it while it lasts:).

Visit with Santa...

The kids really wanted to see Santa again this year, so we took them to Westshore where we had hoped there wouldn't be a line and there wasn't!  Not too surprising:).  Layla was a little quiet with telling Santa what she wanted (a hat she said--she had seen a girl in a cute hat that day I learned later from her, that is where that idea came from. She didn't get a hat for Christmas but seemed fine with that) and Gibs was quite apprenhensive about Santa which I didn't think he would be.  Greta started crying when we quick stuck her in the middle, but I think that was just out of confusion to what was going on, not based on the fact that Santa looks a little scary:).  Layla was watching a movie the other week and was talking about Santa and his reindeer flying in the sky and I asked her what the true meaning of Christmas was.  She knows all about celebrating Jesus' birthday and such so I figured it would be good to again remind her why we celebrate Christmas.  She said the truth about Christmas was that Santa really just drives in a car, he doesn't really fly:).  Guess we have some things to work on:). But I know what she means, she means that the Santas that we see really drive cars, which is true:).  Last year I remember that when we went to the mall to see Santa, when we were back in the parking lot after seeing him she asked where he parked his reindeer and sleigh:).

 This is very random, but Gibs has recently had some issues talking about underpants/underwear in inappropriate places.  Such as Russ'.  On the Dora DVD we keep in the car she sings a nursery rhyme and instead of singing it correctly she uses the word "underpants" and then says, "no, that silly..." and then sings what it really should be.  So the other night in Russ' "Jingle Bells" was playing and Gibs was singing (somewhat quietly) "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells" and then yells out "UNDERPANTS! Hahahaha."  People around us found it funny.  Anyway, so I told him now that he shouldn't talk about underpants unless he's talking about potty training and going in the potty. So now I've caught him talking silly about underpants and then when he sees me listening he quickly adds "potty on the potty!".  Silly kid:).  We definitely at times have a hard time keeping a straight face with disciplining because he does/says such odd things:).

4 Years

Saturday, December 22 marked the 4th anniversary of my mom's death.  With most things in life, time goes so fast that it hardly feels like "x" amount of years.  But for some reason, with my mom's death, it really does feel like she's been gone for at least 4 years.  So much has happened since she's been gone, such as our family growing (Layla was only 6 months old when my mom died) among other family dynamics changing (like my dad remarrying), which is probably why it feels like it's been awhile. 

It's still weird to think back to her final days on earth.  There was a blizzard here while she was in the hospital, so making the drive out to Spectrum to say good-bye was crazy because people were advised to stay home yet we couldn't because we obviously wanted to be there for that.  And then for her funeral, pretty much everyone in our family had been sick and my grandma (my mom's mom) was still stick at her funeral.  Things like that just really make me question God's timing.  Why would he make it so difficult for us to get to the hospital to say our final good-byes?  Why would my poor Grandma have to be suffering with the flu during her daughter's funeral?  And why only three days before Christmas?  Nobody wants to be planning a funeral when they had planned on enjoying Christmas parties and such just like everyone else.  But now, looking back, obviously we all made it through and those little details don't really matter anymore.  What matters to me now is teaching my kids about who Grammy was as a person and telling them how much she would have loved them and looking forward to the day when we can see her again.  She was a wonderful mom and I can see that even more now that I'm a mom myself.  I feel like I appreciate her more now realizing how much work goes into being a mom and I wish I could tell her that.  Some day I guess.

All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

Greta didn't quite get her wish for two teeth, but she did at least FINALLY get one!  Her first tooth popped through this weekend.  It is her bottom, um, left I think.  Layla got her first tooth at 10 months which would be 8 months adjusted and I got my first tooth and 8 months so I figured that Layla was just late because of being a preemie.  Then, Gibs didn't get his until he was almost one (he too wished for her two front teeth for Christmas that year and got his first one right before Christmas too) and I thought that that was really.  So I was really surprised that Greta didn't have any by a year and she doesn't have an "adjusted age" obviously because she wasn't a preemie:).  So it makes me think that teeth don't have anything to do with adjusted ages and that all my kids are just late tooth bloomers:).  So far, all my kids have walked around the same age too, so my other kids' late walking maybe really had nothing to do with being born early.  Layla started taking steps at 13 months and was fully walking by 13 1/2 months.  Gibs started taking steps around a year and was fully walking at 13 1/2 months.  And Greta started taking steps (like more than just a couple) right after her first birthday, but now at 13 months, doesn't take any more than she did a month ago.  She just wants to crawl:).  She's capable, she just needs to realize that walking can get her to the same destinations that crawling can:).  If she's like her big brother and sister, maybe she'll fully walk in a couple of weeks.  Oh, and she also just recently finally got enough hair (just barely!) to start wearing a pony tail. :)