Thank You Uncle Ryan

Ryan and Melissa gave Lincoln a real guitar for his birthday. This is how our car ride home went from Aunt Debby's:

Adelia's Blessing Day

Today was Adelia's blessing. We probably would have waited a little longer to do it, but we wanted to do it while Aaron's mom was in town. We were a little bit nervous that everyone driving from north of Provo would get stuck in traffic and miss it, but luckily there was another blessing before ours, and everyone made it in time.

My Great Grandma Roberts, crocheted Adelia's blessing dress with little booties and a blanket to match. My mom made her a beautiful slip to go underneath. I made her hair bow. :) She looked so beautiful in her outfit, but she was not one bit happy about getting her picture taken in it.

Aaron gave her a wonderful blessing. And we were happy to have so many of our family members there in the circle with him. The people in the circle were: Aaron, Chuck Swan (Aaron's Dad), Kelly Swan (Aaron's twin brother), Ryan Swan (Aaron's older brother), Bryan Taylor (Aaron's cousin), Richard Swan (Aaron's Uncle), Kerry Sparks (my step dad), and Kyle Lemmon (my brother).

After church we all went up to Aaron's Aunt Karen's house in Orem for dinner. I planned to have Cafe Rio Chicken as the main dish (you make the chicken/pork in the crock pot and shred it and eat it on a burrito with whatever toppings you want), and then assigned everyone else to bring potluck items. All the food was excellent, and I don't think anyone went hungry. Kelly took a nice shot of the everyone that was at the blessing, but I haven't gotten those pictures from him yet, so for now, here are the pictures we took on our camera.

Aaron's cousin Bryan, his wife Becca, Uncle Richard, Aunt Debbie, and Lucy the dog.

My brother Kyle, his wife Kelsey, my brother Tanner, my Mom, my step dad Kerry, and my step sister Tanya

Aunt Karen, Aaron's mom Debbie, Aaron's sister-in-law Melissa, Aaron's brother Ryan, Aaron's dad Chuck, and Eli the dog.

Aaron's dad decided to drive down from WA for the blessing. We're glad he did!

Ivan missed his nap, then he wore himself out playing in Karen's backyard. This is the result.

Me and Adelia

3 Weeks Old Photo Shoot

I'm a little late getting this post up, because in reality she's almost four weeks old. But oh well, you just do the best you can right? Today Aaron took Lincoln and went with his dad and brother over to his uncle's house where we are currently storing the bunk bed wood, to work on the bunk beds. Hopefully by the time they are done today all we'll have left to do is stain them. Talk about a project that is taking FOR-E-VER to finish. Other stuff just keeps coming up. Apparently Aaron's time is a valuable comoditity.

Anyways, Aaron took Lincoln, and Debbie went to the store, and so that left just Ivan and Adelia and I at home. I thought we might all three take a nap, but the munkins and different ideas. Instead, I settled for a photo shoot.

Aaron's sister Sydni gave us this really cute little tutu, and I've been wanting to take her picture in it for awhile, and today seemed like a good day. Adelia wasn't super happy about doing a photo shoot, but I think the picture turned out ok. Right after that she started screaming her head off, so we had to take a quick snack break. Then I dressed her up in another outfit I wanted to see on her, and it looked so cute I decided to try and get a few shots of it. 

Ivan wanted in on the photo shoot action. This is his first time holding the baby all by himself. He's loves his little sister, and can say her name and does repeatedly every time they are in the same room. It's pretty cute.

Bridal Veil Falls

Yay! Here's the first picture of all five of us together. I can't believe it took us three weeks to get one. It's a good one though, except for the sun coming in through the trees and making us look a little blotchy. Oh well. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit :)

None of us have gotten much sleep the last few nights, and I for one was tired and cranky all day today. I mentioned how I felt to Aaron, and also that I was feeling a little couped up, and he suggested that we go have a picnic dinner at Bridal Veil Falls. I love going up there, because it's always so pretty, and the boys have such a good time playing at the bottom of the falls. So I agreed.

When Aaron got home from work, he and Debbie whipped up some delicious sloppy joes while I fed the baby, and then we loaded everyone up in the car and drove up Provo Canyon to the falls. It was perfect weather too. We found a nice spot to sit at the bottom of the falls, and ate dinner while the kids played.

As we were standing up to leave, Debbie felt a sharp pain in her leg, like some kind of bite. We figured it was probably just a bad mosquito bite, and cleaned up our stuff and went for a little walk along the trail, and finally headed back to the car for home.

When we got home, the spot where Debbie had been bitten had bruised and was swollen. We worried that it might be a spider bite, and began searching on the internet to see what we could find out. Debbie called poison control to ask about it, and they said it didn't sound like a spider bite, but more like a snake bite. None of us saw a snake, but we were worried enough about it that Aaron took Debbie into the ER to get it looked at. They think it was either a dry bite or a non-venomous snake. They are going to draw a circle around the bruise so they can see if it gets any bigger, and draw her blood to make sure there isn't anything in it that shouldn't be. They'll let us know what they find out. I'll keep you posted.

Lincoln's 3 Year Check-up

I took Lincoln in for his three year well child visit today. Linc has been looking forward to it all week, and today he kept telling me, "We are going to my doctor appointment." And he kept saying the word appointment over and over again. I thought it was funny that he was so excited to go to the doctor, most kids aren't. But I figure since we don't get our shots at the actual doctor (we have to go the Health Department, since our insurance doesn't cover shots), and since Lincoln is rarely ever sick, that he has no reason to have negative feelings towards the doctor. Plus, I think that since I've had a lot of doctor appointments (OBGYN) in the last while, he probably was excited to have one of his one "just like Mommy." Who knows, but he was very excited about this appointment.

When the nurse came to get us from the waiting room she was very good with Lincoln. She talked to him the whole time we were walking down the hall, asking him questions and so on. Then she told him she was going to check his eyes. She had him cover one eye and asked him to tell what the picture was that she was pointing to on a chart. Linc did very well, he has 20/20 vision, which doesn't surprise me at all. But the funny thing was, the nurse decided to ask him the very smallest pictures on the bottom, just to see what he's day I guess. And for each one she pointed to, Linc just said, "Oh, that's just a little knot." It was so funny.

Then the nurse took us to the room and had Lincoln climb up on the exam table. Linc climbed up, then promptly laid down and pulled his shirt up so his belly was sticking out. Guess he's witnessed too many OB appointments, eh? And when we were finished and walking out to the car he told me, "Mom, I don't have a Delia in my tummy. Not even a little one." I had a good laugh over that.

I was so proud of Lincoln at the doctor. He was very well behaved. And he answered all the doctor's questions politely and did as he was told. The doctor and nurses were all very nice to Lincoln and told him what a good boy he was and how good he was doing on all the tests, and you could tell that it just made Lincoln feel so great. Every time they would compliment him, his eyes would light up and he'd get a big smile. It made me really happy that he had such a positive experience with other adults that he wasn't related too. Maybe that's weird, but that's how I felt.

Lincoln is 33 pounds and 37 inches tall. He's between the 50th and 75th percentiles. He scored really well on all the areas they tested him (fine motor, gross motor, social, etc.) and is generally just a healthy, happy little boy.

The Fam

Now that we have Adelia, I can't say "my boys" anymore if she's included too. So I'm not sure what to call the group if everyone is there except for me. Oh well.

I love this picture. Aaron was entertaining while Debbie and I made Reuben Sadnwiches for dinner. I think he's pretty talented to be able to handle all three kids at once and keep everyone happy. Our sandwiches turned out delicious too. It's been fun to actually feel like cooking again. :)

Sleep When the Baby Sleeps?

We're all a little bit tired around here these days. :) But we're doing well.

Grandma Swan Comes to Visit

Aaron's mom is here for a two week visit. We are so excited to have her here. It's been really nice having another adult around to talk to during the day time while Aaron is at work. She's also been a lot of help. We like to joke that she is Adelia's "night nurse", because I'll feed Adelia and then go to bed, and Debbie will stay up with her burping her and rocking her and changing her diaper for a few hours while I sleep, and then wake me up when she gets hungry again. It's been nice to have that extra rest, instead of either Aaron or I having to get up with the baby just to burp her or change her when she isn't ready to eat yet.

Lincoln and Ivan are happy to have Grandma Swan around too. They like to help her put on her make-up and jump on her bed, and play games with her. It's fun to watch them interact, and I'm glad they still have such a great relationship with her even though they don't get to see her as often as we would like.

Debbie bought Lincoln a set of Trio blocks for his birthday, and he loves them. He's still trying to get the hang of how to snap them together on his own. But what he really loves is when someone else will build him something. Aaron made him a sword out of them. He thought that that was the greatest thing ever. He played with it all morning. At one point he ran into Debbie's room and jumped on her bed and said, "This is my ship! Grandma, you be a shark in the water." So Debbie pretended to be a shark, and acted like she was going to eat him with her hands, and Lincoln promptly popped her on the head with his sword. Oops...guess we've got some work to do on the stabbing someone/something just for pretend, instead of actually doing it.

We've also decided that since we have three kids now, the older ones are going to have to start towing some of their own weight around here. So we assigned Ivan the task of bringing in the groceries from the car.

Ok, not for real. But Ivan did want to carry in the milk really bad. He tried for a long time to pick it up, but couldn't lift it off the ground. So Aaron ended up helping him, and he was so proud of himself. It made me laugh. Ivan is growing up so fast. Maybe he's realized he isn't the baby anymore and has decided to be a big boy instead. I don't know, but he just seems to be acting so much older these days. His vocabulary is growing so fast, I can't even keep track of all the words he knows, and even his pronunciation of the words is improving rapidly. One of my favorite things that he's been doing recently is singing the wise man built his house upon a rock song. He knows all the actions, and even though he can't say most of the words, he knows the tune and can sing in jibberish while getting the tune down. When he wants me to help him sing it, he pounds his fist into his hand and says, "Rah, rah, rah (rock)" over and over and louder and louder until we sing the song. I love my Ivan Boy.

Adelia is doing well too. She's starting to have little awake stretches during the day. She is still a very peaceful, content, sleepy baby. And I will be totally fine if those (well, at least the peaceful and content ones) are permanent personality traits of hers. She starting to smile a lot. We are pretty sure she responds to the sound of my voice. And she's starting to grow out of some of her newborn sized clothes already. Yesterday we had to pull out and wash all the 0-3 month stuff so we could start working those in to her wardrobe and taking out the things that no longer fit. It's always exciting to get out new sets of clothes, but a little sad to watch them grow out of the old stuff. Why do they grow up so fast, even right from the start?

I remember worrying a lot about having a girl, just because they are so different from boys, and because the world treats girls so differently than boys, that it was almost scary to think about having to raise a girl. And I'm sure there will still be those times when I worry or am scared for her, but I feel like those times are a little ways off yet. I love that Adelia belongs to our family, and even though she's only been here a little over two weeks, our family wouldn't be complete anymore without her. Sometimes after she falls asleep in my arms I just hold her and watch her for the longest time,  hopefully I can  remember her as a baby forever. It's fun to watch them grow up and progress, but the babyhood just goes by too fast, and I don't want to miss it.

V Day: Velcro, Vegetables, and Vests

We did letter V today at Suzy's house. She started the boys off with pieces of Velcro and then them make Velcro V's on the carpet to introduce the letter. They got a kick out of that.

Next she read them a really creative book about vehicles. All the vehicles in the book were made out of vegetables. They boys had a good time guessing which veggies each of the vehicles were made out of.

Then we went into the kitchen and Suzy gave each boy a vest made out of a brown paper bag. They got to us sponges cut into a V shape and violet paint to sponge paint violet V's onto their vests. After the vests had a few V's on them, Suzy gave the boys different colors of paint and different kids of vegetables to stamp their vests with. Some of the veggies they used were a cucumber, a piece of celery, and potatoes that had stars and hearts cut into them. It was really cool, and the boys really liked using the vegetables.

For a snack we had Vanilla Wafers.

I didn't take my camera with me this week, because I already had my hands full with three kids. So I only have the one picture of the vest that I took when we got home. But Suzy did such a great job with letter V, I think that would be a hard one!

2 Week Check-up

We took Adelia to her 2 week check up today. She's doing great. She now weighs 8 pounds 12 ounces and is 21 inches long. Good for her. The doc said everything looks great. She is in the 75th percentile for everything, which makes her my least monstrous baby so far. :) Both my boys were always in the high 90s until they got a little older. He also said there is a pretty bad cold bug going around right now and to stay home for the next month or so...we'll see if I survive that. We already decided it was a bad idea to take her to church until Septemberish. But I'm not a big fan of being stuck at home, especially now that my body is starting to feel recuperated enough to want to do things.

Today they also had to do the other half of Adelia's PKU test. They poked her heal. She screamed bloody  murder. I was glad Aaron came with, so he could go back with her when they poked her. I hate that part, so I opted to sit in the waiting room with the wild indians and try to keep them contained.

So far things around here are going well. Life with three kids isn't so terribly awuful or stressful...yet. We'll see when Adelia is awake more during the daytime, or when I actually try to go anywhere by myself. :) I have taken the three of them to Costco by myself and the four of us have walked to the park a block north of our house. I consider that a pretty decent success. But we'll see how it goes as time goes on.

We are getting some sleep, which is good. About every third night or so Adelia will give us a 5 or 6 hour stretch of sleep, and that is a beautiful thing. The other nights she's up about every hour and a half or so, with one 3 hour stretch thrown in somewhere, usually toward the earlier hours of the morning. It wouldn't be too bad, but the boys are always up at 7:30am without fail. But it could be worse, so I'm not going to complain. In fact the last three nights in a row we've gotten 5 hour stretches, from about 1:30am-6:00am or so. But knock on wood for that one.

Adelia's two big brothers love her...in their own special ways. They like to hand her lots of toys, pile them on top of her in fact, and touch her head, and poke her eyes (Ivan), and try to feed her real people food (Lincoln), and they are always very concerned when she starts crying. Lincoln came running to my side the other day and said, "Mom, what's wrong with Delia's foot?" So I went to look, and her foot was peeling, so I said oh, nothing's wrong her foot is just peeling. Then Linc turned to Adelia and said, "It's ok Delia, it's just peeling, it won't hurt you or make you cry." I had to laugh.

So ya, we've survived two whole weeks on our own. Aaron's mom is coming to visit for two weeks on Thursday, and it will be nice to have her here helping and keeping me company, since Aaron's school starts again in 10 or so days.

FHE: Abraham and Isaac: Trust

Tonight for FHE Aaron taught the story of Abraham and Isaac. We sang the verse of Follow the Prophet and then talked about how Abraham had trust in the Lord. To explain what trust was we played a game with the boys. Aaron blind folded them and then had them follow the sound of his voice from the living room all the way into the kitchen, and when they got to the end, there was a treat (blueberries) waiting for them. Lincoln thought the game was great and asked to play multiple times. Ivan wasn't trusting enough (haha) to leave the bandanna over his eyes for more than about 1 second. But we gave him blueberries anyways. :)

Lincoln

Ivan

Typical Shot

Lincoln and Ivan love trying to climb into the chair with me while I'm feeding Adelia. Tonight I told them if they would just hold off until I was finished, then they could climb in. And of course, as soon as Aaron brought the camera in they started hamming it up. Silly boys.

On A Sunday Afternoon

On Sunday afternoons, we like to go for walks. We usually walk around the block, but this week I was itching to get out of the house, the boys were restless, and going around the block just didn't seem like it was going to cut it. We decided instead, to load the boys' bikes into the car and drive up to campus and then let them have free reign up there. I like going up to campus because there is a lot of open space for the kids to ride without me having to worry about them getting run over. Plus, BYU campus is very pretty, and has some really cool buildings to look at.

Over by the Joseph Fielding Smith Building (JFSB) they have a pretty cool fountain and some shade, so we made our way over there. My boys loved the fountain. Right off we had to tell them they couldn't play in it, or both of them probably would have jumped right in. Oh, and we made a very random discovery...floating in the pond was a little rubber duck. Aaron pulled it out and on it, it said, "Date? Call Krystal" spelled with a K and everything. Of course the phone number on it was not mine, but what a funny thing to find. We had a good laugh over it and then Aaron threw it back in to be found by someone else.

Adelia and I found a nice shady spot to sit in while Lincoln and Ivan went round and around the fountain. Lincoln was on his bike, but Ivan preferred to just run.

I really love afternoons like this. When you do something that's not necessarily special, but doing it just gives you a happy feeling and you know it's a memory you'll have for a long time. I love to spend time with my family, I think that makes me happier than anything else in the world. I love to watch my kids get excited about things, even if it's something as simple as a fountain in the middle of campus. So for me today was a great day.

Tonight we also gave Adelia her first bath, since her umbilical cord thing finally fell off. She only liked it slightly more than the sponge baths she was previously getting. She did all right if one of us was pouring the warm water onto her shoulders and tummy, but if not, then she was screaming. I'm sure she'll grow into it though, both the others did.

Our First Big Outing

Today Adelia and I had our first big outing since she was born. We drove up to Centerville to watch my brother Kyle and his wife Kelsey open their wedding presents. Typically that's something I probably wouldn't need to be involved in, as the sister of the groom, but since I'd missed everything else involving there wedding, I wanted to go and be supportive.

Kyle and Kels made out like little bandits! They did end up with about five toasters, but they got some really nice serving platters and home decor stuff among other things, that I was very covetous of. :)

After opening presents, we went with Kyle, Kelsey, Mom, Kerry, and Tanner out to Red Lobster for Kyle's and Tanner's birthday dinners. I had a delicious salmon. Adelia was good the whole time. I had to feed her once while we were there, but I used the nursing cover, and it was no sweat. I surely do hope that nursing stays as low key and unstressful as it has so far with her. After she was done eating, Papa Kerry held her while she slept and he ate. I can tell already that they are going to get along great.

When dinner was over, we drove to Kyle and Kelsey's apartment to take a look-see. They have such a cute apartment. It's way nicer and bigger than our first one was, and they are paying about the same price. Guess that's what I get for living in Provo. :) We looked at some of their other wedding gifts, and chatted for awhile. Then I decided that Aaron and the boys probably missed us so we should head for home.

Kyle and Kels went on their honeymoon to California to Disney Land. For Lincoln's birthday they brought him back a "real" Buzz Lightyear toy. Wow, was Linc ever excited to have that. They also brought Ivan a Wall-E stuffed animal, that he loves. He can even say Wall-E, it's pretty cute. And they brought Adelia a cute little baby Goofy stuffed animal.

Boy Clothes....

So we need to do laundry around here, that's nothing new :) But today Adelia was out of clothes. I didn't buy a ton of newborn sized girl clothes for her because chances are she'll out grow that size too fast to make it worth it. But I do have  tons of newborn sized boy clothes...so I went through those and pulled out the less masculine ones, to hold us over until some laundry gets done. I love this baseball onsie on her, especially with the red bow to go with it. :)  Gotta start early and raise her up right!

Lincoln Turns Three

I'll admit I stressed a little bit about Lincoln's birthday this year. I usually try really hard to make the kids' birthday different and special from all the rest of the days. By special, I don't mean we spend tons of money or anything like that, but we just try to do things a little differently, for example we usually go up to campus and have lunch with Aaron, which the kids love, and we don't do all that often. I'm still way too sore and very intimidated by taking all three kids out by myself, so eating lunch with Aaron was not going to happen. And I worried about how to make Lincoln's big day a special one.

Another tradition we have is to let the kids (if they are old enough to have an opinion) pick what kind of cake they want to have. My mom has this little book with a bunch of different animals you can make out of cake and it tells you how to cut them and everything. But this year, before I could get out the book to let Lincoln pick from one of those, he had already set his mind on a dinosaur cake...which then evolved into a dragon cake. So, I had to figure out how to make a dragon cake. Lucky for me, if you can imagine it, you can also Google search it, and find pretty much anything you want...even how to make a dragon cake. :) And even luckier for me, I found a page that had step by step instructions with pictures of every step. Perfect.

Since schedules and timing and everything like that are crazy around here right now, I decided to start the cake on Monday. I baked the 2 nine inch rounds in the morning, and then froze them for most of the afternoon. After the kids all went to bed, Aaron took pity on my and decided to help me make the cake. We cut it out, placed all the pieces just right and frosted it. Then we decorated it. That was the fun part. Aaron did all the artistic stuff like the fire and the wings. I think it turned out great!

We also decorated the living room (well, again, Aaron did while I fed the baby and shouted directions) with streamers and balloons.

Tuesday morning when Linc woke up, we gave him his new bike. We found this awesome bike at Toys R Us on a 50% clearance sale, so we got it for $20. I was pretty happy about that. Aaron let Lincoln help pump up the tires and oil the chain. Then we had Lincoln give his little red trike to Ivan as a present. (So that later when/if it becomes an issue of "mine!" we can remind Linc that he gave it to Ivan.)

Aaron took both boys outside to go on a bike ride, but after discovering that Lincoln didn't know how to use his breaks, thought that their time would be better spent in the parking lot learning how to stop. Linc enjoyed riding in circles around Aaron.

After that Aaron left for work, and I feel like I did a poor job of making Lincoln's birthday special all by myself. I did make him his favorite lunch, quesedillas, but I felt like we had a long afternoon stuck inside the house.

Granny Jan and Adelia on Lincoln's birthday

Thankfully, around 4:30 my mom came down. She brought my grandma, Granny Jan, who is visiting from Missouri, and my little nephew Graham, and my brother Tanner down with her. It was great to have them here. My boys especially love to play with Uncle Tanner.

When Aaron got home from work we BBQed hot dogs and bratwurst for dinner. Pretty simple, but we still aren't up for making elaborate meals around here. Besides, my kids ate every bite, so I'd say success. :)

We invited some of our good friends to come out back and do cake and ice cream and water guns with us. I was glad they came so Adelia and I didn't have to do squirt guns. We left that up to the kids and the dads. And they loved it!

I love this next picture of Ivan. He cracks me so much. I think he has the funniest/most expressive body language of any toddler I've ever been around. He's way into the water guns. Almost every day he carries one around with him where ever he goes. But when he's pretending to shoot it he brings it up really close to his face and hunches his shoulders and gets a really intense concentrating face and makes shooting noises. It's so cute! I wish I'd taken this picture from the front, but this will have to do.

Adelia was such a good girl too and slept right through all the festivities so I could take pictures.