Trixie is Five!

Trixie turned five at the end of August. 

At five years old, she loves to play outside, play with friends, play with her siblings, and play with her parents. She is still snuggly, especially when trying to avoid going to bed or after a volatile outburst. 

She basically taught herself to ride a bike, and she loves going on bike rides with anyone who will take her. If no big kids or adults will accompany her around the black trail (a trail by our house), she will ride up and down the sidewalk of our street for long stretches of time. On the Monday after her birthday (Labor Day) she rode eight miles!

Trixie is smart and asks a lot of good questions. Last week her pre-school teacher told me she is ready to start reading and sent Trixie home with some resources to work with. (And yes, that technically happened after her birthday, but with a post nearly six weeks late, I'm talking about it anyway.)

Technically Trixie could have started kindergarten this year, but I had decided quite a while back to hold her back a year so she'd be one of the oldest in her class rather than one of the youngest. I had a lot of reasons for that, and with 2020 being like it's been, I'm confident I made the right choice. Trixie's getting an extra year with her beloved pre-school teacher, and she's doing an online program that is going fine.

Trixie loves animals, especially horses. We still go to Thanksgiving Point to let her ride ponies. I mentioned that when she turns 8 maybe we can some riding lessons, and she has remembered this and brought it up several times. Earlier this year she and Ike pretended to be missionaries for a Family Night activity. As we asked them questions people might ask missionaries, she told us that you can get baptized when you turn 8, and you can also take horse riding lessons.

She got 11 stitches in her chin earlier this year. It went about as well as you would expect. Once the shots numbed everything up, she did okay. But eventually that numbing agent wore off. At the age of 4, she learned to swallow pills because she detested the taste of the liquid pain medicine.

My two girls are absolutely, positively, the very best of friends (when they are not fighting). They have great imaginations and can play together for extended periods of time.

Trixie also loves to play with her brothers. Felix can often be found setting up train tracks for her, and Ike can always be relied upon to rile her up. At Bear Lake this summer, he toted her all around in this borrowed kayak for long periods of time.

Trixie played QuickBall (like tee-ball, but faster-paced and more focused on essential skills), and she did fine. She finally got a hit on her last game, which was thrilling. I was one of her coaches, which was special for us. She agreed to play, in large part, because of the treats she expected after each game, but Covid put the kabosh on that, which was really disappointing. She also excelled in swim lessons this year and thinks she can swim now. (She can't.)

Trixie is brave and always willing to be a daredevil. She told me she wanted to jump off this bridge on a camping trip. Once we were actually up there, it felt quite high, and she really struggled. She finally did it, though! (After the actual experience, she thought she'd try again, but she just stood on the bridge being scared for a long time before I finally went to get her. Ike did that too on the first day he jumped.)

Like a true middle child, Trixie likes to point out the ways in which she is special, generally talking about her "broken" heart or her defective ears and how she's had surgery more than anyone in her family. At one point I'm pretty sure she told somebody she was born without a heart at all.

She actually has a great, big heart, and we are so happy she is ours.

Felicia is Three!

Felicia turned three in early July. She is a fun little girl right now. At age three she is:

• Obsessed with her father.
• Needing a nap about every fourth day but never getting one.
• In love with Peppa Pig.
• Verbose.
• Potty-trained, but has recently relapsed into having chronic accidents because she can't be bothered to go to the bathroom.
• Irate about having to get her hair done.
• Too skinny for a lot of her pants to stay up.
  
• Interested in wearing as many patterns as possible at one time.
• Crazy about getting her fingernails and toenails painted.
• Capable of finding any porta-potty at any construction site while we are out for drives. (She has a bizarre fascination with them.)

The other day she wandered into our room at night and slept on the floor. When she woke up for good, she popped straight up, with no lolling about on the floor. She looked at me and said, "Mom, wake up. It's cock-a-doodle-doo."

A few weeks ago she fell asleep while leaning on a dining room chair. This episode (pictured above) followed a long string of crying about everything you could imagine, and probably some things you couldn't imagine.

She loves to sing and dance, especially if nobody is watching. She also plays elaborate make believe games by herself.

If there is a mess left in the house, Felicia probably made it. She is, hands down, my most "into stuff" child. She constantly gets into food without permission. She eats raw oatmeal from the container, takes single bites out of cucumbers and apples, and makes her own cinnamon toast, with literally tablespoons of cinnamon heaped on. She has put an entire box of bandaids on her body like stickers. She took a bite from an EOS lip balm. (Who knew that was even possible?) She has gotten into and eaten entire packages of gum from the van's glove box. It is not unusual to find a sink full of sudsy water and all the wash cloths from that bathroom in the basin.

Her speech is generally understandable, but she struggles with words that start with s followed by a consonant. "Smoothie" sounds like "movie." "Stuck" sounds like "duck." Last week she rode a pony called Penelope, and she pronounced the name, "Pennareppy."

As difficult as she can be at this age, she can also be very sweet. She is quite perceptive of other people's feelings and tried to comfort people when they are sad. She quotes her older brothers quoting their favorite lines from movies and shows.

We love our Felicia!

2019 - In Review

Highlights:

• So much running! I ran two 10Ks and two half marathons. I ran about 300 miles. (I didn't keep track of my non-GPS runs, and I deleted some of my wacky GPS runs where my app gave me more mileage than was accurate, so I'm not exactly sure on the total.) I am in better shape than I've ever been in my life.
• Felicia's talking really took off in the last two months.
• Trixie started preschool and loves it.
• Ike and I hiked Mt. Timpanogos (but didn't quite summit due to wind).
• Ike is learning that working hard to accomplish something difficult feels awesome, even if the process itself can be really disheartening sometimes. (Thanks, piano!)
• Ike and I went to the BYU vs USC game, which BYU won in overtime. It was Ike's first BYU football game, and my first time back since 2007.
• Felix's reading has really improved, and he is starting to enjoy reading on his own a bit more.
• I went to my stake's Young Women's camp, and it was awesome.
• Eric's student loan forgiveness came through, after initially being denied. (It was a huge relief.)
• Doing "Come Follow Me," our church's scripture-study program, through the year was fairly consistent and gave us lots of opportunities to talk about spiritual things with our children.
• We had several opportunities to help build our children's faith this year. It started when Eric's loan forgiveness was denied (despite him having taught at a low income school for five years). As we discussed what to do about it, both of us felt prompted to be open with our children about the situation and ask them to pray for their dad's loan to be forgiven. (Trixie once prayed instead "for dad to be alone.") When the loan forgiveness came through, our children could see it as a direct correlation to their prayers. We also had a lot of family prayers for Eric's shoulder to heal so he wouldn't need surgery. (It did; he didn't.) And for Felicia to learn to talk. (She did!)
• I'm like a decade late to the trend, but I started drinking green smoothies, and it's so much better than skipping breakfast or eating whatever desserts we have lying around. (Who knew?)
• I did some things to wrangle my mental health, and I am doing so much better!
• We took lots of friends canoeing on the Jordan River (even more than last year).
• We have a group of friends for fairly regular date night outings.
• New flooring in my entire main floor! Before that we also painted the living room white, bought new curtains for the living room and dining room, and bought a new sectional! The old couches went to the basement, and the TV is down there too. Re-doing the living room was a big deal this year!

Places in 2019:

• Three trips to Jackson Hole - Once for the Fourth of July (my brother had taken my boys to spend a few days with their family, so we had to go pick them up); once for a missionary farewell, and once for a missionary homecoming.
• Moab for a canoeing thing with lots of friends.
• Capitol Reef National Park - Possibly my new favorite.
• Bear Lake, with friends - We started this trip on our own but then found out a bunch of friends would be there at the same time. It was a great little trip.
• Ginormous family reunion in Heber - Eric's grandma's last time to host one with all of her six children, her 26 grandchildren, and 54 (or 52?) great grandchildren. (I could name them all for you, and figure out the exact count, but I've got other stuff to do right now.)
• Great Basin National Park

Birthdays/Traditions:

Nothing new to report here. Birthday ice cream at Cold Stone on the Monday after a birthday. We did two shepherds' meals this year, one with friends, and one with family. Fondue on the last day of school. One new tradition is Hawaiian haystacks for dinner on the first day of school.

2019 Goals (copy and pasted from last year's post, with the results bolded):

• Redecorate my living room. DONE!
• Run a 10K? DONE!
• Read more books on paper and Kindle. Not really.
• Read more books with my kids, especially chapter books with the boys. Probably comparable to the year before. We did read scriptures more, though.
• Maybe get around to finishing up those 2018 goals. (And with commitment like that, clearly I'm on the right track.) Well, we all saw where that was going, didn't we?

2020 Goals:

I'm still working on these. Right now I've got:

• Run a sub-30 5K. I don't know exactly how fast I can run a 5K right now, but the last time I tried (end of November) I ran it in just under 33 minutes. I'm pretty sure I can shave off those three minutes.
• Log 400 miles of running (outdoors and treadmill). (I have a new Garmin, so it is easier to log my treadmill activities to the same location as my GPS activities.)
• Catch up on all the books I have downloaded to my Kindle. There are so many.
• Read the Book of Mormon as a family. We can do it!
• Start a social media hashtag called #forrealfriday where people take pictures and post about real-life stuff, not just the beautiful stuff. Be on the lookout.
• Crochet 20 beanies for a service project run by a family in our ward.
• Crochet 15 new snowflakes for my Christmas tree.

I'm excited about this new year, and the new decade.

Felix is Seven!

I am a month behind on this, but Felix turned seven! For his birthday we took him, Ike, Trixie, and two of Felix's friends to see a very mediocre movie (Abominable).

Felix is a fun and thoughtful boy. He is a lot like me - very methodical in his life and very frustrated when things don't go to plan. He is a great student and excellent (though oddly reluctant) reader and writer.

When Felix is joyful, it shows through his whole body. He celebrates with dancing, and nobody is quite sure where he got that since neither Eric nor I are much of dancers.

He is very into nature and remembers a lot of facts about animals, bugs, and plants. He just had a unit on bats at school. At dinner one night he told us about the smallest bat in the world, and Eric acted incredulous about his facts. Alexa and Google then confirmed that Felix knew what he was talking about. Then Felix told us about the wingspan of the biggest bat in the world, and again, Eric questioned him. And again Alexa confirmed that Felix was accurate.

Although Felix is not hugely interested in reading, he does like to be read to, and he has an impressive vocabulary.

As has basically always been the case, Felix has a very adult palate. He snubs child-friendly foods in favor of things like sushi. There are a few meals that he's not crazy about, but by and large he is the easiest kid to feed.

Felix is an attentive older brother and generally compliant younger brother. He loves to educate his sisters.

This year we've tried a few methods of getting chores done, and right now we are on a system of mandatory chores and optional ones. Felix is making the big bucks doing a bunch of optional chores. And he thinks most things are too expensive and not worth his money, so pretty soon he'll have a ton of cash in his drawers.

And a few pics:

Felix was the only child in his kindergarten class to read all the books in the Battle of the Books program. (Ahem, kudos to his mother for tracking down all those books from all those different libraries!)

Felix enjoys climbing on things and then having his picture taken:

My little nature-boy. This was the first time he completed a Junior Ranger program. He's done one or two since this one. (Again, serious help from me in these endeavors.)

He's not the best hiker, but he's getting better.

He ate a pickled jalapeno at a restaurant with Uncle John. He loves spicy foods.

Another hike with Uncle John.

I sure do love this little boy. I'm not ready for him to get bigger.

Felicia: Nine Months

Felicia has upped her crawling game this month. She is more likely to be crawling on all fours instead of the army crawling she was doing at the start of the month. She loves all the food and is pretty good at getting it into her mouth.

She has got such a fun personality and loves to be around people she loves. Sometimes she is in the arms of one parent and gets so excited about seeing the other that she tries to leap into the other parent's arms.

Felicia's favorite things to find on the floor and eat include: paper, cords, shoes, and actual food. It is hard to keep the floor adequately safe for her. She also loves baths and showers. She does well in her car seat still and was better behaved than her older sister for our road trip to Montana for Easter weekend. Speaking of this weekend, she was a big hit with her older cousins, especially Diana, who frequently stated that she wished she had a baby sister. (Four younger brothers, apparently, is not the same as a baby sister.)

I was terrible about taking pictures of Trixie this month, but here are a few:

She is always this happy in the tub:

This month we went to dinner at Grandma Great's and watched Coco, which I love so much. Felicia, (whose real-life first and middle names are actually the same as Grandma's older sister's) was really sweet with her great-grandma.

I was certain that my abnormally fussy, feverish baby had an ear infection. With the next two older siblings both getting tubes, I might be a little paranoid about ear infections because, no, she did not have an ear infection. She was just getting two teeth. It was a rough day.

And here's a video:

A little crawling practice on Saturday night resulted in the unimpressed older kids crawling circles around their baby sister.

A post shared by Sherry (@containyourexcitement) on Mar 5, 2018 at 2:09pm PST

(I got a new phone sometime this month, which explains the drastic difference in picture quality between that bath picture and the next one.)

Felicia: Seven Months

She's still cute, and we still love her.

I stopped swaddling her in the last month, and voila! She started sleeping better. She is so much more adept with her hands that she can find her pacifier and stick it back in her mouth. Sometimes she still has a rough time falling asleep, but by and large we are getting through naps and nighttime so much better. I can't believe it's taken us this long.

Felicia loves her family and is less certain about strangers. The other day, I had just gotten Felicia up from a nap and fed her when Ike came home from school. She was so excited to see him and kept giggling at him as she tried to get closer to him. It made him so happy to see how much his baby sister loves him.

Felix, too, loves our baby. He frequently tells me she is the cutest baby in the entire world, and he loves to try to entertain her by dancing in front of her when she is getting fussy. One time this month he was singing a rock-and-roll version of a song about how cute she is. It was insanely obnoxious, but the sentiment was so sweet that we didn't ask him to stop.

She loves to sit up, especially when we are sitting up to the table to eat dinner. She previously didn't like potatoes, but we tried them again, and she liked them. So now I think applesauce is the only thing she doesn't really care for.

Maybe she'll start crawling in the next month. We'll see.

We love to pass her around at church and let other people hold her. It's a little hazardous during flu and cold season, but during sacrament meeting we don't have much choice because the toddler requires my full attention. And often in second and third hours I'm subbing in Primary, so Eric will happily pass her off to some other mama in Sunday School. Apparently the guys in Elders Quorum don't ask to hold her, though.

I don't have very many PJs in her current size, and I didn't want to buy more, so I just got the boys' out. Ditto for Trixie, who actually far prefers her "new" dino and train pajamas to any others.

I love my little girls.

2017 - In Review

It's my annual wrap-up. In the past I've felt like a lot of what I write in my yearly review was covered already in posts, but since I've post so infrequently this year, it's like it's all new!

2017 Highlights:

• Baby Felicia was born. We just love her. (And she looks more like me than my others, which also makes me so happy.) (I also got a new nephew this year.)
• Eric finished his grad program! No more grad school! More salary! Hooray!
• Trixie's cardiologist said he doesn't even need to see her in 2018! We'll go back around January 2019.
• Ike has made great strides on the piano. He doesn't always love it, but he's getting to a point where he can practice something until he gets it right, so he understands the concept that hard-fought things are often worthwhile.
• SOLAR ECLIPSE. I took all four kids by myself to Jackson Hole. It was amazing. I already have 2024's on my calendar. We'll be in Dallas for that one.
• I am going to be on an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" in the spring. (I filmed it in early October.)
• Work changes are always happening, and I'm really happy with my current setup.
• I feel like I'm finally in a groove with ward choir (I'm choir conductor) where I sort of know what I'm doing. We actually did multiple musical numbers on Christmas Eve instead of just one, like last year.
• Eric did three weeks at summer camp this year, including one week where I was super pregnant and nearly everyone came down with a stomach bug. The other two weeks were post-baby, and we all survived.
• We bought our minivan, Sylvia.

Places in 2017:

• I went with Heather (former roommate) to Priscilla's wedding in Newport Beach, California. [Tropical Storm] Lucifer tried to prevent us attending the temple sealing, but he was thwarted.
• Spring break in Seattle!
• Jackson Hole for the eclipse, and then again a few weeks later for my nephew's mission farewell.
• I went to Los Angeles for the above-mentioned filming. My hotel was in Hollywood, which is pretty cool.

Birthdays:

• We kept up with Cold Stone, except for my birthday, where we just plum forgot! I was so upset when I realized it, but I was recovering from strep throat on my birthday and life just really got away from me that week.
• The other birthdays in our family were pretty low-key (even the actual birth-giving day was pretty mellow). 
• Eric and I celebrated our anniversary as a "family birthday," which was a lot of fun.

2017 Goals:

• I'm not finished with Personal Progress, but I am still working on it. Definitely should finish in 2018.
• I wanted to focus on getting steps in, and I did really well until about April. I started having a lot of contractions when I treadmilled, so then I took it easy for a few months. And then I had a baby.
• I did submit some writing for a genealogy publication! They sent it back and told me some corrections I need to make, and I still need to make those and re-submit.

2018 Goals:

• Finish Personal Progress.
• Finish making those corrections on my genealogy piece and re-submit.

Ike is Seven

Somebody praised me this past weekend for keeping up with my blog, and I thought, "Uh, if writing birthday posts qualifies as keeping up, then thanks." With that said, last year it took me a few months to write Ike's birthday post, and this time it's only taken a few days!

For his actual birthday we went to Chick-Fil-A (because I had a gift card). Then we drove around to see Christmas lights, particularly a couple of local houses that have lights that sync to music. The day after his birthday was my father-in-law's retirement lecture at BYU, so we went to hear him speak. Afterwards we had a big lunch, and everyone sang to Ike for his birthday.

Ike's middle name is FUN. (It's not actually, but maybe it should be.) He loves to play, especially with friends. Playing is what motivates him to get his work done. At seven years old, Ike has a handful of responsibilities around the house. He makes sure his laundry is where it goes (whether that be the dirty clothes basket or, if clean, then put away in the closet and drawers). He helps with the small rubbish bins around the house. He puts away the dishes he can reach, wipes down the table, and sets the table for meals. He puts his own toys away and does a lot of general helping as needed. Yesterday that involved holding a very tired and crying baby while I cleaned up the house and prepped it for the ward choir to come practice. He also practices piano, sometimes happily, but sometimes not. It depends a lot on what he is learning. Here we are playing a little duet we've been working on. (P.S. I love PianoMarvel. I haven't talked to you about it, it's probably because we don't talk often enough. It is a great program.) (When I try to link to the website, it just won't work, so we'll do this the old fashioned way: https://www.pianomarvel.com/).

Another little duet from us. We've been working on it since early November. I have loved teaching him what the lyrics of this Christmas carol mean.

A post shared by Sherry (@containyourexcitement) on Dec 7, 2017 at 5:39pm PST

When Ike isn't playing with friends, he likes to play with his brother. They have been taught in the ways of their father and enjoy setting up detailed battles with army guys. I'm sure they play other things too, but they are usually in the basement, and I don't really know what goes on down there.

Ike is a great student. He reads well, and his teacher praises him as the Eagle Scout of her classroom. We had Ike work on writing all summer long, much to his dismay. (I really didn't want him to regress in reading and writing over the summer. Reading, I think, is easy to keep up with, but not so much with writing. I don't think there are many reasons for a kid to sit down and write unless that kid really enjoys it.) When he started the school year his teacher said he had the best handwriting in the class.

Other highlights from the last year:

• He finally lost a tooth! (And then a few more after that.)
• Ike learned to tie his shoes. We had tried to motivate him, but ultimately it was his first grade teacher who provided the adequate motivation to get him to learn. (I don't even know what the motivation was, but it worked. Once he was ready to learn, he learned in about 10 minutes.)
• He learned to swim. He's not spectacular, but sometime in the summer's swimming lessons things started to "click" for him.
• He's a great hiker.
• He is such a huge helper with his little sisters. He really loves them.
• He started reading with inflection, and he doesn't sound like a robot anymore. (Again, thanks to his first grade teacher!)
• We finished his soccer season in the spring, and now we're just taking a break from all extracurricular things.
• We discovered he has a pretty bad horse allergy. It's a bummer.

I love my little boy, and stereotypical as it is, I can't believe how big he is getting. He is so full of excitement for life. He has a lot of questions and likes to ask me lots of "what if" questions. He still holds my hand when we go places, but I'm usually the one to initiate it.

And here are some pictures:

Spring soccer with a very pregnant mom coach:

Holding his newborn sister:

For our family reunion my father-in-law had the grandchildren memorize sections of "The Living Christ" and recite it. Here is Ike helping his little brother with his lines. (We had practiced both parts so much that Ike and Felix knew each other's parts, but I think Felix froze up for a second.) (Mom still remembers their parts too.)

From a hike to Stewart Falls:

The day after his birthday in the Skyroom restaurant:

Trixie: Eighteen Months

Things I want to remember about Trixie at this age:

• She has a lot of teeth, especially compared to what Felix was like at this age.
• She loves to give cuddles. But she also loves to pull hair, pinch, and tackle (if she can).
• She loves to give kisses.
• She started walking at about 15 months old, our latest so far.
• She comes running when she hears somebody filling the tub.
• She's obsessed with oral hygiene and would happily stand at the sink "brushing" her teeth for upwards of 15 minutes. (Her version of brushing her teeth is putting her toothbrush under the running water, then sucking the water out.)
• She likes to get cloths out from under the kitchen sink and wipe up non-existent messes from the kitchen floor.
• She is still allergic to dairy. (So much sadness about this. Please outgrow it, Trixie!)
• She loves to go outside. She gets really upset when people go outside without her. And she gets upset when people come in from being outside because she wanted to be outside too.
• She puts on any clothes she can find, often in ways they are not meant to be worn.
• She loves nursery and the babysitter's house.
• She is a wonderful eater and is rarely picky. Sometimes she eats as much as or more than her brothers in a meal.
• She signs: "more," "eat," "thank you," "all done," and "milk."
• She adores anything with fur.
• She lost all her words when we were dealing with chronic ear infections a few months ago. She still has a bit of a speech delay, but she's coming along. She says:
• go
• hi
• krrrr (a sound effect for an airplane)
• zzzzz (a sound effect when she is zipping or unzipping something, or when she wants you to do those things)
• Ma
• Da
• more
• milk
• uh-oh
• ow
• dog
• up
• As we dealt with the ear infections she's had after getting tubes, she loved getting drops in her ears. Thankfully, we haven't had to do drops for at least a month, but it was so cute how she would willingly lie down and giggle as the drops went in.
• Her eyes are very light blue, and I believe they will stay that way.
• I frequently say she is my favorite kid right now because, "She sleeps the most and argues the least."
• She loves to bring us books to read to her, but she only sticks around for about one page before she leaves to do something else.
• She is my least independent child (so far) and is generally not interested in playing by herself. She frequently wants to sit in my lap.
• When we tell her we are going to go somewhere she hurries to sit on the stairs and sticks one foot in the air waiting for somebody to put her shoes and socks on.
• When we want her to come join our family, we can usually all sing a song together, and she will come running to join us. Sometimes she is eager to participate in the fun; other times she is just curious.
• She loves to wave her arms around "conducting" music when people are singing. I believe this is because I am the ward choir director and Eric leads the music in sacrament meeting. "People are singing? Well, I believe somebody ought to be flailing their arms about!"
• If anyone is playing the piano, she must join in, preferably by sitting on the player's lap, not merely pushing on the keys she can reach while standing on the floor.

Last week Eric told her it was time for bed, and she took off running to hide from him in our closet. She even shut the door behind herself.

Also last week near the bus stop one day while we were waiting for Ike's bus to arrive, I recruited Felix to help me put back rocks that children had kicked out of the neighbors' side-yard. It's clear the bus-waiters frequently kick the rocks out of the side yard. The next time we went on a walk, Trixie spent a solid 10-15 minutes putting rocks back.

Trixie really has no understanding that another baby is coming to join our family soon. She is generally not that interested in babies, but I've been trying to encourage her to play with her dolls a bit more, or at least cuddle her dolls occasionally. It will certainly be an adjustment when the new baby arrives, but Trixie is so sweet that I'm sure she'll love her new sibling, even if that love isn't necessarily instantaneous.

2016 - In Review

I love to review my year. Over the years I've adapted the cut and paste form I used to fill out since some of it was redundant or just not really applicable to me. I'm sure it will continue to morph over time.

Places in 2016:

• Idaho (camping on the way to other destinations)
• Wyoming, including Teton National Park
• Montana, including Glacier National Park
• Closer to home: Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Snow Canyon State Park, Zion National Park
• camping in Goblin Valley State Park
• visit to Texas in February for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary
• visit to Texas in October so my family could finally meet Trixie and see our kids for the first time in a few years

Noteworthy things for 2016 (in no particular order):

• Eric started a graduate program related to his field of teaching, so he will get a raise when this is over!
• Trixie was released from her supplemental oxygen and nasal cannula in February. Then in July her cardiologist said we didn't need to see him for a year.
• Trixie got tubes in December after four ear infections in less than three months.
• Trixie said "mama" before "dada." Then her ear infections caused her to go basically mute. Then when her words came back "mama" was first on the list.
• I survived two weeks of Eric being away at summer camp.
• My dad survived his heart stopping for an extended period of time (about 10 minutes). (A perfect stranger performed CPR until the paramedics arrived, zapped him with the paddles a few times, then hustled him to a hospital. He was unconscious for about 18 hours and then needed a few weeks of treatment, but his survival was quite miraculous.)
• I taught Ike to read.
• I read a few chapter books to both boys: Little House in the Big Woods, Charlotte's Web, and Matilda
• Ike started Kindergarten.
• Ike learned to ride a two-wheeler with only the assistance of neighborhood children, no adults!
• Felix started preschool.
• I coached Ike in soccer.
• I had a very successful year in work and came really close to beating Eric in the gross earnings race.
• I got pregnant and am having baby #4 in June 2017.
• Eric finished the basement.

Birthdays:

• We continued going to Cold Stone for buy-one-get one. 
• I turned 32 and went to a nice dinner with Eric's parents and then to Luminaria. I bought myself new dishes, which was really my combined birthday/Christmas present. Also I went to work the day of my birthday because it aligned with a day they were having Moochies brought in.
• Felix had a party with friends, and it was a blast. I really should hire Eric out.
• We had a surprise birthday party for Ike's sixth birthday.

A Reflection On 2016 Goals:

• I kept Trixie healthy during cold and flu and RSV season in 2016. I was very concerned about her because of her heart defect, but all was well!
• I did not resume bread-making for our family. I don't even think I did it more than once or twice. But I was pretty good about meal planning and cooking.
• I read all the books for book group!
• I did not get around to hosting a meal at the Ronald McDonald Family Room at Primary Children's Hospital, and I feel immense guilt about that.

Goals for 2017:

• Physically, focus on getting steps in each day. That 10,000 step mark is pretty distant for me, especially when I can't go on walks outside. Even hitting half that is a pretty physical day for me. I just want to continue to be conscientious about moving my body and not being sedentary.
• Finish my Personal Progress. It's something my bishop encouraged us to do this year, and I have worked on it in fits and starts.
• Submit some writings for publication in genealogy literature.

Fall Happenings

In the last two years my blogging has dwindled to only highlight birthdays and vacations. I'd love to make promises about more devoted writing time or more frequent postings, but I have no intention of doing either.

Here are a few pictures and blurbs about what we've been up to this fall, though.

On Eric's birthday we hiked to Donut Falls. It was a nice hike for our little family. Afterwards we went to an Indian restaurant. And we both were so happy that we can take our kids to actual restaurants to eat actual food without having to deal with them acting like horrible people.

I coached Ike's soccer team this year. My brother aptly calls soccer for this age group "Swarm Ball." It was a neat experience, and I'll probably do it again at some point. I loved spending extra time with Ike. I sometimes felt annoyed with parents who shouted at their kids opposite instructions of what I was giving them, or who wanted to give me pointers on coaching. Folks, I have never played soccer except in elementary school P.E. I only signed up to coach because I got a few emails saying our team still really needed an assistant coach. If all you other parents think you can do a better job, then by all means, please do. Otherwise, the appropriate thing to do is say, "Thanks for coaching this soccer team." Also, I think there was an attitude of, "Oh, I'm too busy to coach." Which, okay, I get it. But who isn't busy? We're all busy. It's the American thing to be doing too many things. If it were just the kids, I'd be all about doing this more often.

At this age level the teams do not play with referees, instead the coaches and parents referee the game. We don't really call handballs unless the kid straight-up picks up the ball with his/her hands, and we don't keep score (officially). I loved it when my fellow ref (usually a coach, but sometimes a parent) had the same attitude about this whole thing that I had. (My attitude was, "This is a game, and my kid is five.") Those games were the most fun for me. I never once reffed with another female. Some men treated me like I was stupid. These games were the least fun for me.

Sometimes this boy was constantly in the action, but as the season wore on he was more likely to hang out of the swarm and see if he could head off an opponent who had taken off with the ball.

It looks like I'm chewing this kid out, but I promise I'm not. His parents had come down hard on him during half time, and he came back very upset. I was telling him that he was doing a great job. (He was one of our better players, and one of my favorite kids.) About three minutes after this was taken, he got nailed in the face with a soccer ball and hardly shed a tear.

Being around Ike and watching him interact with a bunch of boys his age was such a fun experience. I really do love this little boy, and I'm glad we got to do this together. I'm also pleased to report that even if I had not been his coach, I think my boy would have been one of the better behaved and least annoying children on the team. And I'm grateful for that. I feel bad for the parents with annoying kids. (Not even going to try to pussyfoot around that. There were definitely some obnoxious kids on my team.)

We didn't manage to get a big group together for our annual Pumpkin Cruise down by the ropes course on the Provo River. Instead, we hired a sitter for Trixie and just took the boys. We didn't bother with jack-o-lanterns for our boat and just went on our own. There was a big logjam, and we had to portage around that. Felix found that experience really distressing for some reason and kept insisting that we just turn around and go home. But everyone really loved the lights. This was one of those rare occasions when Eric didn't want to do something, and I had to encourage him that it would be worth it. When it was all over he agreed and was glad we got it together to go.

Also, how long until my boys are bigger and stronger than me, and they can be the ones to help Eric with carrying the canoe to the river and getting it on and off the car?

Trixie is One

I can hardly believe my little Trixie is one. She is a delightful little baby. She is still chunky, but she is certainly losing her rolls, and it makes me sad. Her hair is still blonde, and her eyes are still blue. She is a little cherub.

Trixie pulls herself up to standing and walks along furniture. She also occasionally stands by herself, but she hasn't tried walking on her own yet. Even when I try to get her to walk while I hold her hands, she just plops down. She climbs the stairs and has even figured out how to come down them without falling. I don't trust her enough yet to let her do it without considerable supervision, but she's improving.

Trixie loves animals. I cannot emphasize this enough. When she sees animals she sometimes tries to jump out of our arms to go pet (read: pull fur, ears, tails, limbs of) the animal. At our ward campout this month she had a blast petting the ever-patient Pancho. (At our ward campout this month, I also declared my fourth time camping with her my final straw. We will not be doing that again until at least next spring!)

She also got a kick out of riding the pony at Thanksgiving Point, but I think all she really wanted to do was pull Chief's mane.

She learned how to suck from straws, and especially from my water bottle this month. And now she obsessively seeks out my water bottle if she thinks it may be near her. Half of what she slurps ends up on her shirt, but at least it occupies her.

Trixie got two new teeth this month, bringing the total to eight. Ike and Felix were really late teethers, so this mouth full of teeth on such a little one seems very strange to me. She uses her chompers to bite people, especially the shoulders of people who are holding her. Also she uses them to eat all the food. She's outgrown her aversion to bananas and now will eat most things with meat being her least favorite food group.

This month we went to Park City for a couple of days with some of Eric's family, and Trixie got to have her first go at a pinata. She really didn't get it, but she was pleased with the loot she got from the ceratops's head.

Last weekend we had a little family party for her. While I posed next to her with the heart-shape caked I laboriously made and decorated for her, she reached out and grabbed a handful of icing. Clever girl.

 Trixie is a light in our family. She has a sweet and mellow demeanor. She is inquisitive and somewhat destructive. She loves to participate in our family and gets excited when we are all together, especially if we are singing. Trixie adores her older brothers and sometimes stands at the window by our front door so she can see them playing outside. She loves music and often reaches up to play the keys on the piano. In general she is pretty quiet and doesn't say a lot of words or make many sounds. (She says "hi," and I think "da" and "ma" are in her vocabulary too, but that may be wishful thinking.) Trixie waves, gives high fives, and claps. She smacks her lips and loves to visit other families during church each Sunday.

Trixie: Ten Months

Trixie is now a very mobile baby. She can go from lying to sitting and sitting to lying, and she can crawl all around.

In addition to her two bottom teeth, she has two of her top teeth breaking through. Oddly, it wasn't the "two front teeth" (or incisors), but the teeth to sides of those (lateral incisors). I have also caught a glimpse of one of the incisors, so I think it will break through soon.

This girl loves to eat everything. We have yet to give her something she doesn't like.

She learned to wave this month. It took a lot of practice, but it was worth it.

She loves our family's new-to-us piano. She makes a lot of noise when anybody plays it.

She loves bath time and always leans forward to lap up the water like a dog. When she hears the bath water running she comes to check it out. (Felix was like that too.)

This month we've had a lot of family in town, and it has been fun to watch Trixie interact with her cousins. She met Daniel for the second time; he's about 3 months older than her. No pictures, but it was sweet to see him try to mimic the way she crawls. (He's a bum-scooter rather than a crawler, but he was intrigued watching her on all fours and gave it a try a few times.) She also got to meet her nearly-twin-cousin for the first time. They are about 17 hours apart. We took several pictures of them together but this was the best I've got. They are behaving like Disney princesses and not looking at one another. (Has anybody else ever noticed this? When you put multiple princesses in one image, they don't interact with each other and they all stare in different directions.) Also, Trixie sure is chubby next to her little peanut cousin.

All in all, Trixie is a delightful little girl. We are loving watching her grow and develop.