– David loves to tell me that I’m his “sweet baboo” and John is his “best pal.”

– When Drew gets sad, Brooke looks at him and says , “It’s okay, buddy. You gonna be okay, buddy.”

– Drew loves dancing. Every night before bedtime our family dances to “Better When I’m Dancing” by Meghan Trainor. Drew bounces to the song and says “Yeah Yeah” on cue when it’s said in the song.

– After attending a Christian sports camp, we were at the lake, and David was having a hard time getting on his float, but he kept trying and said “legends don’t give up” because he had spent the week learning about “legends” (disciples) from the Bible.

– Brooke says “me three” instead of “me too.” If I say something like, “I want ice cream.” Brooke will respond with, “Me three.”

– Drew loves Amber. Whenever we bring her into a room he’s in, he says, “Amba.”

– David likes to look at the Wayfair catalog and find things to make his room warm and cozy. He’s all about things being “warm and cozy.”

– Brooke likes to lay out tomorrow’s clothes on the edge of her bed before she goes to sleep.

– When one of his younger siblings gets in trouble for something, David will stick up for them and say “he/she is learning.”

– Brooke often says “I’m having a hard time” and “it’s okay to feel disappointed.” She’s very in tune with her feelings 🙂

– When Brooke forgets an item, she says she “forleft it.” She combines the words forgot and left.

Last fall, we had family photos taken. It’s quite an adventure to try and get four kids ages five and under to smile and look at the camera, but it was important to me that we capture this stage in our family’s life. The photographer we used was great. She has grandkids around the ages of our kids, so she knew how to engage them well and was very patient with our family. Below are some of my favorites.

I try to post at least once a month, but I realized I never posted in the month of November. I’m hoping to post pictures from Halloween and Thanksgiving shortly. Our new house has MUCH slower internet, and since John is working from home full-time during the pandemic, I try not to use up bandwidth during the day. In the evening, I like to spend time with him. So, my blogging has taken a back seat. We may have a new internet option come January. If it pans out, I’ll hopefully post a little more frequently.

It’s Sunday morning. John is already at church for a meeting he has before our church service begins. I need to get the kids up. I can hear Brooke making noises in her room. But I wanted to write a quick kid update first.

David – I love his 3-year-old logic. For example, my brother Blake, who lives in Utah, drives a motorcycle. David has seen videos of Blake’s motorcycle on our family messaging app. The other day, someone drove a motorcycle into our neighborhood, and David looked out the window and said “Hi, Uncle Blake.” He thinks anyone on a motorcycle is his uncle. David also thought Thanksgiving was the turkey’s birthday. I’m not sure where he got that idea. I think maybe because his birthday was in October and we had a small party with family for that, and he knows Christmas is Jesus’ birthday and we’ll also have a party with family for that, he then extrapolated that our small family party on Thanksgiving must be because it’s the Turkey’s birthday ha!

Brooke – Brooke’s vocabulary is constantly increasing. Her first official phrase was “What happened?” Whenever she drops something, she says “Uh oh. What happened?” She is very good at saying thank you and please (which often sounds like “nease”). A couple days ago, she said “no thanks” for the first time, instead of just “no.” Side note: I think she hears David say “no thanks” a lot whenever I ask him if he needs to go to the restroom haha. For a couple weeks, she started waking up at night again and screaming. Thankfully she’s slept peacefully the last three nights. I’m hoping this continues.

Baby #3 – I’m getting more and more excited to welcome this baby boy! This pregnancy seems to have been physically more draining for me than my previous two. I’ve struggled with low iron (something that I didn’t have previously), which has caused fatigue, and I’ve had contractions every day for the last couple of months. With Brooke, I didn’t have any contractions until my labor actually started. With David, I didn’t have any contractions until after my water had broken and I was in the hospital. My hands are also super swollen. I can’t take my wedding ring off haha.

We’re so excited for this Christmas season, and it’s been especially fun to look at Christmas through our kids’ eyes. It’s brings back the magic!

Periodically, I want to write “here and now” blog posts and record a little bit about what everyday life is like. This is for my own remembrance so I don’t forget the different phases of life (no matter how mundane).

November was when I first had the desire to do a “here and now” blog post. Even though that was just two months ago, so much has changed since then. In November, my life was full of late nights and late mornings. Truthfully, I often wouldn’t be dressed and ready for the day until about 11 a.m. or noon. I normally went to bed shortly after midnight (which is late for someone who faithfully went to bed between 10 and 10:30 p.m. before having a baby) and got up in the middle of the night to pump and feed the baby. The entire pumping/feeding process would take an hour. Then I’d go back to bed and sleep as long as the baby would let me. While getting up in the middle of the night was hard for me, I relished the slow, quiet time I shared with my baby. This picture captures one of those middle of the night feedings from November.

John has kept very busy with work and church service. Consequently, baby David and I spend lots of time together just the two of us. Normally, 2-3 Sundays a month, David and I attend church alone because John has other church responsibilities that take him to neighboring church congregations. When church is over, we like to put on comfy clothes and snuggle in the basement on Sunday afternoons (like pictured below).

December was when David first started sleeping through the night (hooray!). He went to bed about 9:30/10 p.m. after being bathed. I would wake him up to feed him at about 11:30 p.m. And then he would sleep until about 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. I am so grateful he learned to sleep through the night at such young age. December was still a slow month for us as life still revolved around feeding the baby. I had no idea before having a baby how all-consuming the feeding of a little one can be. It rules my life. In some ways it’s nice though because it forces me to live life at a slower pace. In December, I was able to get some projects done around the house, like organizing our master bedroom closet (a task that before having a baby would have only taken one day, however, it took me a whole week.)

Now that we’re in January, we’re trying to adjust David to an earlier bedtime. He now goes to bed around 7:30 p.m. This allows John and me to have some time together after baby David goes to bed and John is done working. We’re only one week into this new schedule. There’s a book I’m using to help me train the baby to sleep for 12 hours at night. The goal is to have him sleep from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. He did this successfully once last week. During the other nights, he woke up between 2 and 4 a.m. When that happened, I fed him only 2 ounces to hold him over until 7:30 a.m. This normally took about 10 minutes, and he went right back to sleep. However, I had trouble falling back asleep. I’m considering adding a small feeding at 10 p.m. to help him sleep through the night again.

David generally eats 6-7 ounces at each feeding. He eats 4 times a day (about every 4 hours). The sleep training has been a bit challenging because we’ve had to adjust napping schedules. He used to take an evening nap, which is part of why we put him to bed so late. We’re trying to eliminate the evening nap so he’ll go to bed earlier. Every day last week he fell asleep in his jumper while I was doing the dishes.

Right now we’re also focused on transitioning David into his crib from his bassinet. His bassinet has a slight incline, so lying flat on his back in the crib has been an adjustment. In the beginning of last week, he’d cry when I put him into his crib. But throughout the week, he’s acclimated to the feeling of the crib. The night he slept 12 hours straight was in his crib, so that made me very happy and made me feel like we’re making positive progress.

I love being a mom and I love spending time with baby David 🙂 He grows so much each and every week. I can’t believe how much he has changed since he was born, which was less than three months ago. He is a bright shining light in my life.