A Little Catch Up

It has been a while since I blogged, but now that I can post from my phone, hopefully that will change.  

Nate has been growing and growing.  He started crawling at around 5 months and now that he is 9 months, he is a superb speed crawler.  He pulls up and cruises while holding onto furniture.  He can stand by himself for a few seconds at a time and can walk while holding onto someone's hands.  I'm sure his first steps aren't far away.  Nate hates baby food because he wants to feed himself.  He likes veggies and meat more than fruit  and his most favorite food is grilled zucchini.  He can say mama and dada and actually mean me and Juan, he can also sign finished.  He loves to talk and babble and put EVERYTHING in his mouth.  He is a sweet baby who likes to give hugs and kisses and is my first baby who likes being read to.  Jovi and Corbin adore their little brother and he thinks they are pretty great too.  

Corbin graduated from preschool at Applecreek at the end of May.  I always got glowing reports from his teachers, he was a great student and had lots of friends in class.   Corbin is currently taking swim lessons and loving them.  His most favorite thing to do right now is to play with Alec who lives next door to us and is Jovi's age.  He also likes to build Hot Wheels racetracks and race his cars, play with play dough, build with Legos and ride his bike.  I'm not sure what he would say his favorite food is, but he really likes spaghetti with meatballs.  He loves reading books about Tornados and volcanoes.  He can currently read Bob books with very little help from me and is very good at simple addition.  He struggles with writing, but is working on it.  Corbin is a funny boy with quirky sense of humor.  He loves his brother and sister and is often very thoughtful about their wants and needs.

Jovi is happy it is summer because she loves to swim and our neighborhood pool is open, but misses our homeschool co-op.  She is taking swimming lessons too and is a very enthusiastic student.  Jovi loves to craft and draw and is getting very good at it.  She is working very hard at reading more and harder books.  She is doing very well in math and her favorite subject is history.  She loves the show My Little Ponies and can draw them quite well.  Jovi's favorite food is cheese pizza or maybe a cheeseburger. We talk a lot about healthy foods and healthy choices, but you wouldn't be able to tell what she eats by how she looks.  She is a tall, skinny girl.  Jovi is a wonderful big sister to her little brothers.  She is sweet and caring and a wonderful helper for her parents.

A Family Update

Nate can sit up and sort of crawl now.  He kind of rocks back and forth on his hands and knees and then lunges forward.  He still hasn't got a rhythm with his hands and knees moving together, but it is only a matter of time.  He gets around surprisingly well with his lunging and scooting.  He loves putting everything he can get his hands on in his mouth so now that he is mobile, we are very careful about what is left on the floor.  Nate got his first tooth yesterday, one of the bottom center ones finally broke through.  I have been giving him food most evenings now, he has had avocado and sweet potatoes so far.  He is less than thrilled with food, he will eat about a teaspoon full unenthusiastically and then he refuses any more.  On the other hand, he loves water.  He has a sippy cup that he just thinks is the best.  He usually ends up all wet, but very happy about it. 

Jovi and Corbin had fun picking out presents for Juan's birthday.  Jovi got him a box of chocolates and a Hotwheels car and Corbin got him a bunch of Hotwheels cars.  Juan took the day off and so we had a fun time as a family, lunch out and dinner at home.  Juan is such a great dad and husband, I hope he had a wonderful birthday and knows how much he is appreciated by his family.

Yesterday we went to the park.  There were two girls there who looked like they were about 5 or 6 year old and they asked Jovi to play with them.  Corbin went over and started swinging on the swings.  Jovi played for a while and then asked Corbin if he wanted to play.  The girls didn't seem happy about that, but Jovi just told him, "He's my brother, he's cool.".  So then the other girls wanted to make him a bad guy, and ran away from him, but Jovi told them no, that he didn't like being a bad guy and went over and gave him a hug, she reminded them about how cool he was and suggested they be lost girls and he could be their hero.  I'm not sure if that is what they ended up playing, but they seemed to all have fun together after that.  It was SO sweet how Jovi took care of her brother.  I love that they are such good friends and play so well together.  They are both so sweet with Nate.  I love watching their sibling relationships grow and develop. 

Nate Laughs

Nate has been laughing for a while, but we just got it on video a few days ago.

The Wedding

Emma and Evan's wedding in St. George was beautiful.  Here it is in pictures and movies.

 

 

 

Sledding

Being a Texas native, I've never actually been sledding.  That was remedied the day after Christmas when we went sledding with Emma and Evan in Provo.  They took us to this awsome sledding park that was like a big huge bowl.  It had been snowing since Christmas Eve so there was lots of snow, in fact it was still snowing while we were sledding.  Everyone had so much fun. My mom stayed home with the baby and even though Juan was feeling bad with the beginings of a very bad cold, he went down the hill a few times too.

Christmas Part 2

We knew that we were going to Utah for Christmas since the end of this summer when Emma got engaged and chose Utah as the location for her wedding.  We originally planned to drive up over three days and drive back over three days but, life happens.  New babies have their own ideas. 

Nate hasn't liked riding in the car since he was one week old and he screams to express this displeasure.  This got progressively worse till mid November when he would scream from the time he was put in his car seat till the time he was taken out with no break.  Really, I'm not exaggerating.  At that point we decided there was a price to sanity and we were willing to pay it.  We decided to fly to Utah.  He has gotten better since then about riding in the car.  Now he only screams about 1/3 of the time, but we are still glad we chose to fly.

We flew into Salt Lake City on the 23rd where we shared a two room suite with my parents and one of my sisters.  On Christmas Eve, we visited temple square and the mall right next to it.  It started out cold and slightly rainy and then got cold and snowy.  It was really neat watching all the snow fall.

 

 

That night, my dad read the Christmas story while the children acted it out (sort of).  Jovi had been looking forward to Nate playing baby Jesus since I got pregnant.  Nate wasn't so sure, he only lasted a few minutes, but they were the best minutes of the pageant.

We set out the children's stockings and they made a plate of milk and cookies for Santa and the children were sent to bed.  The adults stayed up and played a game of ticket to ride.  The next morning, the kids woke up at 6:00am (5:00 central time) and since it turned out everyone was awake, the kids got to open their presents.  (The video is kind of long and I was really tired while making it.)

Nate really loves his Eeyore toy.  I was actually really surprised that a three month old would like a toy so much, but he does.  It is super cute, but I do have to wash him regularly because of all the chewing.

After the parents went back to bed and then woke up at a more reasonable hour, we got dressed and went out to play in the snow at the park across the street from our hotel.  Juan took Nate back to the hotel after about 10 minutes.  We had him bundled in a really thick bunting, but even with the short exposure he got chapped cheeks.  I felt really bad about it.  We were much more careful keeping his skin covered whenever we were out after that.  The kids and I had lots of fun though.  Jovi and I liked the snow, Corbin loved it.  I think he would have stayed outside all day if we had let him.  The kids are each showing off their "snow castles" made with plastic cups.

That evening, we had Christmas dinner at IHOP and then went to Temple Square to see the lights.  Temple Square was beautiful, but we didn't last long because it was SO cold.  We saw the nativity, walked around a bit and went back to the hotel to warm up.  It was a really nice Christmas Day.