Full of Smiles

Man, having two little kids really wears me out!!  Both of them are high maintenance and need different things, often at the same time.  It's a good thing I am good at multi-tasking.  I have also learned to just let things go and not to worry if my house is dirty, or we are all still in our pajamas or if we are having a snack day.  Sometimes my sanity is just more important!

Hayden is the cutest little charmer you could ever meet.  Just a little bit of sweet talking to him and he is all smiles.  Sometime when I am holding him and not even paying attention to him I will look down and just see him smiling up at me!  It is the cutest thing ever!!

The weather down here is amazing.  Perfect walk weather, and sometimes we don't even need our jackets!  As usual, Kylie loves being outside, especially when there are other kids around.  She sat for an hour the other day playing with these girls.  She just went straight up to them and they were nice enough to play with her.  I just hung back and let her do her thing.  Didn't want to be the hovering mom while she learns to play with others.  Hayden just slept in the stroller the whole time.

Kylie is finally starting to get her imagination play in.  Now I catch her with her dolls or ponies playing with them and talking for them, whereas she used to just toss them around the house.  She is also getting a longer attention span when I try to do an activity with her.  Playing with Playdoh used to be a five minute affair, but now we can spend up to 30 minutes making shapes and animals to play with!

Coloring was worse; whenever I'd bring out the crayons she would just eat them, not color with them.  So I decided to bring out the markers instead and she had a ball drawing pictures with them.  When she saw me hang up her picture on the fridge she got super excited and went to town drawing pictures to hang up on the fridge.  Yeah, I ran out of magnets...

On Saturday we went on a family hike around Pioneer Park, Kylie's favorite place to run around and climb on the rocks.  She takes everything at full speed, though, so she kept tripping all over the place.  By the time we got back to the car she was covered in red dirt.  Hayden had fun, too.  Brandon carried him around in the front-pack, and he was actually awake for half of the hike!  He also enjoys being outside, though not when it involves the sun in his face.  The other day I took him with me to take out the trash and it was windy.  It was so funny to watch him squirm and try to get away from the invisible force pushing against him!

Big Helper

We are finally over our colds!  They lasted a long while and were not very fun.  Hayden still has a tad bit of congestion, but overall we are feeling good again!

This week Kylie has been so cute with Hayden.  She gets super concerned when he cries and is always trying to give him something.  Once this week I put him down on the floor to play and she just surrounded him with all her stuffed animals.

Kylie likes to do the exact same thing we are doing, so when we play with a certain toy with Hayden, she has to do it too.  And then she requests that we play with that toy the exact same way with her...

She is also becoming seriously good with the phone camera.  Sometimes when I scroll through all the pictures that she takes I find some pretty awesome ones:

Yeah, she took those.  Crazy, right?

Since Kylie has been off of her pacifiers, she really likes to be in charge of Hayden's pacifiers.  When he cries she goes off and gets it.  I also catch her intensely staring at one, and I can tell she really wants to put it in her mouth.  Hayden still doesn't really like them, which is fine, but sometimes they are worth the fight to get them in his mouth because almost instantly he is asleep when he sucks on one.

Kylie has this baby doll that she is in love with right now.  And it's not even really a doll... it is the Big Baby figurine from Toy Story 3.  She wraps it up in blankets and carries it around, and when I give Hayden a bath she is right next to me giving her 'baby' a bath.  It's so funny.

Recently Kylie went through a huge growth spurt.  She is so tall now and she hardly fits into any of her 2T clothes, and she is only 2 1/2!  I am down to two dresses that she still fits in... luckily all the clothes she got for Christmas are 3T.  Now that the growth spurt is done she is eating hardly anything.  She will eat half of this or half of that and hardly touch any of her meals.  It freaks me out how little she is eating right now, but I have heard this is normal.

Brandon had a campout this weekend, so it was my first time with Kylie and Hayden all alone for an entire night.  Thankfully everyone behaved (even me!) and went to bed at decent times.  It is really tiring, though, when there isn't anybody there to help out, especially at nights.  So happy I have Brandon around usually to help with things!!

House Full of Sickies

All of us are sick this week.  Well, so far Brandon has managed to escape it, but Kylie, Hayden and I have all been hit with a cold.  So lots of runny noses and coughing going on at this house.  Which means that we haven't been outside to play at all and have been cooped up inside all week.  Not very fun, especially for Kylie.

Thus, we have been watching lots of movies and taking it easy.  Kylie's favorite movie of the moment is Cars 2, and thanks to that movie, has learned some new words: car, boat, and McQueen.  She always asks for the movie by saying 'McQueen'.  It's pretty cute!  We also got some new apps for her to play while being stuck inside.  One of them I thought was pretty advanced for her: having to spell words and put them in sentences.  But it is her favorite game and I have even heard her parrot some of the words she is spelling!  (Very, eat, cake)  She is SOOO close to talking, and has been for awhile.  One of these days she is just going to spout a sentence, I know it.  The other day she was crying and looking around, so I asked her what she was looking for, and very clearly she said "My bear!" I was so happy that I was able to help her and have her tell me what was wrong!

Hayden has gotten to the age where he likes to be sitting up and looking around at everything.  So we got the little Bumbo seat out and let him sit in it for a few minutes (until he gets frustrated, haha).  You can definitely tell how chunky he's getting when he sits in it.

And then of course, Kylie has to do whatever Hayden does.  Especially if it involves some toys that she considers hers... like the little blue dog...

We also tried to recreate the super cute picture of Kylie when she was this age on top of our cat, Charlie.  It didn't turn out so well.  Either Hayden wouldn't lift his head or he'd tip over.  At least our cat was tolerant of being squished by him!

In fact, our cat seemed to like the attention, because after we gave up on getting a decent picture, he came and cuddled up to Hayden.

Kylie is still on the fence about naps.  I can get her to take one half of the time, and on the days she doesn't take one she either does fine or completely crashes.  Like the other day at dinner time.  One second eating her dinner, the next, totally zonked.

I think she really needs naps more than ever, now that she has her new 'big girl' bed.  She just loves being able to play in her room before she is ready to crawl into bed at night and during naps.  The problem we are experiencing is in the mornings... they seem to be getting earlier every day.  She used to sleep in until at least 9 AM, but now that she is free to get out of her bed she is in our room before the sun is even up now.  And you can tell she is still tired because she will cuddle in bed with us for a bit until I am ready to get out of bed.  That is probably the reason she has been crashing randomly when she refuses to take a nap...

Kylie loves to talk on the phone with Brandon when he is on his way home from work.  She is a little chatterbox and is pointing to all the things around the house that she has been doing.  Brandon and I are just on the edge of our seats wanting to know what she is saying!  This week Brandon decided to trade his phone for an iPhone, so now we can do Facetime.  Kylie thinks it is awesome to see her daddy's face on the phone, but she won't talk to him like she normally does on the phone.  But I am sure she will warm up to the concept!

Hayden has been so alert lately!  He loves when you talk to him and has even been looking at the little toys on his bouncer seat.  And he is an awesome smiler!  He smiles a ton more than Kylie ever did as a baby.

Luckily Hayden is a happy baby when he's awake and fed.  He is a lot of fun to play with and talk to!  He especially loves Daddy Time.

Happy New Year!

Kylie is sure enjoying her Christmas presents this week.  And also Hayden's Christmas presents.  Hopefully when Hayden is old enough to actually play with his presents Kylie doesn't get all mad that he is playing with something that she assumed was hers.  But so far she is good at sharing!  She likes to hand Hayden her stuffed animals when he is sleeping - it's pretty cute.

Kylie started somersaulting this week off her tramp.  She will somersault right onto the love sac.  She has tried to do it other places, but it works best off the tramp.

While she enjoys her new toys, she also still enjoys her old past times too.  Especially picture-taking.  Hayden and I are her favorite models:

Hayden is staying awake a lot more and is finally getting onto a schedule that I can deal with.  He still won't go to sleep for the night until sometime between 11 PM and 1 AM though.  That is kind of hard, but I am finally adjusting to the 5 hours of sleep per night deal.

He has also been excellent at holding up his head lately and has even started to smile more!  We had his one month check up and he is at 10 lbs 13 oz - turning into a chunk!  His cheeks are getting so cute!  He also likes to play on the floor more, just waving (or jerking) around his arms and legs and looking around, while Brandon or I guard him from potential Kylie run-overs.

And this is what Kylie did when she noticed I was taking a bunch of pictures of Hayden:

We didn't really celebrate New Year's Eve this year, though the fireworks started right after we put Kylie to sleep and I thought it was too bad she missed them.  But we did deliver some New Years plates to a few people and Kylie had so much fun helping to deliver them all around the neighborhood.  Basically doing anything outside of the house she gets super excited about!

Saturday we did something we've been talking about for a while... we took a side down from Kylie's crib so now she has a 'big girl' bed!  For her nap she wasn't willing to sleep in it, so Brandon made a bed for her on the floor... but that night she did so well!  We put her to bed and she played for about an hour in her room before it got quiet.  So Brandon snuck in to make sure she hadn't pulled out her night lights and gotten electrocuted (yes, we have all these new paranoid fears now that she has access to her whole room at night...) and found her curled up in bed under the blankets!  And the next morning she got up and was super excited that she could let herself out of her room and come wake us up when she was ready, not when we decided to finally get out of bed and get her ;).

Merry Christmas!

Kylie did something she never has done before this week!  She fell asleep on the couch!  As mentioned before, she is still debating whether or not she needs naps, and on Sunday last week she decided she did not need a nap, settled down to watch a show on my phone, and then fell fast asleep.  It was the cutest thing!  Kylie is not one to fall asleep just anywhere.  Usually she just sleeps in her crib, so I thought it was miracle!

We've had some nice weather down here, so I have started introducing walks to Hayden.  Luckily he is at the age where he will just fall asleep while in the stroller, and Kylie has been really good about walking beside me or at least staying close!  The first time I got out the stroller, though, Kylie thought it was for her and climbed inside.  Sadly, I wasn't paying close attention, so while I was getting Hayden ready, Kylie climbed to the very top of the stroller, and tipped it over.  She fell smack onto the tile with her head and it was the saddest thing!  Immediately there was the hugest goose egg on her forehead... so swollen it stuck out as far as her nose!  I freaked out a little hoping she didn't have a concussion or anything, but after a good cry Kylie acted as normal and still wanted to go for our walk.  The poor thing had a huge bruise on her forehead this whole past week!  Luckily it is healing well and no real damage was done!

We spent Christmas at home this year, our first time ever doing that!  I was excited to do Christmas for Kylie and Hayden and start some traditions.  Christmas Eve we went to the St. George temple to see the lights.  It isn't as outstanding as the Temple Square lights, but still very pretty.  Kylie loved running around and touching all the lights.

Once Kylie went to bed Brandon and I had fun setting up Christmas.  I had just barely managed to wrap all the presents the day before, so our big project was just setting up Kylie's Santa present:  a mini tramp!  It took way more time and muscle that we expected...

Christmas morning dawned and of course Kylie had no idea what was going on.  She wasn't fazed at all when she went downstairs and saw her new tramp or all the presents under the tree.  She just went straight to her Christmas cereal and started chowing down!

Eventually we got her to open her stocking, which was probably a bad idea, because then she wanted to eat the candy that was in there and spent practically the rest of the time with a fistful of candy that she was determined to eat while opening presents.  It may be a holiday... but we did not let her eat any candy until after lunch.  Kylie also had to pick all the candy canes off the tree before she decided it was time to open presents.  And she still wasn't interested in her tramp...

Finally we got to presents and basically she wanted to play with every present when she opened it (besides clothes), which I was fine with.  No need to rush through all the presents at once!  Her favorite toy of the morning turned out to be a tea set, which surprised me.  She seemed to know exactly what it was for and was so excited for it as soon as the wrapping paper came off.  That made me happy because I was afraid it would be a 'whatever' present that she wouldn't care much for.  So that morning we had a lot of tea parties!

Another toy Kylie got that she had a lot of fun with was her little puppy.  It barks and walks; she really  has fun following it around and making it bark at Brandon and me.

Eventually Kylie tried out her tramp and it is now one of her favorite things to do.  It is perfect for her because we have been having trouble with her jumping all over the couch, so this gives her her own spot to jump without getting in trouble.  We also have the love sac right next to it, so she likes to jump from the tramp to the love sac constantly.

Hayden slept through the whole morning, so he didn't get to see all his awesome presents (toys and clothes that he won't even use for 3 to 6 months...).

That day we also got to Skype with both Aunt Kendra in Italy and Uncle Dallan in California.  It was fun to talk to them and show them their new nephew!

On Friday we got a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Hansen and Uncle Tommy.  Kylie was so ecstatic to have some new people to play with and showed them all her  new toys.  We had a little Christmas with them and the kids got some cute clothes and Kylie got some new bath toys that she had tons of fun with.

We had a nice visit with them over the weekend, and Grandpa Pete and Brandon got a picture of Hayden they've apparently been wanting to do for a bit.  They kinda recreated The Lion King with Hayden over at Pioneer Park.  It turned out really good!

This week Hayden is 4 weeks old!  He is starting to stay awake longer and is slowly warming up to his pacifier in times of desperate need.  Kylie, on the other hand, has spent all week without a pacifier!!  Yay!!