Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful and very merry Christmas. Our festivities started on Christmas eve at David's parents house in the afternoon. We spent a few hours on Christmas eve with the Lazenby's since we wouldn't be seeing them on Christmas day. (We have begun rotating families to save us from having a miserable Christmas day in the car.) Anyways we exchanged gifts, enjoyed each others company and then headed off to my parents house for their Christmas party. Davids mom got Dutch one of those indestructible DVD players which of course he thinks is the coolest thing ever and my mom got Dutch a little grocery cart for Christmas and he absolutely adores it. He pushes it everywhere. Christmas morning David, Maylee and I woke up bright and early and then waited for Dutch to wake up. David wanted to wake him up but I wouldn't let him because I wanted him to be in a good mood for the rest of the day. So we waited a couple of hours for Dutch to wake up and then we headed off to my parents house for a big Christmas breakfast. The one tradition that I definitely want David and I to do for Christmas is to have a big breakfast, I really don't care about the dinner I just want us to have a big breakfast. And my Dad came through. We had a ton of food and it was delicious. After breakfast I was in charge of aerobics. We wanted to have a 'Dan in Real Life' Christmas, with a bunch of activities. So I was the aerobics instructor and it was a ton of fun. After that we all got ready for the day and then sucked into a puzzle. And we pretty much worked on the puzzle for the rest of the day. But over all it was a great Christmas.

We had an excellent surprise for our family on Christmas morning. This year for Christmas David and I decided not to do presents for our small family. Not so much out of choice but more out of necessity. I won't go into it but lets just leave it at things are tight and Christmas didn't come at a convenient time. Well Christmas morning I got an anonymous text telling me that Christmas was at our front door. At first I thought it was one of those spam text messages that I sometimes get. But when it came a second time David decided to check it out. And to our great surprise there were presents on our door step. We were extremely grateful for the wonderful generosity and thoughtfulness of such a gift. And it was fun for the kids (or I should say Dutch) to open.

Christmas night after we got home from all of our activities we took Christmas down. David and I were both so ready to have our house back to normal, so we didn't wait at all. It was a fun Christmas and I'm just sure it'll feel like next Christmas will be here again tomorrow. Anyways, I brought my camera to my parents house Christmas day so that I could get a lot of great photos but I forgot my battery to my camera, so these are pretty much the only pictures I have, so sad.

Christmas Party

Monday night was our Lazenby family Christmas party. David's parents always go way out and the party is just a blast. Every year the 'real' Santa Claus makes an appearance. He's been coming to their Christmas parties ever since David was 3, the same guy every year. Everyone gets to sit on his lap and tell Santa what we want for Christmas. Maylee did fine sitting on Santa's lap, she was just interested in his beard. Dutch on the other hand didn't' want to get close to Santa, so finally I had him sit on my lap while I sat on Santa's lap and that he could handle Our little family with Santa and his elf This year Fawn bought us all gingerbread houses and everyone got into a decorating competition. Lets just say David and I didn't win. David tends to go over and beyond on his creativity. But it was a lot of fun to watch everyone try and decorate their own house. The finished houses, ours is the one with the brown gingerbread man and the satellite dish on top. Every year Santa brings us all a present which is always an adorable pair of pajamas. The kids match and then the adult men match and the adult girls match. So every year we put our pajamas on and take a ton of pictures. It's always a lot of fun. Then after all the festivities are over we just lounge around and enjoy each others company. We look forward to this party every year and it just seems to come and go so fast. I love this last picture because it describes the rest of the evening very well

10 Months Old

Maylee is ten months old today. I just can't believe how fast time is flying by. It just seems to be going faster and faster. She has not slept through the night again. It all started on Monday. She just was not feeling well at all and I figured it was because on Sunday night she finally cut her very first tooth. (She's a little late in the game.) Anyways so I figured her crabbiness and not feeling well was probably due to her tooth. But then later in the day her eyes were looking just a little too red and had a lot of the yellow-green gunk in the corners. So then I started thinking she was getting pinkeye. We had our Lazenby family Christmas party on Monday night (I'll post about that later) and everyone there kept telling me that it wasn't pinkeye. I've never dealt with pinkeye before so I have no idea. Anyways Tuesday dawns bright and early and her eyes seem to look better, so I thought, good it must not have been pinkeye. Well then the day wears on and her eyes look like they did on Monday night. So at Mutual last night the other ladies in the Presidency said that is was pinkeye. And at this point I was definitely agreeing with them but I figured she's made it this long she can't wait til tomorrow for a doctors appointment. So I get her to bed last night and she is not sleeping well at all. By about 2 in the morning, I haven't had any good sleep. David was up studying for his last final, so I told him that I was just going to take her to good night pediatrics, because we aren't sleeping anyways. I take her down there and you know, I still am not really sure on the whole pinkeye thing, but she does have two ear infections. Poor girl. I'm not sure about the pinkeye thing because the doctor never even looked at them. It seems like she just took my opinion on the matter, so who knows, but she is on antibiotics for her ears and eyes. So hopefully I can get her feeling better in the next couple of days and we can try this whole sleeping through the night thing out again.

So she is ten months old today and not feeling super great. When she is feeling good the girl is all get up and go. She can't hold still for even a second, she just has to be on the move. She still isn't walking but if she has a push toy she can walk with that across the room. Her absolute most favorite thing to play in lately is her car seat. She is constantly sitting in it, or trying to stand in it. And since it isn't a stable toy she is always falling over and out and hitting her head and it really just involves a lot of tears. I'm not quite sure why she loves it so much. But I just can't keep her out of it. She is finally drinking out of a sippy cup, she refused to for the longest time but now she will take one and enjoys sucking on it, thank goodness. And her absolute favorite food is spaghetti, she loves the ground beef in it. I have this old babydoll that I had when I was a little girl, it is just rags now but Maylee loves the thing. Maylee is such a great baby minus the not sleeping situation. I love her so much and still feel overwhelmed with love every time I look at her.

She did it!!!

Maylee slept through the night last night, yeah! We went to our ward Christmas party and by the end of the night she was getting so sleepy. So when we got home, I nursed her and put her to bed by about 8:15 or so and she slept until 6:10 in the morning. It was so awesome. The only problem is now I know that she can do it, so now it's going to be frustrating if she doesn't keep it up. But we are definitely getting somewhere. I'm just so excited. Although just because Maylee slept through the night doesn't mean the rest of us did. Dutch woke up at 2:30, coughing really bad. So we had to take care of him. But I'm just sure that one night I'll be able to sleep all though out the night. Hopefully it'll be soon.

Getting Somewhere

So I checked out a book at the library called, "The No Cry Sleep Solution". Maylee and Dutch are completely different babies. And Maylee can NOT cry it out to fall asleep. It doesn't work for her and I don't want to have to make her cry it out. So I checked out this book. The first two main suggestions are: 1. put your baby to bed early, between 7-8, they say if your baby goes down to late and is overtired they will not sleep as good. 2. Naps are very important, if your baby takes good naps, they will sleep better at night. Well Maylee doesn't take good naps, but I have been forcing her to. Basically I hold her in a tight position, until she falls asleep. She does cry when I do that but I can justify it because I am holding her. And I really only had to do that the first couple of days to get her body in the habit of taking naps and now she is taking two naps a day. Of course they are only between 45 minutes and an hour long but we're getting there. And I also started putting her to bed at 7:30. And guess what, she is sleeping so much longer. She isn't sleeping through the night yet but we're getting closer. She sleeps until about 3 in the morning, last night she slept until 4:30 in the morning. So she is doing about a seven hour stretch and then she eats, goes back to sleep and then wakes up at 6:30. So it is definitely a lot more bearable. I can handle life so much better when we are only waking up once a night. I am hoping to cut out the one feeding but at least we have gotten this far and so quickly. There are a lot more suggestions in the book but I had to return it. So I took my notes and I'm going to keep on working with Maylee. So hopefully I can have her sleeping through the night within the next month, that would be fantastic.

I feel like I am just getting way behind on posting. It just seems like I have no time to just sit down and write a post. Lately I just can't seem to catch up. My house always feels trashed to me, which really keeps me feeling stressed out. It just feels like I am not on top of things at all lately. I'm feeling kind of burned out. And I think I know why. Let me explain. My adorable, gorgeous, precious baby girl is not, let me repeat NoT, sleeping at night. I am lucky if I get a three hour stretch. Lately she has been up about every hour to two hours. And it's not like she is hungry, she just wants me to hold her or pat her bum while she sleeps. So I have even tried having her sleep with us and that makes it even worse. Then she wakes up at about two in the morning and thinks it's time to have a party. It has been nine and a half months since I have slept through the night. I am exhausted. And you know what's really sad, if I get a night where I am only waking up every three hours I actually feel a bit rested. When Dutch was a baby he didn't sleep through the night until he was ten months old. But he was never up as much as Maylee is. He was only up once or twice a night. And then I could take naps with him during the day. So I could function and stay on top of things and actually have an ounce of patience in my body. Now I feel like I am always on edge. Anyways with Dutch we finally just let him learn to cry it out. The first night he had to cry it out, he cried for about 20 minutes and the next night maybe 13 and then after that he was only crying for less than a minute every night and sleeping through the night. So I have tried this technique with Maylee. No such luck. The girl got her mothers stubbornness, I'm afraid. She will stand in her crib for an hour and never once sit down. So I can't let her cry it out. Because I just can't do that to my baby. I never ever let Dutch cry more than 20 minutes and I never really had to. So I just don't know what to do for Maylee. So needless to say I'm very tried and feel like I am running on a very short fuse. The funny thing is, the other night David and I decided to put the pack in play in the office that way if she kept waking up we could put her in there and let her cry and not have her wake up Dutch. So she woke up at 12:36, I nursed her and put her back in her crib at 1:11, so I was up for 35 minutes. Then she woke up at 3:30 and I nursed her and put her back in her crib at 3:54. So 24 minutes I was up. As soon as I put her back in her crib and crawled back into bed she started crying, I knew she was hungry, I just fed her. So I lay there for a minute, b/c I was too tired to go and get her. But then David got up and got her and put her in the pack in play in the office, shut the office door and our bedroom door. And I laid in bed pretending to be asleep because I didn't want David to tell me to go and get her, I was just to tired. So here is where it gets funny. The next morning David calls me from school so excited and says "so how did you sleep last night". I was trying to figure out what he was hinting at. So I said, "OK I guess, she was only up every three hours." (She wakes up at six every morning.) Then David got quiet and said "She woke up twice", me "yep". David "I thought that when I got up and put her in the pack in play that was the first time she woke up. I thought you got to sleep all night long." David sleeps through it all. He has no idea. But if it really is the thought that counts, it was sweet that he thought he was letting me sleep all night long by getting up and putting her in the office. I guess it's a good thing she is so cute. Otherwise I really don't think that I could keep hanging in there.

Now for the reason I even sat down to post. Sorry I guess I needed to vent a little bit. Anyways we decorated our house for Christmas. I love Christmas time. It was so magical when I was a little girl and I haven't felt the magic for many years until I had kids. And now Christmas is just magical again. Although Dutch still doesn't understand but that's ok, I'm pretty sure next year he'll get it. But we had fun decorating our house, David and I decorated while the kids played in the boxes and ornaments. Our Christmas tree is decorated half way up the way I like for the tree to look. With all of my pretty glass ornaments. And then half way down in our cute soft ornaments that the kids can't break. Dutch was really exciting when we were decorating it about all the "balls" we were putting on the tree. He just doesn't understand why he can't play with those "balls". Then after we got the house decorated we made sugar cookies. I think that is another reason why David and I love Christmas so much. It's our excuse to eat as many sugar cookies as we want. One of my most favorite things about decorating for Christmas is my Christmas china. David's really good freind Bill from his mission has sent us Christmas china every year since we have been married and I just love it. I have it set out all month long and I love for us to have at least one fancy meal on it. This year I am a lot more nervous about having it set out for fear of Dutch breaking it. But I've decided that I can't never use it because of Dutch, so I have to just really reinforce the fact that he is not allowed to touch it.

So my Mom was able to work on a couple of the pictures that she took the other day. They look so great, especially considering the fact that we didn't have the best backgrounds to work with. We just took them in my parents backyard because there was just to many of us to go anywhere with some really pretty backgrounds.

Family Photos

We took family pictures yesterday while we had the whole family together for Thanksgiving. My Mom got some really good ones. She hasn't done anything to fix them up yet so don't pay any attention to the background. I'll repost after she plays around with them in photoshop but for now I wanted to share some of my favorites. There are a bunch of them and they're in no specific order. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving again this year. We are so very lucky during Thanksgiving because our families celebrate on separate days. So instead of picking one family and switching every year we get to spend the holiday with both. On Thursday we spent the day at David's parents house. We had a great time there and a wonderful dinner. We just spent the day visiting and stuffing ourselves full of delicious food. Then on Saturday we were able to spend the day at my parents house. Normally on Saturday we have a ton of family over, almost more than we can visit with but this year was really low key which was fun but I certainly miss all the cousins that I usually get to see. Dutch had a blast on both days playing with all his cousins. He definitely wants to play with the bigger kids now, he sometimes has a hard time keeping up but he certainly tries. Maylee is getting to be a lot more social. She will now go to people other than David and I and not cry. Which is a lot of fun for us to see her being held by her grandparents and aunts and uncles. Noah was in town for Thanksgiving and I always love seeing him. I didn't get very many pictures of Thanksgivings this year but I did manage to get a couple of had to have pictures at my parents. I just get so busy visiting that I forget to take any pictures. But I just had to get these ones . Maylee was filthy after eating dinner so I put in her my moms kitchen sink for a bath. And she looked so little and cute in there. And of Dutch playing in the pile of sand. He just sat there with a cup and poured sand all over him, it was pretty cute. And last but not least David got the kids to take a nap about 30 seconds before we were going to take our big family photo. Dutch and Maylee slept through all the photos except for the last three, Maylee woke up and decided she wanted her Uncle Noah to hold her.

Toilet

Maylee definitely is a different kid than Dutch. There were things that Dutch never did, so I just never even worried about them or Maylee doing them. Well the other day David and I are standing in our bedroom talking when all of the sudden David hears water splashing. So he walks into the hall bathroom to find Maylee standing at the toilet splashing her little hands in the water. I swear that girl finds anything to get into. Her sleeves were soaking wet but she thought it was so much fun. So now I have to be very careful of the toilet lid being open. Here's the little stinker. In this picture she was being entertained forever just by sitting in the laundry basket.

Tunnel

For Dutch's first birthday we got him a tunnel from Ikea. He never really enjoyed playing with it. When he first got it we couldn't get him to crawl through it, it's like it scared him or something. It took probably until he was closer to 18 months to enjoy playing with it. And then he only really liked playing in it if someone else was playing with him. So we pretty much never pull it out to play with. Well I've pulled it out a lot more since Maylee has started crawling. I pulled it out one day after she first learned how to crawl. I figure she would be afraid of it like Dutch was and wouldn't play in there. Nope, she loves it, the first time I got it out she crawled right in. Now Dutch and Maylee love to play in there. I think Dutch likes it so much now because I can't see him tackling Maylee.

Football Game

A couple weekends ago we finally went to one of Craig's football games. We hadn't been all season but lucky for us his team made it to the playoffs so we went to the first playoff game. We had a great time going with Fawn, Dave, Allison and Darren. Of course keeping Dutch entertained the entire time wasn't easy. After he ate all the candy and food he could handle he had enough of sitting on the bleachers. So David took him for a walk and then he was good for a little bit longer but not super long. So then he convinced me to take him on a walk. He of course had his Lighting McQueen car (he doesn't leave home without it) so I took him to part of the bleachers that were empty and he raced his car up and down the bleachers for about the last 40 minutes. He had a blast doing that. We both got a pretty good workout from that. It was so much fun to get out of the house as a family and do something fun. That doesn't happen very often around here, so I really enjoy it when it does.