21 months

Heidi is growing and growing. Her verbal skills often make her seem older than she really is and sometimes I get frustrated with her because she won't be reasoned with, then I remember she's still a baby. Heidi's newest funny thing is to tell people "Bye, bye-bye, bye . . ." in a sweet little voice when she wants them to go away so she can do something she wouldn't otherwise be able to. She started by saying "Bye mom, bye-bye, bye mommy" to me when I was trying to get her dressed in the morning because she wanted to be left to dress herself. Then she started saying it to me when we got home and she wanted me to leave her in the car to crawl all around and explore everyone else's seats. She said it to her aunt when she wanted to be left alone to sneak some candy and has said it to Austin in the car too. Its really hilarious to hear her sweet little way of saying "Go Away!"
This is nothing new, but I don't think I've ever written about it on one of her blogs: Heidi loves stuffed animals- anything she can get her hands on! She loves to snuggle and hug them and has to have at least 4 in her crib. She especially loves her pink bunny and two matching puppies, but any stuffed animal or doll will do for a good snuggle.
Heidi loves to sing and hum and picks up on the words to songs really quickly. She often doesn't get all of the words, but she gets enough of them that its clear which song she is trying to sing. She goes around the house singing primary songs that I sing to her for bedtime or that I sing to Trevor to keep him happy.
Here are some photos I got of her while she was outside playing and wasn't interested in being bothered much. The first is a pretty characteristic Heidi face- she is very expressive especially with her eyes and eye brows. She is also holding and eating a mushroom in some of these because she stole it from me while I was cutting up veggies for my omelet just before we went outside :)

TWO MONTHS

Our little Trevor is now two months old- time is flying! I keep thinking of him as a newborn, but he's not anymore! He's growing so quickly and putting on weight very well.

His personality is starting to come out a bit, but I'm still can't really tell what  he's going to be like. Trevor has started smiling and cooing, but he isn't big on making eye contact, although he will occasionally. Sometimes I wonder if he's just overwhelmed with so many people constantly around him, talking to him, or trying to get in his face. One of his favorite things though, is when I put him on the ground and lie next to him with my arm over him and my face really close to him and sing or talk to him. This is how I've gotten the most smiles out of him. But when all of his siblings try to get in on the socialization, I've noticed that he tends to start looking away from everyone. Trevor has started to discover his hands and bats them around a lot. Unfortunately, he has also started scratching his face sometimes too- every baby goes through it, but it so sad to see the little scratches. Trevor has begun to be a pretty good sleeper at night, only waking up once or twice a night to eat. We still have him sleeping in his car seat though and really need to transition him to his crib. We started putting him in his car seat because he was so fussy starting at about 3 weeks old and was spitting up so much. We thought having him in an upright position would help and it did a little. I also stopped eating dairy and gluten for about a month and started having him more upright when he nurses. He has stopped spitting up so much, but since we tried everything all at once we weren't sure what it was that helped him. I slowly introduced dairy and gluten back into my diet over the last week or so and he seems to be doing fine. Having him sleep in his crib is the next step- I'm just not quite ready for it yet since I'm afraid he might not sleep as well and I really need my sleep with 3 other busy kids. Trevor is not very good at sleeping during the day unless I have him in the baby carrier- he prefers to have all his naps snuggled up close to mom, which isn't too bad for me either since I'm trying to get as much snuggle time in as I can with my last baby (the only down side is when I get a chance to take a nap, it can be tricky to get him to nap somewhere other than tied to me).
We just love this chubby little baby!

20 months

Little Heidi Rose is getting bigger and bigger, which is nice because things are so busy around our house and the more she can do herself the better. But at the same time, I love this age and would keep her like this forever if I could. When people see how many young kids I have, they often try say "Don't worry, they move out eventually" like that's supposed to cheer me- but that is extremely depressing to me. I love having so many little ones even though its so hard and Heidi is a big part of both the joy and the challenge. Heidi has been sick for the last week or so, as you can see from the pictures. Worst of all is that she got a cold sore and the first time that happens for a little kid, their whole mouth gets the virus in it. Her gums were really red, she wouldn't let us brush her teeth although she usually loves it, and she wasn't eating much. By the time I figured out what it was, it was gone pretty quick, but her cold still remains.
Heidi is still extremely social and friendly (although she is very wary of strangers). She squeals with delight and bounces around when her daddy comes home or when she sees family members coming up the driveway to to visit. And she always greets everyone with a big hug around their legs.
Heidi's language continues to develop rapidly. She seems to pick up new words after only hearing them a few times and is putting more sentences together. She talks to me all the time and sometimes I don't understand so I try to guess. When I guess wrong Heidi usually sounds like she's giggling when she says no, like its so funny that I thought she said that.
Heidi is still into everything, makes messes wherever she goes, and enjoys coloring on walls and tables (although she knows she isn't supposed to and sometimes smears it around trying to wash it off herself). I've found that colored pencil comes off much easier than crayon does :)
Thank you, Heidi, for making our days so exciting!

Trevor's Newborn Photos

Here are my favorite photos from Trevor's newborn photoshoot. I'm really surprised that we got so many descent photos given that I had to wrestle Leif into his nice clothes and Heidi didn't want to be in pictures any more after the first 30 seconds. Asher was very cooperative and Leif was okay once we got him going. Trevor just wanted sleep and be warm, but he was a pretty good sport. As she has for all of our Colorado-born kids, my sister-in-law arranged for her sister-in-law to take these photos. I just love having professional photos of all my kids!

 As you can tell by the clothes change, this one was taken after we told the kids they didn't have to be in any more photos, and we were just doing pictures of Trevor. All the older kids came back in and wanted to look at him, so we got this cute picture :)

ONE MONTH

This sweet little guy is one month old already! It's strange how every new baby quickly goes from a new little person you have to get to know to a part of the family you can't imagine not being there. Trevor is gaining weight quickly, despite his problems with spitting up a lot. He loves to snuggle, which is a lucky thing because his siblings are constantly asking to hold him. When they can't do that, they are often hovering over him while I have him or while he is in his swing. For the first few weeks of Trevor's life, I thought his eyes were grey because he only ever opened them in the dim light. Now that he is awake more often and opens his eyes in brighter lights, I've realized that his eyes are actually a dark blue, except just around the pupil he has a ring of lighter blue. They are really pretty eyes- I've never noticed that color variation on anyone else before. Unfortunately, Trevor's passport will say that he has grey eyes because I filled out the paperwork for it when he was only a few days old and we went and applied for it as soon as we got his birth certificate and social security number. He is the youngest person I know to have a passport! He will likely be the youngest person I know to travel outside the his home country too since he and I are supposed to accompany Austin to Canada pretty soon to look for a house before we move the whole family up there in March or April. Here are a few pictures I got of him. I saw a friend of mine do photos of her daughter in a basket each month for a year and it was really cute to see her grow. I tried mimicking this, but it didn't work out very well. The basket isn't big enough and Trevor hated being in it. Here is the one photo that turned out ok, but I didn't even get his whole body ;)

Trevor's First Bath

These two pictures pretty much sum up Trevor's first bath. When I first put him in, he was calm even though he was a little unsure about it. He stayed that way for a couple minutes while I washed him, then started crying. Maybe it just got too cold for him with half of his body exposed to the cold air. Asher and Leif were active spectators there to comment on everything Trevor did and eager to see how he would like a bath. Trevor especially did not like when I took him out of the bath and he had to get dried off before getting dressed again. He didn't calm down again until he was fully dressed and swaddled up in a blanket and in my arms.

Merry Christmas 2016!

Christmas this year was pretty low-key since I just had a baby, but it went pretty smoothly since I had the majority of it prepared before Trevor was born. Austin let the kids open one present on Christmas Eve (not including the one they opened from their cousins-Paw Patrol PJs). Leif opened an elephant that he saw at the store months ago and asked us to get him for Christmas. We told him no, but secretly bought it for him. He wasn't at all discouraged by us saying no though; he has been mentioning his "Christmas elephant" ever since, sure that he would get it. He didn't seem very surprised when he unwrapped it. He named it Silly Elephant and has chosen it as his animal to take to bed with him.  On Christmas morning, I made the kids crepes for breakfast before church. My mom and sister were here visiting, so my mom helped Austin take the older kids to church. When they got back, Austin's parents and brother came over to watch the kids open presents. We spent the day playing with our new toys, taking cookies to the neighbors, and had dinner later in the day.