a walk to remember

In honor of the unseasonably warm weather we've been experiencing this week, we decided to take a few walks today.

Will was content to ride on the stroller for about 5 minutes. Then he insisted on walking. At first I was fine with it because it was a lot easier to push the stroller sans his 30 lbs. But then we moved along at a pace of about one sidewalk square per minute. Seriously, I think we averaged about a 45 minute mile. It really tested my patience, but it was nice to be outside and breathe in the crisp, fresh air.


At one point Will yelled, "Mommy, look! A deer!" When I turned and looked at him he had two sticks against his head like antlers. He later told me to look at the moose as he was holding larger sticks up to head. He's been pretty imaginative lately and it cracks us up.



Our slow leisurely pace put Lauren to sleep. I couldn't blame her. Feeling the warm sun on my face made me look forward to the warmer days of spring and summer that are just around the corner.

Will placed the stick and "ball" (sweetgum tree seed?) on her chest. I think he has figured out that it if he picks up items for Lauren he can take twice as long and pick up twice as many objects.



The forecast looks pretty bleak for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad we were able to get out and enjoy.

selfies

Will recently discovered his love of the camera. He will often grab it when I am feeding Lauren or otherwise distracted.


Here are some photos he took recently. It is interesting to see the world from his eyes, as well as what he thinks is worth capturing. There were several carpet shots. When he saw me upload the pictures to the computer he was very proud of the pictures he took of the TV. There were lots of those too. "Shiny, Tiny, Don!"


But far and away he's taken the most pictures of his face.



This one's my fave. Love the artistry of the drool en route to the camera.

epidermis

Lauren is a wonderful baby. She is sweet, smiley and generally content most of the time. But she's not low maintenance.


This girl has some extremely sensitive skin, and we've spent a lot of time this past week trying to figure out what is wrong and how we can help her feel better.

Basically, she has cradle cap on her scalp and face, eczema and an ulcerated, infected hemangioma.

The hemangioma has been causing us the most problems. It's on her back. And she's a baby, so she spends a lot of time on her back. Due to her dry skin and it's location it became ulcerated, causing her a fair amount of pain and discomfort. I feel stupid that it took me so long to realize that the scream-cries I would get when I laid her down weren't just because she wanted to be held or didn't want to go to sleep.

We are now moisturizing her with Vaseline multiple times a day, washing and dressing her hemangioma twice a day, washing her hair with medicated shampoo, and using two additional prescription ointments as needed. In the meantime we've tried mineral oil, CeraVe, Eucerin and Cetaphil, which have helped in varying degrees.

It has been surprisingly difficult to keep her hemangioma covered. It is on the side of her back, and we've tried a many ways (gauze, tape, large band-aids, Duoderm, ace bandages) to keep it in place. Right now we are taping gauze to her back and then wrapping an ace bandage around her waist to keep it in place. It has worked the best yet, but it's far from perfect. Any ideas?

A side effect of all this is all scented lotions and washes are out, so our baby doesn't smell like a baby. She smells like a little old lady. :) In addition, she has to wear clothing with mitten cuffs because she scratches like crazy. Mittens alone don't work because she can get them off. So we've been rotating the 6 cuffed outfits we have that fit her (she's now over 13 lbs).

Since we visited the dermatologist things have gotten better, she appears to be more comfortable, and is sleeping again. For a few nights there she was waking up every 45 minutes or so and I was going insane from the lack of sleep.

Even though Lauren's skin has been a minor inconvenience we feel very blessed to have access to good doctors and that she is in such good health overall.

If my kids had facebook their statuses might read

Lauren John thinks sleeping at night is for chumps. Night is the new day.


Will John just learned this cool new word: mine.

kids say the darndest things

Sometimes I like to read the Ensign while I feed Lauren. Today while I was feeding her Will came over to us and asked for my "book." After I gave it to him he looked at the cover for a minute, then smiled at me and said, "Deeta! Hona!" Which interpreted means, "Santa! Liahona!"


Not exactly true, but Lehi does have a big beard, he's wearing red and white, sitting down surrounded by people and we just put our Christmas decorations away this morning.

I was actually pretty pleased, even proud, that he mentioned the liahona because that means he is getting something out of our nightly scripture reading. We try to read a story a night out of his scripture story book and we read about the liahona over a week ago. Unfortunately, my maternal pride was short lived. Less than an hour later he hit his head on the ground in frustration when I told him he couldn't watch Barney (again).

merry christmas!

the final countdown

It seems that Christmas has taken an extra long time to get here this year. I was talking with a friend recently and we decided that it's because of our toddlers. We got into full holiday mode right after Thanksgiving, which is much earlier than years past. With school, work and traveling for the holidays the Christmas countdown didn't start til much later.


And now it's finally here. It's a good thing too, because for the past few days both kids have been flirting with the naughty list.

happy birthday, will!

scrub a dub

Hoping to save time, I attempted to simultaneously bathe my children yesterday. Because the baby tub takes up so much space in the regular tub, and that Will, he likes his space, they bathed next to each other.

For the most part, we were successful.


A less successful moment occurred right after this picture was taken. I had already asked Will to not pour water on Lauren, but he went ahead poured a cup of water on her face. We're lucky she is so easygoing because other than a few blinks, it didn't seem to faze her.


Will redeemed himself when he offered to share his letters with her.

Two clean kids, no crying, and a little bit of sharing. Sounds like a success to me.

P.S. Lauren is really starting to remind us of Will at the same age. Minus the under-eye circles. Could it be because she is a much better sleeper?

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

Christmas is extra magical for our family this year, thank you Thomas William John. Although technically his third Christmas, this is the first Christmas he really gets things. He loves trees and lights and snowmen. His enthusiasm is contagious, and Tony and I have discussed how much more special Christmas feels to us this year too.


"Lights on!" "Wow!" and "Pitty," (pretty) are some of the first things he says each morning.

Not all aspects of Christmas are exciting to Will. He is still learning to love Santa. A few weeks ago we were eating lunch at Chick-fil-A and a giant cow dressed up as Santa appeared and started greeting the child patrons. I don't think I will forget the look of horror that crossed Will's face as he spied the Santa and grabbed Anthony's arm anytime soon. Actually, most of the kids didn't look too excited to see the cow Santa. It was a good 7 feet tall and didn't talk. Maybe a marketing fail?



Here we are visiting Santa at our ward Christmas party. Lauren sat on Santa's lap while Will collected both of their candy canes. He wasn't pleased when I made him come back for a family picture with the jolly old elf.

We're not too worried about Will's Santa aversion. From what I've seen and heard it isn't uncommon for kids his age and it is getting better. Plus, although fun, Santa isn't the most important part of Christmas.