Spring Is Here!

Well ... not officially for a couple more weeks, but it sure feels like spring! We've had temps in the high 50s low 60s lately and I'm loving it.

A few things we've had going on:

-Marcus turned 9 months old! We went swimming on his 9 month birthday and he looked oh so adorable in his little swim suit. I was disappointed that I didn't take pictures of the kids at the pool, but I took some of my Little Man a few days after.

He thought the camera was funny and kept laughing when I would snap a pic.

I seriously can't stop staring at this handsome little face!

-And I took this pic of Layla after I asked her to go put her swimming suit and cover up on so we could go swimming. I walked in to find her washing her hands and realized she had forgotten to put her swimming suit on first. Oops! I almost died of laughter!


-Marcus loves water! Actually, that's an understatement! It's his most favorite thing in the whole world. If you take him in the bathroom and start the bath, he gets so very excited. At the swimming pool he discovered laying on his back in the water and now that's all he wants to do every time he gets in the bath. Oh, and kick, kick, kick!

-I can't get over his cute face or his endearing personality. He is always smiling or laughing. He loves to be scared, especially by Layla, and I have a feeling he's going to be quite the jokester!

-At his 9 month checkup he weighed 19 lbs 13 oz. I can't remember his height but he was pretty much 50th percentile for height, weight, and head circumference.

Oh the germaphobe in me hates these shopping carts, but they have so much fun in them!

-He isn't crawling yet, but just this week he started the bum scoot thing. He moves slowly this way, but he does get where he wants to go. He also no longer likes to jump in his bouncer. He prefers to scoot over to it and try to pull up to standing on it. He has made it up to his knees a few times now. Lots of bonks as he is falling down while trying to become mobile. I'm thinking he'll be crawling by the end of the month. We'll see.

He's obsessed with the heater vents.

-Mitch has been on travel for the last 4 weeks or so. No fun. He came home on the weekends and thank heavens his travel got cut short due to funding so he is on his way home right now! Hurray! I am sick of having him gone, and it stinks the worst for him because he's been working really long days on an incredibly stressful proposal. Though it was cute when we Skyped the other night and Marcus totally played peek-a-boo with Mitch all on his own.

I love that they have so much fun together.

-One thing I want to remember are the lessons that Layla and I learned the other day. Every time we go grocery shopping, she asks me to buy her a balloon. The kind with a picture on it. I usually say no. In fact, I've only bought her one once. But since Mitch was gone so much, I've felt bad and had a really hard time telling her no (not good parenting, I know), so I bought her the best balloon they had: a pink, heart shaped balloon with three Disney princesses on it. She was beyond excited and asked me to hold it for her until we got to the car for fear of losing her precious balloon. I gave it to her once we were all in the car. On the drive home I opened the sunroof and told her to hold onto the string tight so it didn't float out of the sunroof. She kept arguing with me, insisting that it would never float away out of the sunroof. I told her that indeed it would, so hold on to it tight. Well, what happened but not even two minutes into our drive home and the balloon floated out of the sunroof and up, up, and away. Layla cried and I felt so bad. I almost turned the car around to go buy her another one. But then I realized there was a lesson for both of us to learn. There will be times when Mitch and I will teach, warn, suggest things to Layla and she won't believe us / won't listen. And she will suffer the consequences. I will feel so bad and want to run to her and fix it for her, but I won't be able to. She has to learn things on her own. Maybe that's a little too dramatic, but it really was a good lesson for me about parenting. And I'm pretty sure Layla is now convinced that a balloon will indeed float out of the sunroof. :)

Layla at soccer.

-I wanted to note about Valentine's Day this year. The actual day was super lame. Mitch was out of town. Boo. He was actually flying home that day, but his plane didn't land until midnight, so he didn't get home until the next day (1 am). So on Valentine's I took the kids to the mall food court for dinner and let Layla play in the play place. Lame, right? Actually, it wasn't tooooo bad and the kids had fun. Mitch made it up to us by sending me the most beautiful tulips with a very thoughtful note. It was nice to know he was thinking of me even though he wasn't here. That weekend he took Layla on a date to Boondocks and he took me on a date to Corbins. Yum! It ended up being really nice. Oh, and I also took Layla on a mommy/daughter date to Scheels to ride the ferris wheel earlier in the week. She loved it.

Our mommy/daughter date.

-One weekend while Mitch was in town I got the stomach flu! It hit me suddenly on Saturday night around 11 am. I woke up with stomach pain and started vomiting nearly every hour, all night long. It lasted about 24 hours and then for the next week I couldn't eat normally and was slightly nauseous. I lost five pounds in three days (don't worry, I'm sure I'll gain it right back). But that just shows how sick I was! On Sunday when I was throwing up all day, I was supposed to teach Relief Society, so I felt so bad that I had to bomb out on them completely last minute. And, the worst part was that Mitch flew out of town that day. I didn't want him to leave, but I knew he had to, and so many times the rest of that day I was so angry that I was left home alone, throwing up and running to the bathroom every half hour, all while trying to feed the kids dinner and put them to bed. I wasn't mad at Mitch, just mad at the situation. It sucked. Thankfully I got feeling better pretty fast and was able to handle the rest of the week and no one else got sick.


-Layla and I have made a little goal to use less technology. I told her the Ipad is broken (little white lie...) and she can watch two tv shows a day (which is still more than she should probably watch, but better than what she was watching before, which I'm embarrassed to admit). It's made a big difference around our house! We're much happier, more productive, and spend more quality time together.

Layla's new bedding. Thanks, Mammy Miles!

-Layla still loves soccer and preschool and playing with friends. She makes me laugh every single day. She's really growing up lately! I've noticed how her fingers have gotten longer and slender and her little hands seem so much older, if that makes any sense. She is still emotional, but she seems better as far as being so particular goes. It's not quite the problem it was before. Or maybe I've just learned how to handle it better? She refuses to wear jeans and will always choose a "fancy church dress" if given the choice. Her second choice would be a play dress or a skirt. Third choice is "soft pants" (leggings) with a shirt. She is really into clothes lately, and especially loves high heels. She told me she wants some like mine to wear to church. While shopping the other day she made me try on the most ridiculous pair of leopard high heels that were actually furry. She was upset that I wouldn't buy them. Mitch said I need to work on her taste in style. We're worried she'll start dressing like a hooker. Ha, ha!

Fashionista?

The furry shoes she wanted me to buy.

-Well, after months of internal struggle and debate, I finally admitted that I was depressed and went to talk to a psychiatrist. Best decision ever! Thanks to my lovely prescription, I finally feel like myself again. It's funny, I have absolutely no reason to be depressed—I have a pretty perfect little life— but I think between my Seasonal Affective disorder, lack of sleep thanks to Marcus's horrible sleeping habits (which are improving slightly), and a family history of depression, it was bound to hit me sometime. It must not be too bad though because I'm on the lowest dose of meds and it's working wonders for me. I'm seriously so glad I did it! I have so much more patience and energy, I no longer feel angry or uptight, and I can laugh and be goofy again! Still have some hard moments like every mom does, but I can cope with them so much better than I could before. It's great! And, I also learned that I can no longer blame all of Layla's perfectionist tendencies on Mitch ... the psychiatrist told me that I "could use a little counseling to help my perfectionism." Our poor children have it coming at them from both sides I guess. Hopefully I can learn how to stop being such a perfectionist so I can help Layla since she already shows signs of having that personality type.

Ahhh, I love snuggling with these two in the morning!
It's the best way to start my day.

-Life is good. We are getting excited to plant some trees and bushes in our yard. Trying to decide if we should put up a fence or not. The vinyl fences are SO expensive! I had no idea. We'll have to discuss and get moving since spring came early!