Quick Sophster Update

Being the second child can be hard. I know, I'm the second child and I was often overlooked and under appreciated. Just kidding. I don't know what people are complaining about. But I do feel a bit guilty for my lack of cyber-documenting when it comes to my little Sophie. So here is a little catch up.

13 month visit stats: 21 lbs. (50th percentile) 31.5 inches (90th percentile)

She started walking around 13 months and now she won't sit still. Church is pointless. I just follow her as she does laps around and around. She has two teeth on the bottom and four teeth on top are all coming in together. She still takes two naps. She is a nightmare on road trips. She derives much pleasure from slapping Devin's face and pulling Eva's hair. (She does it with this silly little grin on her face.) She loves to wrestle and roughhouse. She is still extremely loud and lively and so, so, so much fun to play with. She lets me kiss her all I want and sometimes she'll kiss back. She loves to give Daddy hugs. I'll find little nuggets of who knows what in her mouth that she's been chewing on for hours. She's starting to get picky with eating. She'd rather throw everything on the floor. Sound like a typical one-year-old? We don't know what we'd do without our little Soph! We love you little girl!

Manpost Minus the Man

Whenever Devin manposts his team crashes and burns. Clemson still has a few more games and an ACC Championship game to win so I'll spare him the curse-inducing writing. Last weekend we took a trip to S.C. to visit friends and watch the Tigers play Wake Forest. The game almost killed us a few times. I often wondered what the collective blood pressure of the entire stadium was. But somehow we came back to win in the last 7 seconds making the score 31-28. This makes their record 9-1 and they are headed to the ACC championship game in December. (And since Devin already had tickets to the game he was especially tense... as an understatement.)

Here I am with Jackie and Alisha. Yes, we were on the very top row of the stadium. But, we didn't mind, the entire stadium is full of energy and we could actually see everything quite well there. Plus we had an awesome view of the surrounding area. :) And, thanks to our friend Melissa who scored awesome tickets and was willing to share a few extras, we got to sit here for half of the game...

Yep, the 3rd row! I think the coolest moment for me was when Wake Forest kicked a field goal, missed it, and the ball went straight for us. The guy two rows behind us caught it.



After a win everyone runs onto the field and swarms the players like they are one giant boy band. Then everyone hugs and sings the Alma matter. The music started up and these two frat boys shouted, "Somebody hug us!" So Devin went over and put his arm around him and swayed with them while they sung. It was presh.


Touching the giant tiger paw.


I have no recollection of taking this picture.



And don't forget the amazing golf game! I wish I had pics of our kids playing with all their old friends. They were basically babysat the entire weekend and had a great time playing.

Halloween 2011

This year we decided to dress up like the Tangled movie. Basically because Eva wanted to be Rapunzel and she got it in her head that we would all be dressing up with her. Not having the heart to disappoint her... well, here we are. We will never get a group picture where these monkeys are happily posing.



Flynn Ryder...

Rapunzel... (Who switched to a ballerina for trick-or-treating an abandoned us all.)

Pub Thug Extraordinaire

Pascal. (My mom sewed the cool tail for her despite thinking it cruel to make Sophie be a lizard for Halloween. But this is my last year to pick her costume before enduring years of princesses so she can handle it.)

Every blog needs a trip to the pumpkin patch!

It was a charming afternoon. Usually I go to the grocery store and pick the pumpkin out of the fake patch they have set up. Not this year. I'm slowly turning into a "real" mom. Firstly, a themed birthday party, second, pumpkin patch, third coordinated Halloween costumes. Now all I need to do is send out Christmas cards and I will feel like I've made it. Anyway, the patch. So it was this cool place with a hayride out to the acres and acres of pumpkins. For $20 you get as many pumpkins as you can carry. So we loaded up our friend Joe. :) Eva searched high and low until she finally found a green one. Sophie just squirmed the entire time to try to get down into the dirt. Now I feel like fall can come.


The tale of the Binky Fairy. Eva spotted this castle at Target and I told her that is what the Binky Fairy brings. So she went home, gathered up all her binkies and put them by the door for the B.F. She was so excited she could hardly sleep but finally fell asleep. The next day she got her princess castle and was elated. She was too excited to even think about a nap. Then night time came and she was tired and she wanted her binky. We put her to bed and hear this slow, mournful cry, "biiiiiiiiiin-ky, biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin-ky, BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN-KY!!!!" She couldn't fall asleep. She stormed out of her room crying. "I HATE my castle!!! I don't WANT my castle! I WANT MY BINKIES!!!" I was just happy to displace her anger from myself. But anyway, after about 3 hours and the most fervent prayer I've offered in months she finally fell asleep (a couple minutes after the prayer. How's that for a testimony builder!? Coming to a Relief Society lesson near you....) Then in the morning she came out of her room all happy saying "I'm not mad at my castle anymore." We went through this for about three days but now she doesn't ask for it anymore. Bad news is she will not take naps anymore. She was a consistent 3-hr/day napper... Gone. I miss nap time terribly.


As a little treat we took her to a Yo Gabba Gabba concert with Myla and Kim. These two were so incredibly excited. They wouldn't stop dancing and cheering for even a second for a picture.

We had to grab them and squish them together to get them to hold still for this shot.



They had so much fun dancing to the music. Eva was distraught when it was over. She sat stone cold staring at the stage for about ten minutes when it was all over.


The scream: I'm hoping someone will have some advice for me. How do I get my one-year-old to stop screaming? This isn't a normal baby scream. It is loud, incredibly high pitched, ear splitting and comes frequently and without warning. When Sophie screams whoever is with me runs to her like she's being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. The problem, aside from the fact that I'm going deaf, is that it scares the living daylights out of people when I'm in public. She'll be sitting quietly in the cart and an unsuspecting shopper will walk past her and get blasted off her feet or she'll be sitting quietly in church then all of a sudden she'll belt out and all the old ladies will be cradling their hearing aids. Any advice?

How are those feet doing?

I'm nearing my 9 month anniversary since I busted my little doggies. Here I am a few days before. Just getting back from Christmas vacation and settling into life with two little kiddos. It's funny when you think back to the day before something big happens. You had no idea how much your life would change in a few short hours.



Here's a pic from the party where I broke my feet. It is so hard to explain exactly how I did this in a bounce house obstacle course. (Don't forget to put the "obstacle course" in there. It sounds way cooler... Or makes it sound a little less ridiculous... take your pick.)

I was not in this picture...



This is where I was. Sitting in a bench, trying to balance my legs on Sophie's car seat. I have no idea what I was thinking in this picture (which I didn't know existed until tonight) or why in the world I'm smiling. But it was probably something like "ice, pills, home, ice, pills, home, ice, pills home..."



Once I got home I went to bed hoping I'd wake up and the swelling would have gone down.


Not a chance.



So I spent the next couple months crawling...

Dragging...

and rolling. (Don't ask me why my baby is lying in the middle of the kitchen floor and Eva is wearing only leg warmers as pants. But I can't say that I'm surprised.)


The beautiful thing about injuring yourself at a party is that everyone there feels partially responsible. So I never ran out of help and believe me, my life required a lot of manpower. Truth be told, once the shock of it all wore off it was a pretty fun winter. I had a constant stream of play dates and friends walking through my door and I had visits from almost every member of my family. I even got to be a gimpy tourist for a week.



After 8 weeks of being completely helpless the casts came off and I got my sweet moon boots. I had to use a walker for a couple weeks. I'm so happy no one ever took a picture of that phase. It was bad, really bad.



But eventually I learned to walk in them pretty well.


This summer I graduated to the sweet white sneakers. There's about $200 worth of equipment in there. Steel bars running through out, custom orthotics... they weigh a ton but I couldn't walk without them for about 3 months. I wore them literally everywhere, to church, the temple, around the house. Without them I just shuffled like an elderly Chinese woman. It's only been the past month or so that I've been able to transition to other types of shoes and even at that I'm limited in how much I can walk in them.



I have started exercising again. Even running. It isn't pain free and it takes me a few days to recover but I'm trying to figure out if the impact will help strengthen the bones/muscles. I know, it sounds weird. Anyway, as of now, I'm not certain I'll make a full recovery but I can usually walk normally as long as I have decent shoes on. (And walking in my bare feet is only slightly painful.) I still limp every so often but I do think I'm getting better... slowly. So there you go. There's the update. Maybe next time I post an update I'll be wearing a pair of these!

Milah Moo and Sophie Sue

Here's my latest How Does She posts. These ones were really fun to do. We have a Conference tradition to get together with a couple friends and make up a ton of moose munch to pass out. (Ok, so maybe this was my first time but I can still call it a tradition, right?) It was fun to have so many little "helpers". Here's the link to the munch post...

http://www.howdoesshe.com/munchy-crunchy-crazy-yummy



And this one is a combination of my favorite tart crust and my favorite key lime filling. Don't you think my chair makes a nice background?

http://www.howdoesshe.com/key-lime-in-a-pinch-or-for-a-party

5 Years

Yes... we have only been married for 5 years. Or if you've known us for awhile.... yes, it's already been 5 years. They have flown by for us even though much has changed... specifically the addition of two little girls to our family. It really is a miracle to find the right person and I'm still so happy and thankful that we found each other. Even after 5 years I'm as happy as I was the day I realized he was "the one". This may be a little self indulgent but here are some of my favorite wedding pictures. It was a perfect day from start to finish and I've been reliving little moments all week.










To celebrate we went to lunch at the Tobacco Company downtown. Devin had my favorite cookies shipped in from Knoxville, TN. (Cookies my friend Whitney and I discovered 3 years ago and I've been craving ever since.)