Cute Girl

Mary is growing like a weed! A while back I mentioned to someone that Mary had been eating a lot lately and they responded with "She must be going through a growth spurt". I think she has been in one continuous growth "spurt" since she was born, because she is getting big so fast!

Mary is about 4 1/2 months old now and is starting to grow out of many of her 6 month clothes and into her 9 month clothes. I even got a white 18 month onesie out of Josh's drawer a couple of weeks ago because she had grown out of her undershirts and it totally fit her! Granted, there's no way it would have actually fit Josh (and he still wears lots of 18 month and even some 12 month clothes), but still. She still has the cutest chubby cheeks that I just want to kiss all day long, and they go perfectly with the rolls on her legs, arms and belly. (Too bad my rolls aren't considered cute!) She has pretty blue eyes that I think are going to stay blue.

I'm curious to see how much Mary weighs now. At around 3 1/2 months I took her to the doctor because she had kind of a croupy cough (it got better quickly) and she was 16# 6 oz. then. Her "4 month" appointment will be this week, since I could get Josh's 2 year apointment at the same time. I was getting out their immunization records last night so I wouldn't forget to take them with me to the appointment and mentioned to David how both Josh and Mary will be getting a few shots each. David asked me if it was such a good idea to have both of their appointments at the same time if they were both going to be getting shots, and now I'm starting to question it myself! Hopefully they'll both do okay, but if not, at least I get it over with, right?

She rolled over for the first time while we were in Snowflake for the 24th Celebration, but David and I both missed it since we were at my HS reunion. Oh well. She is quite interested in toys these days, she will now reach for them and bring them to her mouth. Her favorite things to play with, however, are her feet. She giggles quite readily now and it's so fun...I really like this stage!

Mary can sleep through the night and does it about 25% of the time, maybe. The other nights she usually just wakes up once. We finally moved her out of our room into Josh's room and they've done just fine with each other, thank goodness.

We started feeding her rice cereal at 4 months and she's doing great with it, and she'll also take a bottle pretty well. It helps that she gets one almost every Wed. night while I'm at mutual.

Mary has a sweet personality and is pretty mellow (at least in comparison to Josh, but that's not too hard) most of the time. Either that, or I am just more immune to crying now than I was with Josh--probably a little of both. She definitely lets you know when she is mad, though...she can escalate from nothing to a cry pretty fast! She puts up with Josh's "loves" quite well, and has come through so far (knock on wood) with only temporary bite marks from him. I guess she'll be tough, right? Check out these teeth marks on her elbow in the first pic and her right cheek in the second.

Here are a few more cute pictures of my sweet baby girl:

Josh is Two!

Warning: Super Long Post

This last week Josh turned two. On his birthday David made him blue pancakes for breakfast and we got to go feed Dicey (Celeste's dog) for them while they were on vacation. Josh loves "Dice Dice", but was pretty sad when "Lef" (Celeste) and "PooPa" (Cooper) weren't there for him to play with. That night we had a family birthday party and Josh had a great time blowing out the candles 3 times and eating cupcakes and ice cream. Then we went to another party, this time to welcome home my friend Sandi from her mission.

Josh with his blue birthday pancakes (yes he still wears a bib...I think I'll keep him in one for as long as he'll let me).

I saw this idea for ice cream cone cupcakes on the back of a cake mix box. They turned out pretty cute even if they were flat ice cream cones...I guess they are Thrifty ice cream cones. :)
Josh seemed to like them!

We didn't get any still pictures of Josh opening presents and blowing out candles, only videos that I don't feel like editing and waiting for them to upload.

We had a little pool party for Josh yesterday with a couple of his friends and cousins and had a great time playing in the pool and eating corndogs, cake and ice cream.

I was trying to think of something fun to do cake-wise. One fun thing about Josh is that he LOVES cards. We have some old Uno and Rook cards that he has been playing with for the past several months. He'll pick them up, put them down one by one on the couch, pick them up again, come and hand them to me one by one, take them back, put them in a box or cardholder or slide them under the TV (annoying), and generally entertain himself for quite a while with these. So, I had an idea to decorate his cake like an Uno card. I've never attempted cake decorating, but my friend Kimmie was kind enough to let me borrow her supplies and little instruction booklet and gave me a few tips.

Here are some pictures of the party and the cake:

Does it look like an Uno card?

Josh with his cousins Karalee, Spencer and Bryant

Enjoying a corndog

He had to have some help blowing the candles out. He tries to blow, but doesn't really get much air out.

For his birthday David and I gave Josh a baseball glove and ball (he's not into them at all yet) a couple of Sesame Street movies and some cards. He played with his new cards all day long on his birthday, pretty much, so at least we know one of our presents was a hit! His Great Grandma Orr gave Josh some alphabet magnets, which didn't get opened until the day after his birthday, and now he has been playing with them almost non-stop (thanks Grandma!).

"I did it!" He spelled such a long word I can't even pronounce it. What a smart boy (he must take after his dad)!

I can't believe how fast my baby boy is growing up...he learns new things every day and he often makes me laugh out loud! A few of the things that make Josh great:

• He knows most of his letters and numbers and colors. Thank you Sesame Street, Uno cards and alphabet magnets!
• He can pretty much count to 12 on his own. After that all the "teens" start tripping him up.
• He says "Eee-ahh" when riding a real horse or a Daddy/Mama pretend horse.
• He says "Eww Dross" when he sees something that looks yucky (or pretty much anything that is wet).
• He argues with himself. When he first started talking one of his first words, of course, was "No". He would say that when we would try to make him do something he didn't want to do, and so we would always respond with "Yes". Now he will say the "Yes" for us..."No yes no yes". It cracks me up.
• When he can't find me or David right away he'll say "Mamy/Daddy, where are you?" (I can't figure out how to spell it like he says it, but it's really cute.
• When he wants me to pick him up he says, "Ma ma ma jew" (Mama I wanna hold you).
• Since Josh started learning to talk David has been teaching him to say, repeating one word at a time, "Daddy is the best". I recently started having Josh say "Josh is monkey". A week or so ago Josh came up with "Daddy...is...the...best...bunkey (monkey)". Too bad David wasn't there to hear it, because that one was great.
• He still calls Mary "Baby". I've tried several times to get him to at least say Mary, but to no avail. Tonight during dinner we were trying again and were unsuccessful at first, then started breaking the syllables up. We finally got a "Mar-baby" out of him. David and I started cracking up, then Josh did his fake laugh because we were laughing so hard. Good times.
• He is a great big brother. He'll often come and tell me when he hears Mary crying after she's woken up from her nap. He loves to kiss and hug her goodnight, and throughout the day, for that matter. Not that he isn't a little rough with her sometimes. He hasn't bitten her for a coupel of weeks, so hopefully that stage is over.
• He gives the best hugs and kisses, and usually isn't afraid to give them to anyone. His hugs always have the "ahww" sound effect.
• Mom's kiss will make pretty much anything better. I love that!
• When he gets excited he'll clap his hands and say "Yay" really excitedly.
• When he finishes something he's been working on he yells "I did it!"
• He is as skinny as a rail, but super strong. He can now reach our top counter (the bar) and is getting way too adept at pulling himself up to the regular counter and reaching things on it.
• Josh is definitely a high energy little boy...he rarely walks anywhere, and when he gets really excited his legs go up and down more than forward when he runs.

I'm so blessed to be Josh's mom, I love him so much and am so grateful that Heavenly Father has entrusted me with him! Here are some more fun pictures of my sweet boy:

Pioneer Days

A couple of weeks ago we were able to go up to Snowflake for my favorite holiday...the 24th of July celebration in Snowflake! I've only missed it once, and that was two years ago when I was too pregnant with Josh to travel...and I missed it!

On the day before the town celebration we always have a Flake reunion for the decendents of my great-great grandfater, William Jordan Flake, who was one of the first settlers of Snowflake. We always have a rodeo (yes, the family is easily big enough to have our own rodeo), a luncheon, and a talent show/program.

This year the rodeo was quite a bit more eventful than in years past, and not in a good way. One of the events is called the Keg Race, which is kind of like musical chairs on horses. Since my cousin Vicki and my sister Kayla were the only two entries for the Ladies' Keg Race, Kayla was trying to round up more entries from me and my other sisters. Mindy was the first to jump on board and then she helped Kayla talk the rest of us sisters, minus Crystal, into signing up. I had to borrow a horse from Vicki's family and ended up switching horses not long before the race started. My hopes were (1) to not get hurt--which I said a prayer for as I was sitting on the keg before the first round--and (2) to not be the first one out. I was the first one out. My horse (I think his name was Jedi) started dancing around after they said go, so it took me too long to get on. I was a little embarrassed, because I'm pretty competitive and I just don't like doing things, especially in front of other people, unless I'm good at them.

Penny got out during the next round, and after that is where the real excitement happened. They said go and as Mindy was trying to get on her horse the horse moved and she ended up landing on her head. I didn't see it until she was actually on her head, and it looked bad. To make a long story a bit shorter, everyone was super worried about her (she, the awesome mom that she is, was most worried about her kids) and she ended up with a broken neck and some sort of injury to her leg. They're still not sure what is wrong with her leg, but it is feeling better and she is getting around quite well these days. She has to wear a neck brack for 6 weeks, but is already 3 weeks into it. (If you want more details, you can read Mindy's version here.) The accident definitely put a damper on the rest of the weekend for our family, but we still had fun doing the rest of activities.

On Friday evening I drug David to my 10 year high school reunion, and my cousin Michelle came with us since her husband Brent was away studying to take the bar exam. I'm not a great mingler, but I had fun seeing some of my classmates...some of whom I see fairly regularly and others who I hadn't seen since we graduated. I was surprised that there weren't more people who came, but we had fun anyway.

Saturday we went to the parade and Josh's cousins helped him gather some candy, so he was a happy boy! After the parade I went to a baby shower for my niece Kari, then we went and visited Grandma Wiltbank and David's side of the family for a bit and just had fun hanging out at my mom's and visiting for the rest of the day. David and I had planned to go out shooting with his new 22 pistol, but it just never worked out, dang it! Next time. Josh had a great time playing with his cousins and all the dogs that were up there for the weekend, and Mary was a good sport about letting so many people love her and hold her all the time.

Here are some pictures:

Two Marys enjoying the Flake Rodeo

Chillin' at the Flake family luncheon

Fun at the parade

Josh and Trevin riding Mumble

Yee-haw! (It sounds so much cuter when Josh says it.)

Two dirty boys having fun in the bath