As "just" a mom, I have a front row seat to my children's growth and learning, daily little miracles, and the funny things that happen in a marriage. I feel so very blessed to be "just" a mom.
Favorite food: Leah loves all food, but her favorite is beans—she loves all beans as well, but beans and rice is her favorite. She also loves smoothies and yogurt drinks, cocomel caramels, bananas, bread with jam, cheerios, and raisins.
Favorite toys: Leah loves to play with anything that her siblings play with. She loves to unload things (especially our bookcase), she loves to push buttons, and she loves books.
Favorite things to say: She loves to sign, she often signs "food", "more", "milk", "mom", "dad", and "hot". She also loves to wave and blow kisses, and will sometimes say "ba" when waving goodbye.
Favorite things to do: Leah loves to be hauled around by her sisters, watch Signing Time, go shopping, take walks, and crawl into new rooms to explore.
Favorite People: Leah is starting to get over her "stranger danger" stage, but she still definitely has her favorite people. She is very Mom-clingy, but loves her siblings and most kids. She loves Dad, but has gotten a little Dad-shy (hiding her face when he talks to her, etc). She also loves her Aunt Melissa and gives her the most snuggles (and also shares the most treats). She is a wary of going to most adults, but has gotten better about letting other people hold her.
Favorite books: Dear Zoo, Peek-a-Who, Moo Baa La La La, and any puppet book
February was a hard month for our family. We got hit with a tough sickness—the kids got it first, and it knocked them out for a week and a half, and then Ben and I got it and it knocked us out for two weeks. Because it lasted so long, it took up a lot of our month and made it hard to make progress on a lot of our goals. We got through it though and made some good memories around (and despite) our sickness.
When we weren't sick, we loved going to the library with cousins. It was time to go home for lunch and we told the kids that. Oliver responded, "But we're already eating lunch!"
We love getting together with Ben's family, especially for Meet for a Treat on Sunday evenings.
I love seeing how much all the little boys love Leah, it's so sweet.
Making Leah laugh!
Cousin Thomas can make her laugh better than anyone (except maybe Parker)
Bath time!
Tell me you have siblings without telling me you have siblings.
Oliver has recently discovered how to take pictures on my phone and he loves it.
More of the kids with my phone haha
Cute Leah!
Ashtyn took this video of Leah standing up at a chair for her cousin. Leah is getting so mobile and loves to be able to crawl around and pull herself up to places.
Happy Ice Cream for Breakfast Day!
We celebrated a day late, but the kids loved it.
Oliver makes "little heads" out of blocks and then plays an irl version of Super Smash Bros with them.
Signing "more". Her favorite signs are more, food, and milk.
Leah's favorite thing is to pull herself up here so she can pull books off the shelf, pull the DVDs down, play with the remotes, and push buttons on the DVD player (we have to keep it unplugged now).
Whatever the sickness was, it hit Oliver the hardest. It cycled through all his siblings, but he got it first and was the last to recover.
It also really got my sinuses. I ended up needing a prescription. It was a rough couple of weeks, especially when Leah got sick at the same time as me.
Another big thing that happened in February (and when Ben and I were sick, which was rough) was Naples City voting on whether or not to put pickleball courts in at our local park down the street. We love pickleball and the courts were being funded by an outside grant, so we really wanted them. There were a few loud people in opposition to the courts, but most people were in favor. As a family, we gathered signatures in favor of the courts and gave it to Naples City Mayor before the vote to give them an idea of what the community wanted. Ashtyn went with me the entire time, and Parker and Rylee came for a lot of it. They all worked really hard and we ended up with 150 signatures over the weekend, despite cold weatehr and Ben and I dealing with the stupid sickness.
We were proud of what we were able to do! I had wished I had more time and didn't feel as sick, because we only got to a fraction of the houses I had wanted to stop at.
The kids also did a pickleball edition of their neighborhood newspaper, which turned out really cute!
The day of voting, Ashtyn wanted to go to the meeting and speak (we told her she didn't need to and that it likely wouldn't affect the outcome, but she really wanted to). Ben took her while I put the kids to bed. She wrote this and got up and said it even though she was nervous about how many people ended up being at the meeting. She did a great job. They ended up voting yes for the courts!
In Febraury, I used my birthday/Christmas money to buy the rest of the Emma M. Lion series and I'm very happy with it!
Parker 😂
Oliver drew this picture of Pacman and Kirby holding hands for one of Ben's friends who stops by sometimes to play Smash, because his main is Pacman (and Oliver's favorite is Kirby).
Ben has been helping with Melissa's house a lot this year and it's getting so close!
This is when they were working on the trim.
At the end of February, we were feeling a lot better and the weather warmed up again, which we all enjoyed immensely. Leah loves to be outside.
Ashtyn ended the month with a hike. She has loved being in Young Women's and going to all the activities our ward and stake do, we have such a great group and great leaders.
So that was our month in February. We made it through somehow and even have some good memories to look back on. I am so grateful for my family and community.
