a {family} nativity

And she brought forth her firstborn son,

and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;

because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7

holiday faves

movie: You've Got Mail. Not really about Christmas, although some of it takes place over the Christmas season. There's just something about that old friend of a movie that makes me happy. And makes me feel all Christmasy.

treat: I totally copied my cousin-in-law and made these. Problem is, despite my diet resolutions, I ate like half of what I made. (I used peppermint Hugs.) Things are addicting. Also, trying to lose weight during the holiday season is like telling Annabelle's hair to be straight. Impossible. Only Annabelle's dilemma results in cuteness. Mine in a spare tire. Rad.

soundtrack: We've had Michael Buble's new Christmas album on for weeks in the car. (Thus, Microphone Blue Blue.) His voice is like velvet, and his versions of the Christmas classics are positively spot on.

event: I'm going to have to go with Hale Centre Theatre's A Christmas Carol. People, it is pretty much the best way to start the season (we attended the first Saturday in December). Richard Wilkins plays Scrooge (and has for 27 years), and the man is kind of incredible. He lives in Quatar right now but returns each December to reprise his role. And goodness, he makes me cry. The whole production is phenomenal. Really.

funny: When we went to pick out our Christmas tree (in sub zero temperatures), Jess went to take Loula out of her car seat and smelled the smell. Girl has stinky diapers. Stinkier than you can imagine. It's not right. So I'm like, "No big. I'll just change her real quick while you go tree looking with Boo." I reached for the diaper bag only to find no diapers. AND NO WIPES. In my two and a half years of motherhood, I have never been caught without either. This was kind of a comedy. So I did what any mother would do and started digging through the car to see what makeshift items I had. Miraculously, I came up with a little baggy of wipes from who knows when that were still marginally moist and a size six diaper leftover from Annabelle's diaper days. And let me tell you what, Lou rocked the diaper that reached to her armpits. Rocked it.

it's been said

  

Me: You're a fruit snack nut!

Belle: I'm not a fruit snack nut! I'm Annabelle Charlene Cheney!

Me: You are?
Belle: Yes, and I'm the big sister!

Me: True.

Belle: And I'm the babysitter!

Me: Sweeeeet. When can you start?

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I want the reindeer red nosed fox.

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{overheard, singing}Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, had a very shiny....nose...had a very...bloody nose?

{thinking, shaking head...}

A very shiny nose.

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{whispers under her breath while I brush her hair}

I'm so excited! It's getting looonnngggg!
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Belle: What's his name that sings this song?

Me: Michael Buble.

Belle: Microphone Blue Blue?

{a few days later, in the car}

Hey Mom. I wanna listen to...Mr. Buble.

{I nearly died laughing. She knows "Mr. Buble" from this.}

{and yet a few days later, in the car}

I like this Microphone Buble.

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Rosie's drinking her bottle so be careful! Don't chouch her!

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Maybe someday I'll see Santa at Hobby Lobby.

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Belle: Is my head broken on the big computer?
{referring to that picture she saw weeks ago that chopped off the top of her head}

Me: No, it was just a picture Honey.

Belle: {holding the top of her head} My head is together?

Me: Yes, your head is together. {Mine, however...}

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Look! Lydia's holding my hand! ... She's my friend.

{the best kind of friend, the best}

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{her first prayer, said without any help or prompts}

Heav-ee Fadurr...we tankee for...my babies...we ask dee...to blessit...name of Jesus Christ...Amen!

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You tink your video is spicy? {my burrito, we haven't got a whole lot of "spicy" videos around here...}

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Grammy's berry little...and she's berry special. {totally out of the blue, mind you}

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Did I get this toy from Old McDonald's? {McDonald's}

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{to Aunt Whitney, referring to her pants}

Belle: These are boy pants.

Whitney: Um, no...they're girl pants silly.

Belle: These are girl pants. But they look like boy pants.

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{while we're walking from the car to the apartment}

Let's get on the sidewalk so we don't get in trouble.

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{overheard, while she plays with her toy food and kitchen}

Thank you for making this! It's nice to have friends over for lunch!

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The firefighters are getting in their truck! I'm so impressed!
{referring to some firefighters she saw leaving Cafe Rio}

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Boys make messes. Girls make cleaning! {perhaps the most true thing she's ever said}

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{while playing with my hair}

Apparently, I'm doing a braid in your hair.

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Belle: I like Santa. I tink he's nice.

Me: Yeah? Do you want to sit on his lap and tell him what you want for Christmas?

Belle: Um, no. I want to stay in my stroller buckled. And juss look at him.

five months

Little Loula:

In your fifth month, you stopped being an infant all together. I'm pretty sure you'll be twenty years old tomorrow. You started rolling over. Mostly only from back to front, but the other way too. I like that you did it this way, because you did it your way. By the end of the month, you were really good at rolling to actually get places or to grab things. You also found your toes. You don't eat them very often, but you do love to grab them and roll from side to side.

This month brought a few separations for us. You were left with loving friends and family a few times - a few times you were perfectly fine, a few times you just wanted your mommy. On one of those times when you wanted mommy, when I returned, I rushed into the room where you were crying (and being held and loved). The instant - I mean THE INSTANT - I touched you to pick you up, your cries were silent. I felt so very special in that instant. You then spent a half hour staring up at me with wide smiling eyes, a smile behind your binky. As if to say, "You did come back!" I hope you're learning that although I will leave from time to time, I'll always come back. And while I'm gone, I'm missing you.

Your hands are fast, fast, fast now. You grab with a vengeance. You must touch everything in your reach. And you will lunge straight out of our arms or laps to get to what you want. You love your exersaucer but have a particular affinity for the purse toy attachment. If ever you play with it too long you get angry. When I take you out of the exersaucer, you just get more angry. I think it's because you want the purse and it's really stuck. You often stand straight up in your exersaucer. Your legs and tummy are getting strong. Play time is intense - you focus through things, not on things it seems. You love your white blanket more than ever. It's the perfect amount of stretch and love I suppose. You also love Sophie the Giraffe. Looooooove. I often find you with your blanky in your right hand, Sophe in your left. And happy as a clam. (You appear to favor your left hand, which is very interesting with your exclusively right-handed family, including sibling, parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.)

You've started sleeping a little sporadically. Sometimes I get a wake up call at 3:30 a.m., sometimes at 6:30 a.m. like old times. Sometimes your naps are two hours, sometimes they are two minutes like old times. I imagine it has something to do with your growth rate. Or maybe with how much you've played that day. You did get your first cold this month as well, which also seemed to throw a wrench into your sleeping patterns.

You wear size 6-9 month clothing mostly. That said, you don't fit in some things because you're too skinny. You're long enough for some 12 month clothes, but way to spindly to fill them out. I have you in size three diapers. You techincally fit in size two, but the blow outs were driving me insane. So you're in big size three diapers and blowing out rarely.

You love your big sister. Like a lot. You love to try and touch whatever she's touching. You love to grab her curly hair. And she is hands down your favorite reason to giggle. You laugh at almost everything she does. Although, I'm happy to report that you also regularly giggle now. Up until recently, I had to put on a circus to get a giggle from you. Now you laugh just because you're happy. Your little chuckles are some of my favorite sounds.

I love that although you are tiny, your spirit is huge. Your personality takes over our apartment sometimes. You're a very intense little girl. Either you're very happy or you're very, shall we say, unhappy. Luckily, there is more happy than unhappy these days. You're so very lovely my girl. And we're so very lucky to have you.

All my love,

Mommy

Here she is at one month.

Here she is at two months.

Here she is at three months.

Here she is at four months.

lovely

Jess has a desktop screensaver set up on our computer that shuffles through some of the best of his photos. This morning, I looked over and saw this:

And I was just a little bit overwhelmed with how beautiful this lovely earth is. With how lovely everything is. This Christmas season has been wonderful for me. Last year was hard. I was in my first trimester of Lydia, and I wasn't well - in body or spirit. So this year has been so refreshing and quite honestly, a little bit amazing. Every little thing means so much more this year, the lights, the sugar cookies, the Christmas tree, the tiny baby Jesus and his brave mommy, Mary (oh, my heart). I've been sort of absent from my blog because I've been busy Christmasing. And enjoying my little girls. They are maybe the sweetest things on earth, and sharing Christmas with babies is some kind of magic. Annabelle is starting to understand some concepts, and having a new baby around during the holiday season...well, there really isn't anything better.

So. All of this to say, I'm simply grateful. Life really is beautiful. Amid the shuffling and even amid the heartache that we all experience in one way or another, it's quite lovely. And I'm simply grateful.

PHOTO: The Great Smokies, sunrise. I don't believe any post processing occurred either. (We don't even own Photoshop.)

another white bites the dust

My mom makes her grandbabies oodles of crocheted things before they're born. They arrive home to blankets and booties and sweaters and hats and a blessing dress (or five if it's Annabelle and she just keeps growing out of them) and little snuggly blanket squares. All crocheted from the same ridiculously soft yarn. And all ridiculously beautiful. She's a busy woman. I'm really not sure how she finds the time to outfit these babies, but she does. And their mommies are ever so grateful.

As it has been documented, Annabelle took a particular liking to the white blanket she was brought home in. Girl loves that blanky more than any other earthly possession. Although I don't allow it to accompany us into stores or on errands, it's often waiting patiently in the car. And even when my mom crocheted her a second white blanket in the hopes that having two would slow the decay of the first, she won't budge. She uses the second one, but she loves blanky. Blanky makes her happy. It makes her brave. It makes scary things fade. It heals owies. It even assisted in potty training (she held it, rolled up in a tight ball, to make her feel brave, and now that we're past the fear, she leaves blanky at the door). The other day, when a friend hurt her feelings, it was only being wrapped up in mommy's arms with blanky around her head that she could forget the mean things that had happened.

When Lou was born, I was dead set on not allowing another baby to destroy that pretty white blanket. She came home in it, and then I promptly folded it at the end of her bed and decided that the pretty light blue/tealish one was the one she would love. Little turkey didn't. She took a liking to the minky type of blanky for a while, but whenever I'd take the white blanket out (for church or photos), she would light up and practically dance. She'd grab it from behind her head and wrap her face up, just like her sister did and does. When you'd peek at her in the blanket, she'd be grinning and happy as a mommy who got a whole night of sleep. Eventually I realized something: this beautiful blanket was doing nothing sitting there folded except staying white. And so I relented. I think it has something to do with the stitch of the blanket, but just like her sister, she laces her fingers (and toes) through the blanket and swims in all that softness.

Yesterday, I thought I'd see if I could just get her to like the blue one. I just really wanted to give the white blanket a shot at you know, STAYING WHITE. Plus, I love that teal one. And it's never too early to start pushing personal preferences on your children, right? 

Here she is with said blanket, just a few weeks old.

She seemed fine through the day with the new blanket, but when it came time for bed, she started pitching a fit. This is rather customary for her, and the night time fit is generally just a last ditch effort to not go to sleep. She usually gives up quickly, takes her binky, and goes to sleep. But not last night. Last night she was arching her back and yelling and seriously mad. Sometimes I think babies can't use words until they're a little older because if they could as infants, it would be chiefly obscenities. I was a little worried as I can customarily get her to settle quickly, but I was having no luck. I thought maybe she just wanted her bed as she is pretty keen on snuggling up and drifting off to sleep by herself. But that made things much worse. And suddenly I had the thought, "Just give her her blanket."

Oh.

I scooped up that sad little thing, wrapped her in the white, soft blanket full of love, she nestled her head in, and she immediately went to sleep. I am not lying. I'm relatively sure my mother crochets some sort of invisible airborne drug that my children become addicted to into those blankets. There is truly something magic about them. All day she's been happy as a clam, her fingers laced through her blanket at all times. And I promised her I'd never take it away again. Except maybe when she's twenty. And her roommates think she's awkward. But until then, she's free to be safe and loved in that pretty white {for now} blanket.

smile

So I'd be lying if I said every day was super awesome, that I'm super happy all the time. The truth of the matter is, sometimes I'm pretty irrational. Sometimes I make no sense. Sometimes tears are more common than smiles. And it isn't because I have a sad life. On the contrary. I have a lovely life really. I think it mostly has to do with hormonal imbalances that my body is continually reconciling. For the most part, I'm relatively normal. I'm blessed to have doctors monitoring me monthly and synthetic hormones to do the job that my thyroid cannot. But on the days when things are out of whack, I can feel it. Thankfully, I've learned to just wait it out. I've learned that I'll come back around.

 

And thankfully, I have my babies around to keep me in check. It's honestly pretty hard to be sad when I stop listening to my brain and just focus on them. One thing I've been incredibly grateful for is this tiny girl's smiles. She doesn't smile with just her mouth. She smiles with her whole face, and it's contagious. There have been many times where I'm nearing an irrational breakdown, and that great big gummy smile happens. You simply cannot look at this face and not smile back.

 

Go ahead, give it a try. Bet you're smiling already...

 

 

it's been said

{while trying to describe which song from Sound of Music she wants}

Belle: I want Maria to sing without her hat.

Me: Um, it's a movie. We can't make her take off her hat.

Belle: No, I want her to sing without her hat, sing So Long.

Me: You want the Cuckoo Song?
Belle: {getting ridiculously exasperated with me}

NO. THE SONG WITHOUT THE HAT THAT THEY SING SO LONG.

Me: Oh! {realizing which scene she probably meant} This one?

Belle: Yes Mommy! I know bout what I'm talking about!

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Mommy, your hair is long. My hair is...small?

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Mom! What happened! Is the top of my head missing?

{after looking at a photo where the top of her head is cut off}

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Day gonna hang out and have a blessing. {her nativity people}

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{after Jess picks up his scriptures to read one morning}

Belle: No Daddy! Don't read the scriptures!

Jess: Um, why not?

Belle: Daddy don't read the scriptures! I don't want to go to bed!

{because we always read scriptures together at night before bed}

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Me: Who's your favorite Mommy?

Belle: Daddy!

{awesome}

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{to Lydia} Hey little creature!

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{while playing with a little toy car} This car is a HUGE LAWNMOWER!

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{in reference to her Great Grandma Cheney}

Grammy's little. She's just my size.

{cute...}

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{in reference to a short lady at Target}

Look Mommy! That lady's just my size!

{awkward...}

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Brown paper packages tied up wif...kittens...

 {My Favorite Things in Sound of Music)}

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I want to listen to I Have Competence.

{I Have Confidence in Sound of Music}

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{after I give her a roll and start scooping up her soup}

Belle: Thank you Mommy.

Me: For what?

Belle: Thank you for making dis dinner. It's goooood.

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Belle: Here Mommy. Have one of my candies.

{I take a Skittle.}

Belle: Thank you for taking a candy from my hand!

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{while she whines because I won't let her have something}

Me: What's wrong?

Belle: I want you to make me happy Mommy!

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Lehi has germs on his face.

{in reference to his beard}

two pies

I went to a baby shower for a friend the other day. She's having her second baby, so she was asking those of us who had two (or more) how the transition was. We started talking about how your heart literally grows, that you really do love the second as much as you love the first (something that seems so impossible beforehand). And one of my friends described it perfectly:

"While I was pregnant with my second, I pictured my love as one pie that I'd have to split in half," and she traced in the air a circle. "Each baby would get some of the pie, and it would be my job to make it even." She split the air pie in half with her finger. "What I didn't realize is I wouldn't have to split that pie at all; I'd actually just have two pies." And she held one imaginary pie in each hand.

It's the absolute truth. My heart is two pies - each baby gets her own. It's beautiful and lovely, and perfectly amazing. When I had Annabelle, my heart practically ached with all the happiness that was going on. I didn't think I could know more happiness. Indeed, I do. That Lou is her own little pie. And I love it just as much as the first.

nativity

We pulled out the Fisher Price nativity set the other day. And it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 'round here. Belle spends considerable time each day organizing the set, putting things and people in their places. I often find each person in their bed asleep, along with all the animals on their sides as well, because of course, they're sleeping too. Once, she gathered all the people around baby Jesus and told me he was having a blessing (like her baby sister's blessing a few weeks ago).

Lou, for her part, is enjoying devouring the camels...

....although she occasionally pauses to...ah hem...use the facilities...

...then resumes camel consumption.

I'm so glad we have a toy that actually reminds us why we celebrate Christmas. It isn't red and jolly, it doesn't twinkle or make noise, but Annabelle is learning the story of baby Jesus and loving every minute. And Lou Lou is just happy to have something to gnaw on.