January always feels like the longest month of the year. This January felt especially long with too many cloudy days and never-melting snow. It was cold. Thankfully, we had lots of smiles inside our warm house to make the month easier, as well as two big events to celebrate. Here's the filler stuff.
On January 1, Rachel officially became a Sunbeam and got to go to Primary. Thankfully, she has amazing teachers who are helping her class adjust to all that sitting! She had a little confusion at first.
Gabe went for his hilarious breaststroke crawling (picture a little baby doing the worm), to full on crawling. Here he is with his worm crawling all over the place and messing with our rugs:
He also discovered the playroom downstairs and absolutely loves it.
Here's Michael busting out some new dance moves?
Gabe continues to love his baths.
And we all still love story time:
Gabe is a paper eating machine, so we have to be really vigilant. He loves looking at books, but sometimes he tries to eat them. Also, his crawling style sometimes causes him to lose his pants. You can see them back in the mudroom if you look closely. (Upper left middle)
Rachel's hair continues to be her super power. This is the laziest hair-do I have for her, and I found myself filled with a mixture of pride and jealousy over how her natural curl made this look like a really fancy up-do.
Our own Eden looks like this:
We got a disco/light ball and hung it updownstairs. Our dance parties just went to a new level:
Someone else has discovered that Brian makes a good climbing thing:
January 12 marked 4 months since surgery. Look at me, standing on my surgery leg!
Gabe figured out how to climb up onto the hearth, and he discovered an awesome person inside the fireplace.
He is now into everything because he figured out how to pull himself up onto everything. At this point, he hadn't even started full on crawling. I can't remember if all of our other kids did this too.
Gabe turned 9 months old and has officially been outside the womb longer than he was in it. It's going so fast. He's now a very busy, but still very chill, little guy. He weighed in at 20 pounds during his well-child, and I expect he'll pass Rachel in weight before too much longer.
Brian started our downstairs mantle with my dad in Idaho over Christmas, On Saturdays in January and the one Monday he had off, he worked hard assembling it, sanding it, and finally painting it!
After painting it, he worked hard on installing it:
This picture is of it not attached, so you'll see another picture later that will look the same to you, but to us, there's a big difference.
Gabe goes back and forth about being afraid of the vacuum.
Michael is still taking piano lessons, but this year, I'm teaching him. So far, it's going pretty well.
For release night, the kids and I went to the Children's Museum after a quick drive-through dinner. This was Gabe's first time playing there, and he really enjoyed himself:
They all love banging on the piano. Rachel is dying to learn stuff, so I started teaching her as well. I bought some percussion instruments, and we're having fun with our little mommy and me class.
Ta- dah! Now it's basically done. There was tweaking, nailing, caulking, filling holes, and touch-up paint to be done, but now the mantle is all finished and SO beautiful. Good job, Brian!
We love our fireplaces, especially during this cold January!
Deer have been spotted all over our neighborhood, and one afternoon, we spotted them in our neighbor's yard across the street. You can't really see them in this picture, but trust me, they were there.
On January 27, I discovered our beloved fish, Spike, dead in his tank. It was so so sad. I took him out and put him in the toilet, and I said a few words with Rachel and then flushed. And then I thought that maybe we should have buried him instead.
All day, Rachel kept asking about Spike. She kept saying, "I want Spike back." I had to explain to her about death the best that I could. I told her that Spike had gone to live with Jesus. We had the same conversation about half a dozen times.
A day or so later, Rachel was quite insistent about Gabe not being in the bathroom. We got him out because we agreed with her, and she said, "We have to keep him away from the toilet so that he doesn't get flushed down and go live with Jesus." She's been pretty consistently concerned about this.
Gabe's pediatrician told me that I can start cutting out bottles and focusing on meals and snacks so that we can get him ready for being a year old. I've tried giving him a sippy of whole milk at his meals, and he likes it. Our other kids had to have flavoring put in at first since they weren't used to having their milk cold, but we've never warmed Gabe's water for his bottle. I'm excited that we're going to have an easy transition without the guilt about extra sugar.
Our friend Koby had a surprise birthday party thrown by his wife. Towards the end of our time at the party, she figured out that there was cake, so she sat at this counter-height table to eat her cake, making her the only child with all these adults. She wasn't fazed, and we were laughing at the high contrast of this group. She's so tiny next to the adults.
Michael made this huge paper airplane for Rachel for her birthday. It was awesome, but way too big. So, we took this picture, and after a week, we sent it to it's final reward.
Whenever we make it to February 1, it feels like a major accomplishment. January always feels so so long. Looking back on it today, I can't help but feel that it flew by. Perspective, right?
