The Christmas Post

We sure had a MERRY Christmas. The boys seemed to all get what they want. And they loved their new Nintendo DS's (Santa for sure got them used or didn't pay full price, he's smart like that)

We got a new family member.

The boys named her Isabella after the friend on Phineas and Ferb (not twilight).

Cara sure enjoyed her first Christmas that she wasn't napping through especially the candy. She didn't quite understand the whole unwrapping gifts thing, so her brothers were happy to help.

Sporting new pjs. 

I was testing out my new point and shoot camera and caught this picture of Cara, funny face.

Anyway, I hope you all had an awesome Christmas and if for some reason you didn't get a Christmas card or you don't know me on facebook here is the photo we sent along.

Halloween 2012

Yes, apparently I do have a blog and yes I sometimes remember to update it. Also I just realized I haven't posted about Cara's birthday that was over 1 month ago!  Well I'll do this out of order since I am already doing the Halloween post and hopefully remember to do Cara's birthday next week. Yeah, we'll see.

We didn't do the complete family theme this year. We sort of split up. KC and I were District 12's Katniss and Peeta (pre-hunger games). Andrew and Isaac were characters from their favorite video game Minecraft and Will and Cara were classic Halloween, a pumpkin and a ghost.

Getting ready to go trick or treating.

The boys couldn't wait to get out and get going.

Cara practices walking while she tries on her ghost tutu. 

Katniss, Peeta and a pumpkin?

See? I got candy.

Isaac as a skeleton archer from Minecraft. After a while he got tired of the box head and just went around in the sweats.

Andrew as "Steve" from Minecraft. After a while he got tired of falling down (the box was too long so he couldn't bend his legs well) so he finished trick or treating early and spent the rest of the evening giving out candy on the porch.

Cara enjoys the treat or treat walk. It was beautiful weather for a Halloween in Utah.

 Here are the reference photos we used for our costumes.

William Is 3!

This last week our little William turned 3 years old! We had a little family party at home. The main present that he got was a Cars 2 scooter for him to ride with his brothers outside. He is so fun and cute and independent sometimes. He very much lives up to him name. We are working on potty training but I don't think it will happen until he "wills" it to. Ha.

Yes, 3 cars, 3 years old!

We often have a hard time getting him to open his eyes for pics. As soon as we say "smile" he closes his eyes.  So we usually have to catch him by surprise.

Random Update

• Despite the glowing post about cloth diapers have yet to make the leap, the chasm looks so big from here...
• I made the Sweet Potato Curry with Tofu again. I suggested making it with light coconut milk to make it more healthy. It's more healthy, but like most health foods it loses a lot of the flavor. That darn fat in the coconut milk is just so yummy. We had to add a lot more salt to get some flavor. You've been warned.
• I was thinking of getting Will off the pacifier when he turned two, but today out of necessity (I couldn't find a single pacifier), I put him down for a nap without one. Did he care? No, as long has he had his special blanket.
• Andrew had his birthday last week. It was a small family thing with pizza of course. There is something about going from the age of 6 to 7 that makes a kid seem so much older.
• I'm very ready for spring to come, it's so close! I am thinking I need to hurry it along by growing wheatgrass again.

A Matter of Money, Cuteness, or the Environment? I say all three.

When I was expecting William I looked at possibly getting cloth diapers to use on him. I almost spent a few hundred dollars on it, but couldn't bring myself to make the leap. Lately I have been looking at the prospect again. He still has at least a year more of diapering left before he is potty trained so it's would still be economical to make the investment, though not as much if I started when he was born.

So now I that I am looking at it again I am leaning towards an economical basic one size cover from Econobum. Then I want to get a bunch of Indian prefolds and sew them into fitted diapers with elastic and velcro so I don't have to deal with pins etc. I also want to get a diaper sprayer to make easier to clean the yucky stuff off the diaper. (The boys will be told upon threat of death or something that they cannot touch it.)

Today I wanted to do a details price comparison for cloth diapering vs disposables for what I buy. I get Sam's Club Member's Mark diapers and figured that William will go to a size 5 when he is 2 and won't potty train until 3ish. I guesstimated the amount of time a baby is in each size of diaper and took current prices for each item from Sam's Club and Walmart for the Parent's Choice size 1 and 2.

I know it's small so click on the picture to see it blown up.

The table says that for diapering a child in disposables from birth to potty training at 3 results in 6909 diapers costing $1,228. That doesn't include the cost of wipes. To get enough diapers from birth to potty training expecting to do laundry about every 3-4 days will cost $208.70.

If cuteness is a factor you could spend a lot more on covers. There are some way cute ones by Bummis that cost about $13 each but you would have to get some in each size. But even the Econobum covers come with 3 colors of binding to add a little to the cuteness factor. You can also make your own covers out of laminated fabric (PUL), heavy fleece or wool.

A lot of people site environmental reasons to why they choose cloth diapers. They say that a child from birth to potty training will contribute 1 TON of stinky waste to the landfills. That is a lot of stink and diapers can take from 250 to 500 years to decompose (source). To borrow from the same source:

• Disposable diapers generate sixty times more solid waste and use twenty times more raw materials, like crude oil and wood pulp.
• The manufacture and use of disposable diapers amounts to 2.3 times more water wasted than cloth.
• Over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable diapers for one baby EACH YEAR.

It sounds like I'm sold right? Well I have a neighbor that uses cloth diapers and she lent me some of her extras that would fit William. I have been trying it out and so far my only complaint is that they are a lot thicker than a disposable diaper. The poopy diaper and washing in the toilet thing is gross, but once I get the sprayer it will be a lot better (I hope). Finally it is really hard to beat the ease of a disposable diaper. I think I am still going to try it though. For William, instead of the almost $400 I will spend on disposables over the next year I can instead spend about $150 to get started with 6 covers, 24 diapers, and a sprayer.

My Heroes

Is your land in danger from an evil king, sith lord, emperor, or magician? Never fear! Call 1-800-MY HEROES and we'll provide you with the right hero for the job.

The hero, Andrew Who Could Fight always has the right weapon for the job. With his magical sword, super hammer, bombs, and arrows, he is ready to fight both dungeon bosses and evil magicians.

 If a samurai ninja is more your style, we have Ninja Isaac to protect your people.

With Scottish heart and fighting skills, William Wallace is ready to free your people from the tyranny of kings.

Do you have a Sith Lord Emperor plaguing your galaxy? What your rebellion needs is a good Jedi Master.

Does organization, structure, and cleanliness bog you down? Pumpkin Boy with pumpkin power will fix that with his ability to empty cupboards and throw food. His signature mess of pumpkin innards lets organizers know who's in town.

Is your city overrun by mental crime bosses? We also have special relations with a bat obsessed group who can put those criminals behind bars. Sign up now and we'll include a free signal light.

Cast Off

The cast finally came off yesterday. Before they took us to the cast room, Will was happy as a clam since he had full access to the computer.

Or so he thought, darn password protection.

Then they took us to the cast room, but Will thought it was the torture room.

After a few minutes his leg was finally free.

But it wasn't over as we had to go to torture room number 2, the x-ray room. Then mommy wasn't allowed to let Will down on the ground until the doctor reviewed the x-rays. Torture for both Will and mommy. Finally we were free to go and we could get candy.

Won't this make a great keep sake?

Of Course

Will is walking finally!

Wait... scratch that.
Here he is the day after he broke his left leg on a trampoline last Friday. He needed some Motrin for a couple of days, but he's in no pain now as far as I can tell.

And here he is yesterday after he got is cool blue waterproof hard cast. So Will won't be doing any real walking for 3 more weeks. He can sorta crawl. On the bright side he has developed a nice way of telling me he's awake in his crib without having to cry. The hard cast makes a nice loud sound on the bars of the crib, so when he's bored and awake he just bangs away.

Problem Solved

"Mommy, Will turned off the TV!"

"Will, don't change the channel!"

"It's too loud! Will turned it up!"

Problem Solved.

Sweet William

It was William's birthday this week. He didn't know what was going on, but he loved getting lots of cupcakes. The photo is of him after his third cupcake. I think the older boys enjoyed his little party more than he did.

We have really enjoyed having Little Will in our family. He is so excited and full of life. I can already see him being a fun loving kid. He loves to do silly things with his body and make odd noises with his mouth. His feet are almost as important to him as his hands. He loves to slam his feet on the ground continually (you can see that in the video of him crawling) and almost as soon as he could clap with his hands he started doing the "foot clap" which I will share in a video.

Happy Birthday Will, we love you.

Crawling With A New Doo

William is 1 year old this week. Wow, time flies! A couple of weeks ago he got is first hair-cut. That baby hair was just crazy all the time. He looked like a little mad scientist.

He looks so much older now.

The week after that he finally started crawling, much to the dismay of his grandma who was babysitting him for a week. She was hoping for a happy stationary baby. Oh well, we can't stop progress. I'm sad he won't be walking at one like Andrew was, but I am also happy he won't be walking at one. More time to baby proof the house. I'll share pictures of his little birthday party. I'm sure he'll love his cake.

Here he is showing off is crawling skills along with his waving skills. He's pretty narcissistic as I can always guarantee a wave if he sees himself in the mirror.

August Pictures

Apparently I haven't posted any new pictures of Will lately and my sister didn't let me forget it today. She made me promise to post something soon. So here are a few pictures I took of the boys with Will a couple of weeks ago.

Who's Who Answer and Stuff

Those who guessed were right. Picture A is Andrew, he tends to have the longer face. Picture B is William. Finally picture C is Isaac. I think William and Isaac look most alike although when William was first born I though the looked most like how Andrew did when he was born.

In other news we are making our way through more active little boy injuries. Andrew was at the doctor yesterday with some cuts on his eye lid and right below his eye. Isaac threw a play sword at him. The doctor glued them up since we couldn't put bandaids on them. Isaac was at the doctor a month ago when he took a head dive into a door frame at the bank. He got a gash on his forehead that was pretty deep. He almost needed stitches but we ended up only needing the derma glue stuff. That stuff is a miracle invention for moms of busy boys and girls. Last night I had to put 5 bandaids on Isaac's toes. I don't know how it happened, but he has cuts on the underside of his toes. I think he needs to wear socks and shoes outside for a while and stop running around without shoes on. We are still waiting for our first broken bone, which will now come soon since I mentioned it. I'll post photos of that one.

Who's Who?

These are pictures of Andrew, Isaac, and William all at about the same age. Can you tell who's who?

Blessing William

Last Sunday we had William's baby blessing at home. We were going to do it during sacrament meeting, but since he was still a bit sick from RSV we decided to hold it at home.

(As an aside William and I were at Primary Children's for 24hrs last week. He had a fever over 100 so as a precaution they had us go there so they could do all the tests to make sure it wasn't something more serious. Turns out he had RSV though he was hardly coughing and had a bit of mucus. I all sounds more worrisome than it actually was. We came home after the 24 hrs and he is doing awesome now and back to himself.)

William manged to sleep through the whole thing, which made the blessing go fairly smooth. Casey thought that doing it at home would be better since he wouldn't feel the pressure of feeling the spirit for the blessing in front of the whole congregation, but he said afterwards it wasn't that much different doing it in front of a bunch of family either. Any way he does it, he always does an awesome job.

Casey's brother from Arizona was already visiting so he was able to attend along with his other brother and his family. I had my family come up from Southern Utah to stay and be there for the blessing as well. I have two sisters who have 3 kids each, all 5 and under. So we had 9 kids in the house for 2 days. We couldn't go outside much since it was rainy most of the time. Sometimes it was very loud, but we managed to enjoy it still. Andrew and Isaac loved having their cousins here to play. No matter how stressful or hectic it is when the house is crazy with visitors I always feel a little depressed with how suddenly quiet and lonely the house feels after they leave. I also miss having the extra people to help with the cooking and the dishes.

Introducing....

He's finally here. I am now happy to introduce William Joseph to the blogging world. He had his own plans for what day he wanted to arrive and he decided to spring those plans on me at 3:45 in the morning on the 18th. My water broke, waking me from the last night of restful sleep that I will have for a while. I had my very generous cousin come over to stay at the house while KC and I headed to the hospital.

They eventually got me started on pitocin to get my contractions going and after a while I decided an epidural was in order. I had felt enough labor pains for this one, or so I thought. After the epidural I found that I could still feel all the pain on one side of my body. So they injected me with more anesthesia which helped, but my legs soon felt like they were the size of elephants. That dose wore off and I was again feeling the contractions on that side. The pain was dulled, but still painful. We were getting to the end though, and I figured when it was all over I'd want to walk sometime in the next day so I didn't ask for another large dose of anesthesia. Feeling the contractions a bit proved helpful as I eventually had to call in the nurses to inform them that William didn't want to wait much longer. So the doctor was called back in and after a couple pushes he was out. It turns out that the cord was wrapped around William's neck. This explained why his heart rate would go down quite a bit during each contraction. Despite expectations for a larger baby, like Andrew and Isaac were, William surprised us by being just 7 lbs 8 oz and 19.5 inches long. In the end though he was healthy and looked great. That's the exent of the gory details I am wishing to share.. aren't you glad?

Here are some photos from the last few days.
Look at that head of hair.
We thought we'd be able to go home after 24hrs, but Williams PKU test showed high levels of Bilirubin so he had to do some fake baking during the next day. He levels went down quickly and we were able to go home without having to take home any extra equipment.
Finally able to go home.

His brothers think he is the cutest and can't wait for him to crawl and be able to play with them.