Early

Moriyah has continued to wake up before 7am even though we have stayed up late the last couple nights. I think it was yesterday morning she flung the door open and proudly proclaimed, "Hey Guys!" My 6 am response was not as enthusiastic.

I think that if you stay up past your bedtime it should correlate into an equally, if not longer, sleeping in. Now, how to teach that to my children?

My beautiful girl

My daughter is so amazing. Sometimes so frustrating, but mainly amazing. She is beautiful, kind, tenderhearted and loves to sing.

Today she came in the house and her and Moriyah sat on the couch and she read a story to her. Then they went upstairs to get on dress up clothes. Hannah held moriyah's hand all the way down and as they walked off to play Hannah said, "Daddy, she is my best friend forever!"

Melts my heart. I pray they will always have a close and tender relationship.

Its been awhile!

Well it has been an incredibly long time since I blogged. I feel like an entirely different person since that blog posting. I have grown and changed much since that time. Teaching has its ups and downs. Thankfully I'm in an up motion now. I have had horrible health issues that were solved, after much testing and worry, with a pill. As we come up to our tenth wedding anniversary adam and i are still learning what it means to live sacrificially and to choose love each day.

Here's the story that brought me to this computer as I wait for my toe nail polish to dry.

This morning the girls woke up bright and early at 6:45. Which is the regular time for them, they still haven't caught on to saturday and sundays schedule yet. Adam and I each got a girl and brought them back to bed with us. I had Hannah he had Moriyah. We laid quietly for 1.2 seconds then the talking, giggling and general awakeness began. Mo, thats what we call Moriyah, crawled over adam and Hannah to come find me. she put her face right between mine and Hannah's. I thought Hannah was going to have a cow but instead she looked at me and said as if introducing us, "This is my friend Moriyah." Those were the most precious words to hear. I have been a little worried about the girls because they seem to like to pick at each other even though they're so little. I guess all siblings are going to fight sometimes. I just don't remember the boys doing it this much.

I am so excited because my husband is the bomb. He earned some sort of award for something at work. (I think he had to be in the top 10% in the NATION for something). We are going to a banquet tonight. I started asking a girl friend that works at tmobile what it would be like, what i should wear, etc. The best way to describe her responses is a high school formal. I had to go buy a dress and everything. The funny part of that was there were five high school girls trying on formals at the same time i was. I'm pretty sure they thought I was in high school to. So I'm waiting for my toes to dry so I can get dressed and all dolled up. Hopefully have a great time!

Little Mo

I think that Moriyah might be the most uniquely funny infant we have had. Here are some of her funnies:

• She ROARS. Seriously just like a lion. If she hears someone roar she is compelled to roar as well.
• She used to growl, thankfully I haven't heard her do that lately. It was this deep raspy i'm possessed kind of growl. I found it to be a bit creepy.
  
• She loves to eat, not so unique, but she will eat anything we give her. Pickles, blueberries, olives, whatever. But please don't give her baby food. She hates it.
• She waves good bye the right way. Most babies wave backward. Oh not Moriyah.
• For many months now Moriyah has swirled her foot around. You know how you can make a circle with your toes. Well she does that when she is excited, tired, intrigued...whenever
• She gets genuinely angry and yells at whatever has made her angry. IE her shirt, the table, a toy.
  
• she moo's but only with Adam. I think she is going to be a daddy's girl. I tried to get her to moo with me. No dice, just daddy.
  
• She thinks I'm a rock star. At least thats what i call it. Every time she sees me she screams for me. She my entourage. Every mother needs one.
  
• She is so fat she has tan lines on her rolly arms.
  

She brings us such joy and laughter. Little Mo we love you.

kodak moment

Beautiful

Thank you Father for all the beautiful things you have placed in my life.

On Parenting and police

So Moriyah is the worst infant of all my kids. Isaac was a quick second. followed by Hannah and then Andrew. This ranking is according to sleep. Moriyah is nearly eight months old and still doesn't sleep through the night. She has a hand ful of times slept most of the night. This means that it has been over two years since I regularly got to sleep at night.

Some nights are better than others. Moriyah is the most clingly of all my kids. she screams if she sees me and I do not pick her up immediately. It is such a blood curdling scream that one day our neighbor poked her head out to see if she was ok. I had just put her down to help hannah with something. I was right there. She was fine.

If I am holding Moriyah and I don't feed her when she thinks that I should, which is every two to three hours, she begins to claw at me and even tries to rip the neckline of my shirt off. It has gotten so i can hardly rock her to sleep. She just screams because I am not feeding her. I can't tell you just how frustrating this is.

We have tried things that have worked in the past to get our dear children to sleep through the night. We moved moriyahs bed down stairs so that she could cry. When we did this with andrew it took all of a week and he was sleeping like the best of them. Moriyahs bed was in the living room for several months. We gave up. No amount of letting her cry it out seemed to help her sleep. Maybe I have been too inconsistent with her. I have no idea. I'm just exhausted and frustrated and nearing the end of my sanity.

It was 95 degrees today. Naturally everyone has their windows open. It gets really cool at night so we put our box fan in our window before we went to bed. The fan was on low. It creates this great white noise as well. Seems to help me sleep, aparently too well. At 3:30 I heard Moriyah and got up and got her. She was sitting up in her bed, which is unusual. I thought that she must have been crying longer than i heard her. Hannah was awake too, the girls share a room now. I said good night to hannah and took moriyah in my room. I was feeding moriyah when i heard our door bell ring. then a series of loud bangs on the door. I was trying to rouse adam to answer. next thing i know i see a flash light and an officer walking through my hallway. He went into each of the kids rooms then left. Aparently one of our neighbors called the police because moriyah was crying.

Thank you oh wonderful neighbors for calling the police for my crying infant. I hope you are so diligent in your vigilence for child abuse when it comes to actual abuse. I am so frustrated and tired and now angry. I am the only parent who ever goes outside with my kids. In fact all the kids in our neighborhood end up in our driveway to play with adam and i. I could tell you the names of all the kids in our neighborhood and what is happening in their lives. I feel like i've been parenting about 10 kids in the last two weeks. But thanks again wonderful neighbors for noticing my daughters crying. I am never going to sleep at night. How will moriyah ever learn if i can't even let her cry once in a while? I bet someone just wanted her to be quiet so they could get back to sleep. Jerks.

i cant wait!

Well Moriyah definately has whatever stomach bug we all had. Which translates into being awake much of the night. Yuk! She is now sleeping and i have tried to lay her down four times but she just wont stay asleep. i have given in and am just holding her. i started surfing the web and was looking at my new camera! Its the canon rebel xti, the digital slr! it was ordered last week and i keep thinking that i'm going to get a knock on the door and it'll be here. no such luck yet. im just sooo excited. this is what i remember feeling like for the couple weeks before christmas as a kid. my poor kids are going to hate me for the first couple weeks but i'll have to get some practice in. hee hee hee!

My beauties

Moriyah today, what a cutie!
















so beautiful princess

Here's my goofball.

what puppydog eyes!