quote board

"We are SUPER BATS! Our super power is giving our diseases to da bad guys!"
~Daniel


(Yes, my kids are nerds)

help for sleepy families

Parenting books have always seemed a bit, ummm, gimicky to me. I have a hard time believing that a self-proclaimed expert who has never met my children could know how to parent them better than me.

But if being the mother of three children has taught me anything, it's that I often have no clue what I'm doing. At least it feels that way.

The honest truth is that I've discovered that some fresh ideas or a new point of view can work wonders for my parenting dilemmas. The trick for me has been to find new ideas that jive with my desire for gentle and respectful parenting.

So, in desperate frustration over Jack's sleep issues, I turned to Elizabeth Pantley's No-Cry Sleep Solution. And let me tell you up front: this book did. not. disappoint.

Jack is an unbelievably good-natured and happy baby. So I've been feeling like a complete idiot for the fact that it was taking us a good two hours to get him to sleep at night, or that it took 45 minutes to get him down for naps that only lasted 30 minutes, or that he'd start crying the minute we pulled down the blinds in his bedroom.

That was last week. This morning, when it was time for his nap, I sang him a song, laid him down in his crib wide awake and smiling and walked out of the room. He cooed to himself for about 5 minutes and then he slept for TWO HOURS! If those aren't dramatic results, I don't know what are.

seven years ago...

... this boy and this girl got married. They really, really loved each other.

Seven years, three college degrees, six moves, three little boys and a beagle later...

...they're still living the fairy tale.

Happy 7th Anniversary Joe!

ask and ye shall recieve...

This post is for you, Julie. We aim to please!

Exhibit A: the chunkybum and (ahem) waist.

Exhibit B: Double chin, baby boobs and wrist creases. Oh, those wrist creases! Please don't let them influence your child-spacing plans...




Squishy!!!

This kid is definitely a keeper.

aliens attacked my eyeball

Dear Blog,

It's been forever. Didja miss me? I missed you (kinda), but things have been a little (a lot) chaotic around here. First off, some nasty little aliens attacked my eyeball.

Seriously.

Okay, maybe that's not completely true, but it sure looked like it**. I really just had a corneal ulcer, which was Awful. No worries now. I'm all better-- and my ophthalmologist is a heckuva lot richer. But he's a real nice guy, so I'm okay with that. His name is Frank and he's got 8 kids and 9 grand kids and he likes golfing and BYU football. You learn these things about your ophthalmologist when you see him every day for two weeks. In fact, I kind of miss him now.

Anyways, the point is that I was out of commission for a little while, and then summer was here and it was hard to get back into the swing of blogging. But I'm back now and I love you more than ever.

My camera has gone camping, but I promise that I do have pictures of my crazy kids coming soon. Here's a teaser for you: Jack now weighs 23 lbs. You won't believe the fat rolls!

Thanks, I knew you'd understand.

Steph



**While that's not an actual photo of my eye, that's what it looked like.