Growth Stats

I took Rigdon in for his 6 month check-up and found out that he had RSV. So I totally forgot to put his stats up. But here they are:

Rigdon

Height: 28.5" ~100%ile
Weight: 23.5 lbs WELL over 100%ile
Head: 18.25"

In comparison to the other kids at 6 months, he is an inch and a half taller than any of them and weighs 5 1/2 lbs more than the girls did and 2 1/2 lbs more than Talmage did, and he was a chunk! His head is almost 2" bigger around than Sadie's was at the same age. Amazing. He is so big!

Sadie had her 3 year check-up on the same day. Her stats are as follows:

Sadie

Height: 37.5" 50%ile
Weight: 30.2 lbs 50%ile

That's right. Rigdon is less than 8 pounds behind Sadie. I was comparing her stats to Avri's and Sadie is almost exactly the same size as Avri was at 24 months. Sadie is our smallest child. And Rigdon is our biggest. I guess that's why when Sadie sat on Rigdon the other day he didn't even complain.

Picture Fun

We have been having fun learning how to take pictures with our new camera. A nice side benefit of learning how to use the camera is that we remember to take pictures of our kids as they grow up way too fast. :) Here are a few random pictures that don't really deserve their own posts, but they are fun anyway.Talmage is never without a weapon in his hands.
The kids were being very quiet one day. This is where they were hiding.
Getting some lovin' from Grandma.
Learning how to play soccer.
Cute kiddos. Notice here that Rigdon is almost as big as Sadie.
A friend in our back yard.

Mercedes Third Birthday

My baby girl turned 3 this past Friday.
She got some new summer clothes from Grandma Kim and Grandpa Reed,
a Little People Castle with extra people from Grandma and Grandpa Dietz,a spring microphone from Rigdon,
"Don't Break the Ice" from Talmage,
a kitchen mixer from Avri,
and a shopping cart that has a place to put her baby doll from Mom and Dad.
Strike a pose Mercedes!
The missionaries even came by to wish her a happy birthday and brought her a DVD and a little card that they had made. I couldn't believe that they would remember her birthday! We have some fantastic missionaries in the ward right now.

Sadie wanted a yellow kitty cat cake. She got to help pick out all of the M&Ms to put on the kitty cat, which I think was her favorite part! She got to have chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner (her very favorite).
Mercedes is such a fun little person to have in our family. She is probably the most strong-willed person in the family, but brings so much fun and personality to our Clan. She is cute as can be and has the sweetest little voice. She finally decided to be potty trained and hasn't had many accidents since. She is learning her ABC's really well and wants to know what EVERYTHING says, so I'm thinking she will want to start learning how to read before long. She adores playing house and almost always has a baby in her hands or is cooking something in her kitchen. We just love Mercedes to pieces and have had such a fun 3 years with this little girl in our home.

March Madness

We've had a busy month! Here's what we've been up to...

A little of this,
and a little of that.
Playing with toads that we found in the garden - Yay for garden season!! I'm so excited to see our seeds popping up for the tomatoes and broccoli and cabbage. Not to mention all of the flowers popping out of the ground. It has really lifted my spirits! But back to the toads:
Enjoying the on-again, off-again nice weather.
Taking a few bike rides as a family while we try to teach both Talmage and Avri how to ride two-wheelers.
And a LOT of nebulizer treatments. Rigdon got RSV in the middle of the month and we had a couple of scary days where he wasn't breathing so well. But after a priesthood blessing and lots of albuterol treatments he is doing much better. All 4 of the kids were on the nebulizer, since they all had awful coughs and they took turns having fevers. We barricaded ourselves in the house for a week to keep all of our germs to ourselves (and I REALLY missed going to the gym). But we feel very fortunate that we went all winter without really getting too sick. Too bad they had to get sick the week that it was like 70 degrees outside!

First Annual St. Patrick's Day

This year we celebrated our family's first annual St. Patrick's Day! I say that because I have always thought it was the dumbest holiday. But I decided to start some fun traditions this year and we had so much fun that I can't wait until next March 17th!

For Family Night we made a leprechaun trap. We bated it with real fool's gold and put a sign up that said "Do Not Climb Ladder." Those leprechauns don't like to follow rules. We told the kids the folklore about leprechauns. We found a cute video clip called Leprechaun's Gold on YouTube and the kids loved it. Here they are checking to see if we caught the leprechaun.But nope, just gold coins. Avri almost stuck her hand in the trap, but because of the video, they were nervous that the gold they found in the trap would turn into bees. hehe. Sadie was fearless and dug right in!
The Leprechaun's Gold was really magical gold that turns into chocolate and it is, in the words of Avri "the creamiest and most delicious chocolate you've ever tasted!"

But that little leprechaun didn't like that we tried to trap him, so he played a couple of tricks on us. He turned our milk green...
and our jello green...
and even our toilet water green!
We also tried, for the first time, Corned Beef and Cabbage for dinner. I was pretty sure it sounded gross, but it was actually quite good. I don't think I want it to be on my weekly or even monthly menu, but I think we will have it every year. The kids seemed to really like it and ate it all.

It just happened to be my week to teach preschool and we had preschool on St. Patrick's Day so we made Blarney Stones, and used potato stamps to paint clovers. We also discovered that pretzels make good clovers. We had green snacks and danced to a St. Patrick's Day song and read a book called "The Leprechaun's Gold" by Pamela Duncan Edwards. It was a good story, and the kids loved looking for 4-leafed clovers in the illustrations. It was a good way for the kids to see the difference between 3- and 4-leafed clovers.

Hope you had a good St. Patrick's Day! And if you have other fun traditions or pranks from your leprechauns leave a message! I need more ideas for next year!

Snow Cave

I managed to lose a memory card that had a bunch of pictures on it, and I finally found it. So some of these are a little old, but better late than never.

Back at the beginning of February when we had that huge snow storm and had T.O.N.S. of snow, Kendall decided to pile all of the snow from our front yard into one massive pile in the front so that he could go snow caving. (I think he's missing his mountain snow!) So after the snow packed down for a couple of days he dug out a cave that was big enough for him and Talmage to sleep in. Avri decided she didn't want to chance being cold.

Talmage was more than thrilled to be not only camping, but out in a cave in the snow! Does it get any better than that for a 4 year old boy? (Or a 28 year old boy for that matter. :) ) I think not. He looked up at Kendall as they were heading out to the cave and said "Dad, you're the best dad in the whole world. I love you." Here is a picture from outside the cave. The boys are all snuggled in and the door is blocked to keep in their heat.

I was pretty sure with the size of the snow mountain in our front yard that we would have snow until at least May. But then we got this really warm weird weather and two week later this was all that was left of our massive blizzard. You can see exactly where the cave part was.

The snow has been gone for a while now and the flowers are finally coming. So I guess we didn't have snow until May like I thought we might. Thank goodness! Or I would move to Arizona.

6 months already?

Has it really already been 6 months? I am always amazed how it feels like my babies were just born yesterday, but how it feels like they just...belong...like they've always been here. Rigdon continues to warm our hearts. He is the sweetest baby. He is full of big smiles, belly chuckles, and as happy-go-lucky as they come.
He is...well...BIG! He continues to live up to his nickname of Big Rig. I won't have stats on height and weight for another week and a half, but he is in 12-18 month clothing if that gives you an idea. My arm goes dead after holding him for more than about 15 minutes and if he falls asleep on my lap my legs will go numb.

Rigdon is a fantastic sleeper. He sleeps through the kids, a room full of screaming toddlers at the gym, conche shell blowing...you name it, he can sleep through it.
He is LOVING solid foods. We started him when he was little, a little less than 4 months, by doctor's orders. This was totally not my style, and he didn't really get the hang of it until he was closer to 6 months anyway. But it helping to reduce the amount of spit-up and reflux that he has had.
He fell asleep face down on his hands the other day. I got him up from his nap and was laughing so hard. I had to get a picture. Poor kid looks like we beat him. If you look closely though, you can see both hands, and even his fingernail prints. (You might have to make the picture bigger though.)
The other kids love to entertain him. If he is fussing there is usually at least one volunteer to play with him. Avri has been the best lately about making him happy, getting him to laugh, and reading him books. Talmage loves making him laugh with funny noises in the car and Sadie is always giving him new toys to play with.

I was looking at all of the kids' pictures from when they were 6 months and I thought I'd put up a little comparison. Can you guess who is who?

New Glasses

Mercedes got new glasses today. She has had her old pair for almost 2 years - not bad considering she isn't even 3 years old yet. But going to get her new glasses made me feel a little nostalgic. Here she is with her very first pair of glasses at 13 months old.I cried when she was trying them on. I was so sad that my baby had to wear glasses. Then she got them and was so stinking cute in them! And she has been remarkably careful with them. She wasn't even walking yet when she first got them. Now she is so much older and has outgrown these frames. So...
We upgraded to these ones today. I know they don't look THAT different. But they do to me. She looks so much older.
But still a stinkin' cutie bug!