Pyper Rosie

Little Pyper Rose is growing up so fast!  Here are some things about her recently:

- At her 6-month well check, she weighed 14 pounds 10 ounces (20%) and was 26.25 inches long (76%).  She's still my biggest baby, but she's starting to slow down on her growth and follow the other girls' growth patterns more closely.

- She has just recently started wearing 3-6 month clothes.

- She loves baby food!  Her favorites are carrots, sweet potatoes and squash.  She hates green beans and peas, and is pretty unimpressed by fruit as well.  The only fruits she enjoys are apples and pears.  She also loves baby oatmeal and rice cereal.  She does NOT like solid foods.  At all.

- She is sitting like a champ!  She is not really anywhere close to crawling yet, which I am 100% okay with.  My girls are generally mobile a little later, and it's pretty awesome that I don't have to baby proof quite as early.

- She is so so quiet.  She really doesn't babble at all.  True to her Savage name, her main forms of communication are grunts and squeals.  She's such a content baby!  She laughs and smiles a lot.  I've been doing my best to get her to say, "Mama," and DJ is trying hard to get her to say," Dada."  So far she's not saying anything.  Haha!

- She is a really good sleeper.  She usually goes to bed between 6-7pm and sleeps til about 1am when she gets up to eat.  Then she sleeps til around 7am, eats, and goes back to sleep again til around 9am.  She usually takes 2 naps a day, each between 2-3 hours.

- She is still bald as can be.  She has a little bit of hair but it's super short, and I still can't decide what color it will be.  I'm thinking lighter brown than her sisters, but not fully blonde.  We'll see.

- Her eye color changes daily, just like mine!  Some days they look blue, occasionally green, and sometimes grey.  So I'm thinking she'll end up with hazel eyes.  If you look closely, right around her pupil she has a ring of light brown, the middle of her iris is green, and the outer edge is blue.  It's really pretty!

- She has the best smile!  She is so happy and smiles at everyone.

- She has 2 teeth on the bottom, which she got when she was around 4 months old.  She's pretty much been teething ever since then-- drooling, swollen gums, chewing everything in sight-- but no other teeth have popped through yet!

- Her Daddy always calls her Pypes, and I usually call her Pyper Rosie, Miss Pyper, or Miss Rosie.

Here are some recent pictures of my baby love:

 Playing in her bouncer:

Her first time sitting in a shopping cart seat:

Staying up late to watch basketball with Dad:

Sitting up so big!

 She loves Lexsi!

She is just so pretty.  Really. 

And so happy.

And time to update her monthly growth pictures.

4 Months:

5 months:

6 Months:

7 Months:

Mia Mae

Miss Mia is as precocious as ever.  She is so much fun to be around, and I just adore her!  Here are some things about her lately:

- She is such a great eater.  She's happy to try anything, and there are very few foods she doesn't like.  

- She is a total smarty pants!  The way that she speaks is just hilarious to me-- most 2-year-olds don't have such an advanced vocabulary, so it just cracks me up to hear the things she says!

- Her favorite primary song is The Wise Man and the Foolish Man.  Her favorite secular song is "Watch Me."  She loves to whip and nae nae... haha!

- She is such a sensitive girl.  If anyone around her is sad, she starts crying too.  Another benefit of her vocabulary is that she can tell me exactly how she feels-- if she's sad, hurt, nervous, scared, etc.  It's very helpful.

- She and Lex are sharing a room so that Pyper can have her own, and it's going great!  They both actually sleep better now that they're in the same room again.  So Mia goes to sleep around 7pm (she usually falls right asleep, even if Lex is awake and messing around for a while), and wakes up between 7:30-8am.  I have a feeling that she'd sleep later if she didn't share a room, cause I think Lex is the early riser.  But that's okay.

- Little Einsteins is her very favorite show, and she is always pretending to be Quincy.  I'm not sure why she doesn't choose to be one of the girls, but there you have it!

- She is has very strong opinions and is not afraid to let you know it!  I love that quality about her, and sometimes it's super frustrating.  

- She has a unique sense of style-- as in, she believes no outfit is complete without a skirt.  She'll pick out jeans and a t-shirt and insist on wearing a skirt with it.  I do my best to steer her away from ridiculousness, but in the end she's 2, so I don't care that much.  I'd rather let her have an opinion.

- She is a BIG tease.  She knows exactly what to say and do to get under Lexsi's skin.  Lex will be freaking out about whatever it is Mia is doing, and Mia just laughs.  Again, sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's super frustrating.  She is pretty much a free spirit.

- The most exciting of Miss Mia's recent developments is that she's potty trained!  I'm extremely excited about that.  At the beginning of January I decided to go the "lazy route" with potty training, and put her in pull ups.  I just wasn't quite ready to commit to cleaning up pee all over the house yet.  After about a week, I realized she was keeping her pull up dry most of the time so I made the switch to regular panties.  She obviously still had accidents, but it wasn't terrible.  Now it's to the point that I feel confident in saying that she's fully potty trained.  I go out in public with her and leave her in regular panties, so life is good!  I haven't tried tackling night time potty training yet, but I think she'll pick it up quickly so I'm going to try soon.  It's so amazing to only have one kid in diapers!  Mia was a full year younger than Lex was when she decided she was ready to potty train, so I'm incredibly grateful that she was ready when she was so young!

- She is a great big sister to Pyper, who she calls "Py-puh."  I love that she can't say her "r's" yet.  

- She completely idolizes Lex, and wants to do everything she does.

Here are some recent pictures of my sassy girl:

She came out with her shopping cart, a baby, a backpack around her neck and a microphone and announced, "I'm going to Grammie's house!"

One day at Smith's while I was putting groceries on the conveyor belt, Mia opened a pack of Rolo's.  I was not thrilled to have to buy them, but I learned my lesson:  never leave Mia unattended by the candy.

I was trying to do dishes and she just HAD to be held, so we made do:

 Again with the backpack around her neck.  It is apparently her fashion statement:

She adores Pyper so much, but doesn't quite grasp the need to give people space.  Luckily, Pyper is used to that.

Getting her fingers and toes painted!

 DJ was on the computer and heard Mia say behind him, "That's a LOT of popcorn!"  When he turned around he saw this.  Haha this is what happens when your kids are independent.

Eating yogurt with a knife at Sean's reception.  Cause she does what she wants.

Wearing Lexsi's crown from church.  

She got to go with her Daddy on a date to get donuts and new panties after her first full day of no accidents while potty training:

Playing in a fort:

Eating her free apple from Smith's.  Pretty much the best thing ever.

She's obsessed with apples, but always eats the core all the way to the seeds.  I keep telling her not to, but she doesn't seem to care.  I know the core won't hurt her, but it can't be delicious enough to keep eating!

She is so proud of her Braves "warm-up suit!"

Wearing her jacket backwards...

She insisted all the ponies needed to go on a walk around the store, so I obliged.

Braves girls:

Playing with Pyper:

My girls just have awesome hair!

She is seriously obsessed with pepperoni.  She would eat it for every meal if I'd let her!

Miss Lex

Oh, my Lexsi girl.  She's just getting too big and it's awesome and breaks my heart all at the same time.  I can hardly believe she's going to be 4 in just a few days.  HOW does time move so quickly???  Here are some things about Lex these days:

- She is really the best big sister.  She is always wanting to play with Pyper, and they adore each other.  She and Mia are also very best friends.  It's amazing.

- She has the best memory.  She remembers random things that I don't usually even remember until she reminds me of them!  She's just very smart.

- She is still not a great eater.  She has her things that she likes, and she likes enough different things that I'm not worried about her diet, but she definitely hates trying new things.  One night she chose to go to bed without dinner cause she didn't want to try a cheese quesadilla.  I hated so much that she went to bed without eating, but I hoped it would teach her to at least TRY new things.  She has done slightly better about it since then.

- She is a puzzle master.  Really.  

- She loves playing with Play-Doh

- She is the best helper.  The other day while I was making spaghetti, I called downstairs and asked her to go into the food storage room, find me spaghetti noodles, and bring them upstairs to me.  She did it and was so proud of herself!  I love that she loves to help!

- She is generally a good sleeper.  The past few nights have been weird and she's come up to my room and asked to snuggle me in the middle of the night, but that's definitely the exception rather than the rule.  Usually she goes to bed around 7pm and gets up between 7:30 and 8:00am.

- She is still pretty tiny.  She mostly wears 3T clothes, but usually wears 4T shirts so they're long enough.

- Lex started dance class in the fall and she is loving it!  It's been so good for her to spend time each week on her own so she has some independence from me, and it's great she gets to be social with other kids her age.  

Here are some recent pictures of my girl:

Helping me make bread and watching as it gets mixed up:

Lexsi's first mini-recital.  It was adorable!

She's just so beautiful!

Lex started Sunbeams in January!  It was a little bit of an adjustment the first few weeks, but she's doing great now!

Her second week in Primary, Lex gave a talk.  I know I shouldn't have taken a picture, but I couldn't resist.  I'm the Primary Chorister so I just had the perfect angle to capture the moment.  She's so tiny that even having 2 steps up to the podium, she still couldn't see over the top.  So DJ held her up and helped her give her talk.  I was incredibly proud of her!  She's generally very shy, so I was pleasantly surprised when she spoke right into the microphone for everyone!  I'm pretty sure I didn't successfully give a primary talk until I was like 7 because I was too shy.  So this sweet little 3-year-old blew me away!

 Whenever Pyper starts making noise after her naps, Lex exclaims, "I'll wake her up!!"  Then she runs into Pyper's room, turns on the light, and climbs in her crib to play with her.  Pyper loves it.

One day we were driving home from Provo and Lex said calmly, "Mom, I need a tissue."  You can imagine my shock when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw her like this!  I quickly pulled off the freeway and got her cleaned up.  In the end it wasn't anything serious-- she had just been picking her nose-- but since she didn't realize it was bleeding it just ran all over til she asked for help.

She's just the best.

2015-- A Quick Review

It turns out I have an issue with blogging.  If I start to get behind, I tend to get overwhelmed and stop blogging altogether because I feel like it's going to be way too hard to catch up.  I'm going to try and hit some highlights over the past 4 months (yikes!) and then do one post for each of my girlies and what their lives are about these days.  And from here on out I'm going to do my best to just, well, do my best.  And then move on, instead of getting caught up in things I've missed.

Thinking back on 2015, I consider it to be our family's Year of Medical Mishaps.  Every single person in our family had serious medical issues or procedures in 2015.  In February, Lexsi broke her leg.  In July, I had a c-section.  While that's not a mishap by any means, it is a serious medical procedure and took a fair share of recovery.  Pyper also obviously spent time in the hospital at that point-- not because she was unhealthy, but the business of being born is still a pretty serious ordeal!  The day that I checked out of the hospital, DJ checked in.  He had to get a blood transfusion--which, side note, somehow cost more, with one overnight stay, than my 4-day hospital stay with a c-section.  Apparently blood is like liquid gold.  With as much blood as I've donated in my lifetime, you'd think it wouldn't cost thousands and thousands of dollars for my husband to get blood, but there you go.  ANYWAY... he had so little blood in his body that the doctors were shocked that he was even conscious, let alone the fact walking around and functioning as well as he was.  The first few weeks after Pyper was born were pretty awful physically for both of us.  After his hospital stay, he ended up having a surgery a few weeks later and then another one later in the fall and now, thankfully, he is doing SO much better.  In October, Mia got a concussion and spent the night in the ER.  So, yeah.  It was an unfortunate year medically for us.  Hopefully this one runs a little smoother!

And now, a picture overload to hit the highlights.  

First of all, this super insane picture of my postpartum hair loss.  Seriously guys, worst receding hairline award goes to me.  This happens every time after I have a baby.  Obviously I don't pull my hair back when I'm bald like this.  I'm really good at masking it, and most people probably don't even know I'm actually balding.  Until now, of course, when I post it on the internet for the world to see.  Basically I'm just putting this out there for myself down the road and my posterity to see the weird things that can happen after giving birth.  Never fear, it always grows back.  I'm not bald anymore.  But yikes.

In the end of October, Matty came home from his mission in Brazil!  It was the first time in three and a half years that my entire original family was all together.  It was awesome.

I took the easy route for Halloween, and safety pinned a Beanie Baby tag on Pyper's fall jacket jumper, and just had the big girls choose from their copious amounts of princess dress ups.  It was a success.

The girls got to put their Christmas tree up in their room in early November.  I quickly learned not to leave Pyper alone with it.

Not long after the girls got their tree, I put up a Christmas tree in the downstairs living room. I'm telling you, Christmas with toddlers is the very best!

This year for our upstairs, we got a real Christmas tree for the first time ever.  I didn't buy nearly enough lights for it, so the bottom was all lit up prettily and the top was sparse.  The ornaments were distributed in a similar manner, cause my girls were in charge of decorating.  And that's fine.

I needed to make Pyper a stocking this year, and had to make Mia a new one as well cause when I pulled hers out of storage it had a mysterious stain on it.  I love that my first Christmas with DJ, I made our stockings.  Now each time we have a baby I can make another and they all go together well.

The girls and I met my mom in Draper to go to the Festival of Trees.  They loved it, of course!

This is super random, but Mia and Lex do this thing that they call "belly bumpers" where they just ram each other with their bellies... 

My babies on the Sunday before Christmas:

We have loved all the snow this year!

Matching Christmas Eve PJ's!  My fave :)

This is the Christmas Eve setup:

And the aftermath of Christmas morning:

Sean got married the weekend after New Year's, so we were down in Provo hanging out with our Savage fam for a few days.  It was a blast!  Mia was apparently exhausted, cause she fell asleep with Papi every day we were there.  

Pyper finally got to meet Grandma and Grandpa Savage!  She was an absolute gem the whole time we were there.  She was passed around to all the family members and was as sweet as can be!

Lex also fell asleep one afternoon (super weird!)

Papi, Daddy and the big girls at Sean's wedding luncheon.

Mia, Lex, Kennedy and Kate at the reception:

Mia and Hailey:

All my lovies in their pretty wedding dresses:

And that's as caught up as it's going to get for now.  Here's to better blogging in 2016!