All the boys

Michael 2 1/2 months
Hyrum: Same
Seth: Same
I think they all look like babies. I can never tell who babies look like at such a young age :)

A Seth update:
Seth Monkey has started a new phase-basically he has woken up and started doing things :)

Smiling is old news for him. He knows how to do it and if he decides your worth one he will flash his sweet little gums at you. He also has started talking to me-we have lots of conversations grunting back and forth each trying to out smile the other.
He sleeps through the night so I am at least well rested when he starts his bellowing. I followed babywise with both Hyrum and Seth and Hyrum was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks and Seth at 2 months. I improvised a tad with Seth but I will admit that Babywise was a lifesaver!
And most exciting over here is he is on a much better schedule during the day. Now he sleeps until 7:30 in the morning and is up until his next feeding around 10:30. Then he stays awake for about twenty minutes and then crashed until 3. He wakes up for a couple of hours until the next feeding (Around 5) and then sleeps until 9:00. He stays awake until 11 and then is down again for the night. I am so GRATEFUL that he takes such long naps during the day! My crazy life is still crazy but I am not near as frazzled at the end of the day.

This is not a great picture but I love that I captured a moment where Seth and his daddy were enjoying each others company :)
Check out those baby blues!
He looks so soft and squishy in this picture. I'm glad I have this baby around to snuggle!

One of the benefits of pumping for HOURS every day is that it gives me some much needed me time. This morning I was reading and the idea came to me that it was time to start including the boys more in Family Home Evening (FHE). In other words THEY get to start giving lessons, making refreshments and picking out songs as opposed to them listening and pretending that they care about the lessons I or their father have prepared.

So today went as follows :
I made a FHE chart with names that rotate. Today MD had the Lesson, Hyrum had refreshments and Seth had the closing prayer. I asked Hyrum what he wanted to make for refreshments and he said he wanted a cookie cake. MD said he wanted to do a lesson on trains when asked so I asked Michael to help him and I helped Hyrum make his cookie cake.
Basically Hyrum had a blast rolling out the cookie dough on a pie plate and MD was totally jealous that Hyrum got to do it.

MD's lesson went like this (In the form of a story/prayer)

"Dear Heavenly Father, Once upon a time there was a train and it is like the church. If you jump out of the train you will get hurt and if Hyrum jumps out of a church he will get hurt. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen."

Lesson learned.

Afterwards MD helped Seth say a prayer (in other words MD said the prayer) and they ate up the cookie cake. When asked what he wanted to make when it is his turn next week, MD told me he wanted to make a train, but then seemed to think about it for a minute and decided that a train would hurt his tummy so instead he would make a cookie cake too.

On a side note-Seth laughed out loud today. It was awesome because he was in the middle of a scream when I started laughing at him and he couldn't handle it. Mid scream turned into laughter which he kept trying to turn back into a scream but I was too funny :)

My boys remind me of vacuum cleaners because they are ALWAYS hungry. No matter home much they eat 20 minutes later they are asking for more food. It's hard to say no when this is what they are asking for:

"Mama may I have a carrot?"
"Mama can I have an apple?"
"Mama can I have a banana?"

So what should I say to that? At dinner I watch them scarf down all our food (Meals that I have doubled mind you) and have them still tell me they are hungry a few minutes afterwords. Man I wish I had their metabolisms. Or I wish I had their energy-If I ran around as much as they did I am sure I would always be hungry too :)

But the issue is-They are 2 and 3 years old! OK MD is closer to 4 but still doubling and even tripling some meals at this stage of life seems a bit early. Kind of makes me apprehensive about the teenage years.

And just so you know- Seth can tuck it away with the best of them. This 2 month old eats between 7 and 8 ounces a feeding and he starts asking for more about an hour later....

Crazy

I haven't felt like writing lately due to the chaos of my exciting life these days. I guess I had felt pretty grown up before-2 boys, a clean home, dinner almost every night and then along came baby number three and I feel like a tornado-everything is scrambled and disorganized and everything I thought I was good at has gone down the drain.

When I got pregnant with MD we thought of it as a bit of a miracle (there were some issues that would have made pregnancy impossible-luckily they disappeared :) and we plowed on ahead with daydreams of becoming a new family of three.

Then came Hyrum. Fortunately for me Hyrum was easy breezy and life with him was actually easier then life without him. Finally I had a playmate for MD and a happy one at that.

BAM! Into my life was thrown Seth kicking and screaming. At first I thought that it was cute that such a tiny little guy had such an opinion-until I realized that he was opinionated about everything. At first my days were filled with patience but at some point that patience turned into frustration and instead of me trying to calm him down I had to start walking away.

I gave myself a couple of months for life to get to some degree of normal but it doesn't seem to be settling-maybe this crazy life will be my new normal :)

Finally I decided to ask for advice from some of the mothers who on top of being wonderful mothers show that they love it. Every single one of them at one point gave the same advice: You can't do everything so focus on the things that are most important. Wouldn't you know that is also the advice my husband game me- Smart man :)

I have to admit that I am one of those people who feel like I have to be perfect at everything! So that advice has been hard to incorporate because as I was telling Michael "Everything is important!" I LOVE being a homemaker- I love cooking and keeping house and taking care of my family and myself. I love feeling productive and proactive and it goes against my nature to just stop doing something. I think if I had just a few more hours in the day I could get everything done.

So maybe this is why I only really post pictures lately- my life is so chaotic to myself that it's hard to blog about it without sounding crazy.

During pre-school

Seth gets all my attention poor boy :)

Eskimo Baby

This outfit was given to me by my mother-in-law and I think it was my husbands as a baby. (Though I am not 100% positive) It came in pretty handy as I walked my kids to preschool this morning. And as an added bonus Seth looked pretty cute all bundled up.

Michael Dunn

This big boy is in PRIMARY!!! Nothing has made me feel like time is rushing by so much as to watch my oldest child sit in primary and pitch a fit. Because that is all he did. I think I started feeling weepy at the beginning but it quickly left as I watched him pout and hold onto my foot begging me to take him with me. So I sat through the opening exercises in primary. His poor teachers already had their hands full with the 12 + other kids crying, wrestling and wandering around. Luckily when it was time for him to go to class I passed the responsibility to Michael. The feeling of weepyness did return as I watched Michael carrying a bawling MD to class but unfortunately Seth had started crying and so I quickly ducked into relief society. When I went to pick MD up his arms were full of goodies from Primary- and he admitted that he enjoyed the last part of it. I was glad to hear that because if you ask him now he will tell you he hates it.

Impromptu Photo Shoot

Seth is growing at such a fast pace that I figured I better put him in some of the outfits we received even if it is the dead of winter- there is no way he will fit into them in the summer :) Then because he was being such a cutie I figured I should pull out the camera. Then the other boys decided to get involved!I really didn't force this picture- the boys liked watching the camera beep as it counted down.