Ayden and Alex

As Thanksgiving is drawing near, there is nothing I am more grateful for then my family. I have been so blessed with a great husband, parents, siblings, in-laws and children. In regards to my children I feel like I need to be better about writing down the little things they do so that I can remember them. I have been wanting to do a blog about my girls for sometime now. So I am going to write down a few things about them before I forget; then I can start to do it regularly. As this entry covers my two daughters whole lives in a nutshell it might be long. Right now my mind is blank so hopefully things will start flowing. WARNING- this might be a bit of a bragging session. What Mom doesn't brag about her kids?

Ayden- 3 1/2

-Ayden was a very hard baby for the first 4 months. Hard in that she was very fussy and needy. It seemed like she was always in pain and that she wanted to be happy underneath all the crying but just couldn't. She hardly ever slept and cried a for a large portion of the day and night. It seemed only baths and car rides (with zero stopping) would sooth her. Ayden had multiple baths a day as a baby and we put a lot of late night miles on our car. There were times we would regularly put Ayden in the car and go on a two hour drive at 2 in the morning to keep our sanity. We would playBeethoven and Bach music loud enough to drown out her crying (to this day Brad hears crying in his head when he listens to Bach and Beethoven). We had the drive mastered; it would take the first hour for her to fall asleep and the second hour to allow her to fall in a deep enough slumber that when we stopped the car she wouldn't wake up and start crying all over again (fortunately Logan Canyon is long, has no stop signs and suprisingly zero traffic at 3 am (ideal for parents with grumpy babies). There were a few times we would get home, she would wake up and the drive would begin again. Once after two drives we were so tired and scared to wake her up, we slept in the car in our driveway. Our pediatrician said that she was the "fussiest baby [he had] ever seen". At four months I came into the office with a screaming baby and I told him I was done. He told me there was never a baby he couldn't sooth. I handed her to him and after swaddling her, turning the lights down, bouncing her, humming in her ear and switching to a bunch of positions with no luck he handed her back to me and walked out he room and came back with some medication. It turns out she had acid reflux and the acid would just go up and down her esophagus eating it away. Poor little baby. After a couple months of medication her esophagus healed and she turned into a very happy and engaging baby.

-Ayden is a smart little girl. She has always been ahead of the curve. I used to love reading about developmental milestones because Ayden was always way ahead of where she should have been. She came out of the womb holding her head up and made the top on another one of our pediatrician's lists as the "strongest baby [he had] ever seen". She was always very active and learned to crawl before she was 6 months (was army crawling before 5 months). Before walking she developed a weird crawl that we dubbed the "monkey crawl" where she would sit on her bum with her legs in the butterfly position and put one arms out in front of her and lift her legs up and swing them through to the other side. It was so funny and she was extremely fast which is probably why she didn't walk until 12 months (see video below).

She started talking at 9 months. She knew over 50 words when she was 15 months old and was putting sentences together at 18 months. She knew all her colors, shapes and body parts before she was 18 months old. At this same time she was a pro at animal sounds and when we would drive she loved for us to play the animal game with her. She would say "lets play animals," and we would name an animal and she would tell us the sound. She was SO fast and it amazed brad and I. We would often have competitions with her and she would win every time. Brad would say an animal and I would try to say the sound before Ayden did but could NOT beat her. She is still very smart and loves learning. She is the youngest one is the preschool co-op but you would never know it, (except maybe because she has a few more tantrums then the rest of the kids. At my house anyway). Ayden also pays special attention to detail. She remembers everything. Just this morning she was talking about a snack we had in preschool in September and she was telling me the color of fruit roll up everyone had. I am learning that if I can't find something in the house I just need to ask Ayden because she will know. She remembers what people wear, whose clothes is whose, the color of all of the Disney princess characters hair and dresses, etc.

Ayden is also very competitive. At the age of three she would rather not play a game because then she would risk loosing. She hates loosing more then she likes winning. For those of you who knew Brad when he was young (there are still hints of it now) then you know she got this from him. We don't know what to do about it except beat her at everything she does until she gets over it.

Alex- 20 months

-Alex was the best, sweetest little baby ever. I could not believe babies came the way she did. She was so cuddly and quiet and only cried (whimpered more like it) when she was hungry, tired or messy. The only thing she didn't like was baths. This baby came a COMPLETE opposite from her sister. It was a welcomed change. She only woke up every 4-6 hours at night in the morning and started sleeping through the night at 2 months. I thought she would always be really easy going and quiet but she is turning out to have a little personality of her own. She knows what she wants and as calm as she is, she and a Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet have something in common because they can both go from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds. Another trait passed along from her Daddy. Alex is a thinker not a talker. She always has a little contemplative look on her face. She is soaking everything up and one day I think she will start talking up a storm. Sometimes she will go off talking a whole sentence like she knows exactly what she is saying but I have no clue what she has said and then say, Okay. She surprises us every now and then because she will say a word I had no clue she knew or point to a letter and tell me what it is. It's common when she is quietly playing by herself to hear her counting to three or something. She LOVES books. She would be very happy reading books all day long. She loves to read them to Brad and I also. She will point to something and say something we once again don't understand and then if we don't make a comment back she looks up at us and pulls our face down and says it again, until we respond. She has the sweetest little voice and my favorite thing she does is sing to herself. She seems to really like music. She has always loved when Brad plays the guitar and once music is on she starts dancing.

Both of my girls are so special in their own way. I am so grateful for their differences and that each one of them is their own little person. They are both so beautiful with their curly hair, big lips and beautiful eyes yet their beauty is very unique. Once again opposites, Ayden is small with blond hair and blue-green eyes, Alex is almost the size of Ayden with brown hair and brown eyes. I am so blessed to have these girls in my life and I am blessed to be able to raise them with my best friend, their Dad. I hope I can be the mom/wife my family deserves. It can be overwhelming because they are all so great and I feel like they deserve more but each day I strive to be better. Brad, Ayden and Alex, thanks for being mine.