My Baby Girl

I can't believe how time flies! My little one has such a fun personality, I just want to get it down before I forget.  She absolutely loves her feet!  She gets so excited whenever they are uncovered.  I think that in the womb her feet were up by her face.  I rarely felt kicks the way I did with my other pregnancies, and when she was just a few days old I incidentally put her feet on my belly and she easily folded in half and instantly calmed and fell asleep. For the past 2 months at least she gets so excited to see her feet, grab them and eat them, that we really had a task at our recent photo shoot to keep them out of her mouth to get a picture.  She acts like they are her long lost friends! 
She is so good with her little hands she is quick to grab anything and loves to hold a spoon and feed herself.  I put food on the spoon, hand it to her, she puts it in her mouth, and when it is empty I hand her a new spoon loaded and refill the first. 
 She is so talkative too!  Since she was 2 1/2 months she says what sounds like "Hi".  She says "dada, bababababa, papa," blows raspberries, and sniffs in imitation. "Mama" only comes out occasionally when she's sad. She still has an internal clock that says 6:30 pm is bedtime, and 4-5 am is playtime, and boy can she squeal!--especially when she gets a hold of her feet!

She loves to cuddle nose to nose or bury her face in the bend of your arm to go to sleep. She likes to have her stretch out down time too.  For a little while she would stretch whenever I would say "Stretch". She is getting around by pivoting, rolling scooting on back and on tummy with knees tucked up under her.  She can use her legs and feet to get something almost as well as her hands.  She gives open mouth slobber kisses--sometimes holding your face in both hands--it melts me!  If you can't tell, this mommy adores her!

5 year old view of death

"Mommy, Did I die yet?  I can't remember"

"Will you tell me when I die?"

"When I die you will plant me so that I can go up to heaven"

Letters to Santa

Clearing off my desk, I found some small rolled up pieces of paper that were removed from our Christmas tree: this year's letters to Santa--or prayers?
"I wont a we"
"I wont my babe to git betr" (baby got croup right after big brother had it)
"I wont a doombuge" 
"I wont Leyim to git betr"  (cousin with Leukemia)
"I wish the orfins can be safe" (he's had a sudden concern for orphans- one day he told me that he wanted to give something to the orphans, like toys or something.)

Another precious moment I don't want to forget:  Sometimes I drop my son off at school on my way to work.  The first couple of times, as I drove away I happened to glance back to see him blowing me a kiss.  I'm so glad I caught them!

Thankful ABC's

We drove to my brother's house for Thanksgiving this past year, and on the way to help time pass we made a list of things that our family is thankful for.
 Here is the list we came up with:
Annelise, Apples, Aunts, Airplanes, A/C, Alphabet 
BMW, Brakes, Birds, Bruce & Bryce, Bed, BYU
Church, Computers, Crystal, Cars
Dad, Damon Atkinson, Driving, Dolls, Disposable Diapers!
Elevators, Eggs, Elephants, Escalators, Eyes
Four wheelers, Flags, Family, Friends
God, Grapes, Gary, Giggles, Grandpa, Gondolas
Honey, Home, Hitch, Hamburgers
Ionut, Internet, Ice, Icicles
Jesus, Jumpin' Jacks, Julia, Job, Juicer
Kyle, Kitty, Knives, Karate, King size bed!
Lorna, Love, Layettes, life
Mountains, Mail, McDonald's, Mothers
Nature, Nuts, Naps, Natural Gas,
Operations, Owners manuals, Oxygen, Ochi (eyes) Oranges,
Pencils, Pumpkin Pie, Paypal
Quiet, Q&A's, Quanine
Rain, Reading, Redbox, Rootbeer
Sara, Scriptures, Stars, Stores, Sprinklers
Tent Trailer, Trees, Tumbling, Trampoline, Tonic Water
Umbrellas, Underwear, Unlimited Internet access
Violins, Violet
Water, Wyatt, Wainwrights, Writing
X-tra clothes, Xylophone and X-box
You, Yellow, Yo-yo
Zippers, Zebra, Z-pack

Learning to Write

My first grader is loving writing lists and making math books.  He loves to write his own math problems on a legal pad while we are driving in the car, and he is getting good at math!  Today he was writing 10 x 10 =100 100 x 100=1000, etc on our short drive to church. Lying in bed tonight we were making plans for tomorrow. He and his dad had a "fun day" yesterday at a mini golf place, and he wanted to go back tomorrow for Family Night.  I told him "Maybe" and he was concerned because he didn't know what that meant.  Then he suggested a bounce house place as an alternative.  I told him that on Thursdays it only costs $4 per person, so that would be a better day.  He instantly said, "Then we would need $16."

The other night when I got home from work I was presented with a list.  I am not exactly sure what the list was for...I think it started out a menu order and then turned into a grocery or packing list, but I thought it was so cute, written on both sides of a used envelope, that I had to preserve it.

Here is what he wrote:

Garys list

Mom

fun fris

wodr

ornj jos

stak

sop

kis

plat

knif

roobe flot

(*translation -Gary's list for Mom: french fries, water, orange juice, steak, soap, kiss, plate, knife, rootbeer float)

Thankful for Poop

This summer, my cousin who I affectionately call "Caca" (I can't even remember how that started) came to visit and brought his family. Because it is so hot here, we decided to go to a lake that is about an hour away, up a beautiful canyon road. We packed a lunch, made all the kids go potty, and headed off in two vehicles. Not 15 minutes later, my daughter said she had to go potty.
"You just went" I replied.
This daughter of mine is very...persistent when she wants something. Within a minute she started her infamous incessant chanting. As we turned to go up the windy canyon road, her tone got frantic and I asked my husband to pull over. We got out and let her go on the side of the road. Her #1 business turned to a need for #2 and so we squatted a little longer. While we were waiting the idling van started to make a terrible noise. Just as she was finishing her duty, there was a loud clank and the noise stopped. My husband inspected under the hood and found that the wheel from the power steering pump and the serpentine belt had fallen off. How lucky we were to not have been on a blind turn on the narrow winding road out of cell service.
My work gives me a AAA membership with towing. We were right on the edge of cell service, but couldn't get enough of a signal to make the call. We piled all the kids in one car and left the men with the van while we went back to the last city's park and called AAA. While we waited for the tow truck, I called my dad to see if he could call around and find us a part, since it was Saturday afternoon, and our other car needed repaired as well. (Oddly enough Ionut had dropped and broken our power steering pump in that vehicle when he was changing another part). My dad called and Napa said that they had had one, but that morning they had sold it. (Ionut had picked up the part from them that morning for our other car)--they happened to be the same part. He called another place that had one and it was actually cheaper. I raced back to where the men were just in time to show my card to the tow truck (being my membership, I have to be present for the tow to be covered). They towed the van home, and while Ionut fixed it, we let the kids play in the park and eat the lunch we had packed. When he finished, we picked him up and went to a lake that was closer to home. Everything worked out so well. So we were thankful for poop, and for a daddy who can always fix our cars and keep us running :).  I think it was Caca who said, when you pay your tithing you're blessed--it doesn't mean that bad things don't happen, they just happen in good ways.

Little Dancers

Just thought it would be fun to post this little video of the kids dancing to Romanian music. If you can't tell, the one on the left is finger dancing--Like in the beginning of the movie "That Thing You Do".