No real smiles at this point. Losing her hair on top. Lots of sleep smiles. Baby acne, but not as much as the other kids. Mommy still feeling like she is in recovery mode. Starting to hold up her head.
Holland likes sleeping on her tummy but the doctor told us not to let her do it.
That girl is so cute! Aren't her toes tiny? Her big toe isn't even as big as my little toe. I guess that's because I am the oldest.
Her hair didn't look as red as mine did. But it is still cute and soft! In the front it is blond and in the back it is brown. I think she will have red hair because blond mixed with brown is red, isn't it? Her hair is beautiful!
She loves her birthday shirt! Isn't it cute with the butterflies on it?
She is bundled up like a burrito. Holland can get her arms out of the blanket with short sleeves on, but it is harder with long sleeves. I think that is why Daddy and Mommy put her to bed with long sleeve shirts on.
Roasting marshmallows in your house is fun. We roasted marshmallows over a candle. We did it for Family Home Evening.
I roasted the marshmallows by myself like I normally don't do. We roasted them in order to make them yummy.
Because Mommy and Daddy are afraid of getting my marshmallow too burned the fire.
Miriam liked the chocolate. The marshmallows were yummy with the graham crackers.
Isn't her little face cute? She likes her swing.
She loves tummy time.
She is good at lifting her head up now. She can do it without her legs. She is a really good sleeper and a really good eater.
I can't believe my Miri baby is FOUR years old! Because she was the youngest for so long I still think of her as my baby girl.
She started out the day with a mouse pancake.
And then we did a little photo shoot outside.
It is kind of hard to get a normal smile from her sometimes.
I just love her big, dark eyes and red curly hair. I love her giggle and how much she adores on her baby sister. I love how tough she is. She is strong and determined. At her four year check up she weighed 31 lbs (10-25%) and was 39 in tall (25-50%).
Miriam is so playful and funny. She is at the perfect stage to ask funny questions about everything. I love her little comments and questions. She is still weirdly obsessed with talking about death and how we are going to die. The other day she told me that we are going to have to die on the cross like Jesus. This sparked a good teaching moment. I am always a little surprised about the false doctrine my kids believe. :)
There are so many of her quotes that I have written down from her. I don't know if they will be as funny out of that moment but here we go:
"There is so much in my head I can't even tell you, but its not real." She also often tells us, "Once I hear something it is just in my head and I can never ever forget."
The money shot!
We had a friend come watch the girls while I went to a doctor appointment. The friend is a very petite woman whose husband is quite overweight. Of course Miriam asked, "Her big, fat daddy coming too?"
Another good one: "I don't like Primary because I don't get a snack. I like food." (In class time she gets surprisingly hearty/fancy snacks like sausage and pancakes.)
"If you can't see very good, you need to open your eyes more."
She still says the sweetest prayers. "Thank thee that we know each other and we love each other." "Thank that our family is so great." "Thank thee that we know each other and love each other and that we will die and see Heavenly Father after we are resurrected." "Thank thee that I will turn five soon like I turned four soon."
"I like reading stories because they are fun and interesting."
She often asks us, "How do you know?' She asks us this when we say any fact: when our anniversary is, how to spell something, when we see something. "How do you know?"
It isn't always so sweet. "Mommy, you always make us unhappy." "How come you don't want to be nice more often, Mommy?"
"I am sad you are going to cut off my head some day"
"Girls are better than boys because they don't have to dust the bathrooms"
When we were making the brownies, she said "I want to add chocolate chips and a little bit more butter."
For dinner she had watermelon and pizza. She said she wanted mac and cheese pizza. She got a combo. :)
"Even though the laws aren't ours Mommy and Daddy we still have to obey them."
"We are fighting about how much we love each other."
"Only three people get to tell us what to do: Mommy, Daddy, and Jesus."
"The last place is the goodest."
I love this expression!
One day she started a sentence with "I presume..." I can't remember what she completed it with, but I thought it was so funny.
This expression too!
I love, love, love this wonderful girl! She is such a delight in our life. Ever since Eliza started back in school Miriam is my little at home buddy. It is a great opportunity to spend so much quality time together. She still really loves preschool, which we do almost every day. She is learning how to read, write, add, and subtract. Occasionally we'll do a craft. So it is pretty remarkable that she likes it so much.
She says her favorite food is chocolate. She says to write down that her favorite cereal is corn pops. She is still a pretty big fan of Mommy and tries to get Holland to say mama and only smile for mommy. She loves holding her baby sister, reading stories, watching a movie from the library, doing tricks, eating yogurt and bread. She is high energy and exuberant.
This video gives a little glimpse into her birthday evening:
We love you Miriam! We are so lucky to have you in our family!!
We're so lame. We spent our one vacation day this summer de-junking out apartment. We knew we wanted to start the process of finding a house to buy, and didn't want to pack and move a bunch of stuff we really don't want. We also thought that there was no way we could afford anything but a minuscule house, so we wouldn't have room for it anyway. However, due to an unexpected promotion and raise, we were able to increase our home-buying budget. Seriously it was such a miracle for us. So we went for it.
Don't singe your hair!
My little firecracker!
We had been keeping an eye on Zillow for almost two years and had a fairly good idea of what we wanted and where we wanted to look. We had a good feel for price ranges and what the house selection was like at our price limit. Despite this we had never actually been house hunting.
The only fireworks we saw--sparklers.
We called up our agent and spent one whole afternoon looking at houses. (Hear the sarcasm? One afternoon of looking was not what I had anticipated!)
We dropped the ball on seeing fireworks, but they still had fun!
It is funny how looking at houses in person makes such a big difference. The ones we looked at online were definitely not the ones that stood out to us in person. The second house we visited just really stuck with us throughout the day. There were a lot of things about the house that made it stand above the rest, but the thing that really clinched it for me was the feeling I got there. I just kept getting the feeling. This is the right house. That was the right one. We should try for this house. This is remarkable because of the unhealthy amount of anxiety I have about buying a house. The money, liability, and responsibility seems almost crushing.
I had fun with my new camera.
So we went for it. And we got it! We negotiated down a few thousand dollars and signed the contract. The next few days I could hardly eat I was so nervous. We read hundreds of pages of home buying info and forms. It was daunting.
The sweet girl read an abridged version of Pride and Prejudice for the first time on July 4th.
It definitely isn't the prettiest home we looked at, but when we wrote down out house buying priorities it had almost all of them. There are still a lot of things that we want to do to the house to upgrade it, but the square footage, number of bedrooms, location, and lack of scorpions was all right. Hopefully we can address the other issues when we feel up to it. Two more major issues is that it has this pristine white carpet throughout the house and the tiny backyard has no grass (or really anything too much going for it). We'll see what comes first. I am planning on a lot of before/after type posts in the future.
John and I tried to write our names.
It is a little surreal to me that we are actually doing this. Buying a house?! I never, ever dreamed that the first home that we would buy would be a cookie cutter home in Arizona, but what do you do?
He got further than I did.
Honestly though I mainly feel blessed: this promotion; getting this house. I hope and pray that it won't be a rotten egg house. One way or another we are jumping in the deep end when it comes to figuring out how to take care of a home.
So blessed to live in the country!
We close in a week and a half. After that we have about a month to get out of our apartment. It will be nice to not be super rushed to clean everything, do a few repairs, maybe paint, and move.
Holly baby just slept! What a sweetheart!
We are becoming independent--our independence day!
