Other January activities

Since I've been such a slacker this month on the blog, I thought I'd better throw in a quick post of what we've done this month. We've been lucky enough to have my sis-in-law, Savannah, and my nephew, Jared, visiting for almost 3 weeks now. They came to help out with things at my parents house, helping my mom while she recovers, and making sure they eat and such. It's been nice having them here. They actually got here on the day that our congresswoman, Gabby Giffords was shot by the crazy guy that went on a shooting rampage up on the Northwest side. (Gabby's race was a really tight this last time, with her winning by just a few thousand votes. While I disagree with her politically and voted for the other guy, I'm glad she survived. That was quite a shocker of news and is still in the news here, 3 weeks later, mostly just updates about how she is doing, or updates about the legal steps with the shooter.)
Anyway, Rachel has been having fun playing with Jared while they're here. Todd came out about a week and a half ago, too, and has been working remotely. They'll be here until a week from Saturday, so we're enjoying their time visiting. (Though admittidly, some of the enjoyment comes from staying home and taking care of the total lack of housekeeping since my mom's accident.)
Last week was a crazy week for me, with 2 New Beginnings to go to and YW volleyball, along with a regional Priest-Laurel Conference that our stake was in charge of, and ward conferences. So out of 8 days, from Sunday to Sunday, I wasn't at a church building just 2 out of the 8 days. Hopefully things will slow down a little now, but camp planning is starting up, so I'm not counting on it too much.
In one of my guilty moments for abandoning Rachel so often last week, I picked up a gingerbread house kit on clearance for $2. She'd been wanting to make one, but we never got around to it before Christmas, so this was a perfect opportunity. Grandma helped her decorate it and she loved it-especially the eating of the (stale) candy.

Lately Rachel has been on a cleaning kick. She'll get a washrag wet, then come tell me to move my stuff that is on the table, and she'll wash it down, then go to the bathroom and wash her sink and counter.

In the hopes of corralling this cleaning energy and keeping it going, we pulled out a chore chart that I found at Target for $1 a while back and put those jobs she enjoys doing on there, along with teeth brushing in the morning and night, and the one job she HATES: putting her toys away. She's been loving getting star stickers, so we'll milk that for all it's worth and hopefully it'll last a while. She actually has a completely clean room right now, having put all her toys away last night so she could get another sticker. Woohoo!

Coming soon (or whenever I get around to it): pictures from our visit to the Children's Museum with Jared and Savannah.

Annie

I got out my photo album the other day to show Rachel some pictures of me when I was a little girl about her age and I came across this picture of me as a baby:

When I first looked at it I thought, "Wow. That is Annie." Except for the 70s wallpaper and the fact that my Grandma is in the picture, too.
Here are some pictures of Annie from this month for you to compare:

I put Annie semi-sitting up anywhere and Rachel has to sit next to her.

I decided to try some pigtails for Annie. She looked like a totally different little girl to me with them in. I felt a little bad, though, seeing how her hair was being held so tightly, I thought they'd give her a headache, so I only left them in for about 2 minutes. One of these days we'll try it out for real.

At the beginning of the month she had her 2 month appointment (she'll be 3 months old in a couple of days--I'm not doing so great at keeping up with the blog these days. Oh well.). She was 23.3 inches (78th percentile) and 11 lb. 9 oz (64th percentile). Rachel had her 3-year-old appointment the same day, so I got her printout of all her measurements, and at her 2 month appointment she was 4 ounces more than Annie, same as when they were born, Rachel was 4 ounces heavier than Annie-kind of funny. Annie is a great baby and is really starting to show her personality. She loves hearing her own voice and talks non-stop if there is someone there to talk back to her. She's a good sleeper and a good eater. Her hair is starting to lay flat on it's own (Jacob laments the loss of her "mad scientist hair") and Rachel comments that she looks like a boy with her hair like that, so we add little hair clips occasionally--luckily she's got plenty of hair, and it doesn't look like it's going to be falling out. (Rachel had tons of black hair when she was born, which all fell out when she was between 2 and 3 months old, then grew back in blond, so I'm hoping that we're safe with Annie's hair, since it's already blond and doesn't show any signs of falling out.)

Squealing

Annie is a crazy squealer lately. If you lie her down on her own she'll talk to you for a good long time--sometimes she'll even talk to you if you're holding her, but she has to be in a real good mood for that. It is so funny to see her enjoying her voice so much.

Rachel loves that Annie is actually beginning to interact with her sometimes and Annie loves to watch Rachel and talk to her.

The End

I'm glad we got to go up to Provo for Christmas, even if it was a pukey Christmas, we still had a good time. Rachel got to be pretty crabby and argumentative while we were up there. And we had some tough times getting her to go to sleep. We decided it must be because she was so out of her normal routine. Next time we'll remember that she needs her regular routine even more when we're on vacation—same discipline, and the same bedtime, not staying up late, and not skipping part of the bedtime routine.

On the drive back home we stopped at a hotel in Mesquite, Nevada. This is almost the only time when she was actually happy while we were there, when we were almost ready to leave in the morning and she was playing with Annie:

That night at the hotel was by far the worst night. The whole drive down she would randomly start crying saying, “I miss Aunt Cari.” Occasionally she would say she missed Grandma or Grandpa or another one of her aunts, too. But once we were in the hotel trying to sleep it was more “I want to go home!” “I want to sleep in my bedroom!” With big tears and everything you imagine when you hear the word tantrum. We tried driving her around, and everything else we could think of, but she was so beyond tired she could not calm herself down enough to go to sleep. Finally we put on a movie and by the end of it she was asleep. At 2 am. Then she was up at 7am again crying, “I want to go home!” And kept crying that in about half hour intervals the whole way home. What a pleasant ride home. ;) But we were all so happy when we finally did pull in to our driveway. Except for Rachel who didn't want to eat at home. "I want to go to a restaurant!" Silly girl.

I have so much more respect for my parents who drove us all the way up to Idaho every summer and occasionally at Christmas, too, for most of our childhood years when it was probably the hardest to travel that far. And without a portable DVD player, too!

As for crabby, crying, argumentative Rachel, after 2 nights of sleeping in her own bed, she pretty much returned to her normal, happy, 3-year-old self, thankfully. It's amazing what a little familiarity will do for a 3-year-old.
One big blessing we found upon returning home was that my mom was going to be released to go home early. Her goal date to get out of rehab was January 10th. When we got home on Wednesday she told me they said she'd probably be able to go home a week early, the 3rd or 4th. Thursday she had a doctor's appointment and was okayed to be able to put some weight on her arms, which helps a ton in her mobility, being able to use her arms to balance with a walker while she balances on her one leg she's allowed to put weight on. Then later Thursday she was told she'd be going home Friday. So as one of the best ways to kick off the new year Mom is at home. Woohoo! She's had so many people praying for her there's no way she couldn't get better, and to do it so quickly is a miracle. Really, the docs at the hospital originally said she might be in the hospital for a month. She was out of the hospital in a week, and home from rehab just 3 weeks after the accident. If that's not a miraculous recovery, I don't know what is. It's a good thing we came back from Utah early or she would have either been stuck at rehab over the weekend, or Dad would have put himself back in the hospital from moving furniture out of the way to get things ready for her hospital bed and such and we would have had two patients who couldn't walk to take care of. :) At least they would have been gimps together. ;)

And thus ends 2010, the year of hospitals: Jacob in February with Steve, Dad in May with his back surgery, me and Annie in October when Annie was born, Mom in December thanks to a big truck, and Rachel squeezing in that Christmas Eve visit to the ER.
Here's to 2011 being hospital free! Happy New Year!!

Grandpa is Retiring

We decided to leave on Tuesday to beat the big winter storm that was blowing through on Wednesday. (We had originally planned on staying longer, but not wanting to abandon my mom for too long in the hospital, and because of weather, we cut it a little shorter than the original plan.) We stuck around for Rod's retirement reception on Tuesday afternoon, first, though.

We got to get a whole family picture while we were there.

Between these two photos we've got everyone looking. Photoshop here we come...

Jacob's cousin, Janie, made the cutest little ponchos for the girls and delivered them to us at the reception.

Janie wasn't satisfied with how Rachel's turned out, saying it was too small, and she plans on making another one that's bigger, but Rachel had so much fun walking around in it being Little Orange Riding Hood. And Annie is just so cute in it. I love them!

Congrats, Grandpa, on your retirement! Anytime now Grandma and Grandpa Campbell will be getting their mission call for parts unknown. My guess is to be church service missionaries in Eastern Asia, like Thailand, or China or something. Or CES missionaries in Tucson. :) It'll be fun to see where they actually end up going. We'll get to see them again once more before they go because they're coming down to Mesa in a few weeks and we'll drive up to see them, but it was fun being able to spend some time with them this Christmas.

Temple Square Lights

Later Monday afternoon we headed up to Temple Square to see the temple and all the pretty Christmas lights. Cari, Lisa, Mark, Ashley, and Lena came with us. It was pretty cold, but we all survived.

Snow fun

Sunday Rachel was still a bit under the weather and had a fever so she stayed home from church. Monday, though she seemed to be over the worst of the illness, so se decided to take advantage of what snow was left from the big dump of snow they'd gotten a week earlier and we went up to Rock Canyon park to go sledding. The snow was just patchy, but good enough for us Arizona people.

Rachel liked the first run, but after that she wasn't incredibly thrilled with sledding. She didn't like the bump at the bottom of the hill because it hurt her leg or her bum every time. But if you asked her about it after the fact she'd tell you sledding was awesome.

She had been looking forward to throwing snowballs for weeks, so after the sledding lost its appeal I told her to throw a snowball at Daddy's bum. She thought that was the funniest thing ever and did it over and over and over.