Yesterday my baby turned one. Let me tell you all about Elizabeth.

Only a few days after Carissa was born I started to feel a desire to have another baby. Usually that’s the last thing you’d think about after giving birth, so I set the thought aside. Yet many times as my two kids grew up I’d look at them, and at our family, and feel like one was missing. Once I learned I was expecting in 2012 those feelings and thoughts disappeared.

Pregnancy challenges me. When I was seven months pregnant I received a new calling at church that was hard and felt overwhelming at first. I prayed that in exchange for my service, I would have help with my pregnancy and delivery of the baby. Wesley and Carissa’s births were very difficult in different ways.

I was due around mid-November but labor started around 11 pm on November 5th. It was Monday night and I was just getting ready for bed. I had stayed up too late watching a movie with John, and I felt so tired. Nonetheless, labor was happening. Around 1:30 or 2 am my visiting teacher came and slept on the couch while John and I went to the hospital. I had my first-ever epidural. Though the newness made me nervous, it was overall a wonderful, wonderful experience because for the first time I had a baby without the pain of labor. Wow.

When the doctor showed up I felt nervous again, remembering how difficult pushing had been in the past, but the doctor acted like it was no big deal, and it turns out it wasn’t. The water hadn’t broken yet, which may have made her birth easier and my recovery faster.

She was born around 6:30 am on Tuesday, November 6th, 2012 (Election Day). As soon as I held her and got a good look, the first thing I thought was how different she looked from Carissa when she was a baby. This baby was lighter, more fair, and with less hair. We named her the next day: Elizabeth Erin.

I enjoyed the quiet time I had with her at the hospital, and I thought she was very sweet. When we brought her home she was so quiet that sometimes we’d touch her chest to make sure she was breathing.

My mom and dad stayed with us a short while to help, and my mom spent much time holding baby Elizabeth in the rocking chair at night (she’s a softie like that). One morning she told me she felt like her mom and grandma (Elizabeth’s great- and great-great-grandmas) had come for a visit.

Elizabeth was very small until I started feeding her formula around her fourth month. Since then I think she’s become the biggest baby I’ve had. She seems to be growing up fast. She loves sippy cups. She is really good at imitating. If you make a sound with your mouth (such as blowing air or growling) she’ll imitate it. She also is quite vocal. Sometimes John and I joke about what it’ll be like having two chatty girls around. I feel like, for her age, she is good at communicating vocally. She is my only child who hasn’t used sign language. I use it sometimes with her, but for all her imitating, she’s just not interested in sign.

We’re getting more familiar with her personality as she gets older. Some words I’d use to describe her are playful, social, and explorer.

She seems to have a sense of humor and is very playful. She loves to play peek-a-boo by ducking behind a doorway and then popping back out, or holding a blanket over her head and pulling it off again. Now that she’s walking she thinks it’s great fun to walk away from you, even as you call her name, with a great big smile on her face.

She’s still sweet, but more spunky now. She seems to really enjoy being with other people. She’s aware of who’s in the room and whether she’s alone. She’s learning to play independently, though.

She started walking at 11 months, and now that she’s mobile she is quite the fearless explorer. She is quite good at going up and down stairs (she scoots down so fast that it’s like she’s sliding on ice). She clearly wants to be able to walk up and down stairs like the big people do, but she’s still too small. With her being so good on the stairs sometimes I’ll find her in unexpected parts of the house by herself. Just this morning I found her in a darkened bathroom with her hands in the toilet.

As far as sleeping goes, when she was younger she used to go to bed at night without so much as crying, but later she started to cry at bedtime and wake up after she had been sleeping through. After a few months I got up the courage to let her cry and now we know she can cry herself back to sleep with no problem. She goes to sleep around 6:30 or so and I don’t get her until after 7 am (my personal sanity-saving rule). She’s usually happy when she wakes up, and she likes to hang onto her blanket when I pull her out of the crib to go downstairs. She takes a morning nap and sometimes an afternoon nap.

She has about four teeth on top, two on the bottom, and her first molar coming in as well. Her hair is a beautiful auburn color, kind of golden/red/brown, and quite straight. She’s getting more of it, too. I think she is a beautiful little girl. We are glad to have her in our family.

On August 15, 2013 our sweet Carissa Rose turned three. She had a wonderful day. I’d been telling her that soon she would turn three, and then she’d be old enough for preschool, and she’s been looking forward to it. The day before she turned three I told her it was the last night she’d be just two years old. And as she went to bed that night she reminded me that it was her last night as a two-year-old. She has a good memory!

The morning of her birthday I didn’t remind her that it was her special day until the morning was about half over. But as soon as I did, she paused and her eyes lit up as this news sunk in. In an animated voice she talked about how she was three years old now. It’s so fun to watch her excitement.

We pulled out a helium tank we have and blew up a few balloons. That was hugely exciting for Wes and Carissa.

But the Big Event of the day was taking Carissa to Build-A-Bear at the mall. I’ve never been into stuffed animals myself, so I never gave it much thought. But a few weeks ago John and I were at the mall for dinner and noticed little girls coming out of the mall with Build-A-Bear bags and their new stuffed treasures inside. They looked so happy that we thought we should walk through the store before we went home. We did, and we observed the prices (which are naturally not cheap), but we came away convinced that out little daughter would absolutely love the experience.

And thus she did. The way it works is you pick a stuffed animal shell, fill it yourself (with an employee’s help) with fluff, give it a heart, and then you can buy accessories and clothes and print a birth certificate. Wes was quick to find a Hello Kitty one, and as soon as Carissa saw it, that was it. We took it to the fluff machine. The very, very nice employee showed Carissa how to use the foot pedal to fill her Hello Kitty with fluff.

You’ve got to watch this video. It is just so cute to watch her experience this. Also, notice that the employee is missing his forearm, but look how good he is at using what he has.

Bath time.

Honestly, cross my heart, I wasn’t planning to buy the stuffed animal any accessories or clothes. But as soon as her kitty was bathed she sidled up to the accessories wall and said that Hello Kitty needed some clothes.

OK. Why not? It’s her birthday. There were dresses and shirt/short combos, but since Carissa herself prefers shorts that’s what Hello Kitty got, too. I was turning to leave when I heard Carissa say, “Now she needs shoes!” and she was already perusing the selection. So. Hello Kitty ended up with some pretty snazzy wooden sandals.

However, I drew the line at the chair and car. But Carissa sure had fun playing with them for a while.

During this time Wes is mostly pulling these wheeled toys around the store (and out into the mall).

Carissa is happy. Off to print the birth certificate!

There’s a candy shop/ice cream store near the mall that we’d never been to before. We stopped in. Wes had an ice cream cone and Carissa had a huge sucker that the nice employee gave her for free since it was her birthday.

After dinner we headed to my parent’s new place and had a birthday celebration.

Oh, Carissa loves birthday parties! She throws birthday parties for her stuffed animals often, and we knew she couldn’t wait to have a real one for herself. As I buckled her into her carseat to go to the party she said, “I want candles on my cake!” Because her stuffed animals always have (pretend) candles on the (pretend) cake that she makes for them in her (pretend) kitchen.

We sang, she blew, and then we ate!

She ate her cake with such relish, enjoying every bite. She picked out the cake herself at the grocery store the night before. She was so sure she wanted the one with balloons on it, I couldn’t say no.

Then it was present time. Grandpa helped her open (along with all her cousins).

Besides the Hello Kitty, I really only gave her a backpack (which is practical since she starts preschool in a couple weeks). It’s a penguin backpack, since she’s really into penguins these days. But her grandma, uncle, aunt and cousins were uber generous and she received some really lovely gifts like a dress-up fairy costume with accessories, Hello Kitty book with little toy figurines, magnetic dress-up dolls, and the list goes on.

Her grandma provided goodie bags for all the kids, which I let Wes and Carissa open at home the next morning. It was like Christmas! Carissa kept asking if she could play with the toys she had just gotten, and which I had piled on the little kids’ table, and I kept telling her, Yes! They’re all yours! Play with them! The light in her eyes is unforgettable.

So she had a very happy birthday, thanks to the wonderful support of family and the beautiful innocence of being three years old. For a few days after she would say, “I’m still three!” (I think she was going for, “I’m three now.”)

And here’s Elizabeth!

Yesterday I turned 32. In the morning I took the kids to a bagel place where I had the most delicious peanut butter and jelly bagel, toasted and schmeared with cream cheese. We sat outside and ate under an umbrella. Then we picked up dry cleaning and headed to a Zumba class for special needs kids (wherein neither of the two teachers showed up, and I and another lady pulled out our mp3 players and made up stuff for half an hour). We ordered pizza for lunch. My sister and two of her kids came for a visit.

This was all great. But the best part of my birthday was about to begin. John and I hired babysitters to watch our kids while we went to Sundance Resort, up the canyon in the mountains. I’ve long wanted to take a “scenic lift ride,” which is what they call the ski lift in the off-season. The weather was beautiful and about about five degrees cooler than in the valley. The lift is $12 per person and well worth it. The views of the mountain range was amazing; there are a lot more mountains up there than you realize when you’re standing in the valley.

I’m scared of heights, which is one reason I wanted to take the lift. It’s good to do something sometimes that scares you. But when we got to the top I was feeling pretty exhilarated!

We hopped off at Ray’s Summit and took a short hike. There are several hikes you can take, including one to Stewart Falls, but we only had time for about a 1-mile jaunt before the lift closed for the evening. Still, it was really a pleasant and fun way to spend the afternoon. We met several families on hikes, saw a couple taking engagement photos, a mountain biker preparing to descend the mountain, and a hiker climbing a tree. But for the most part we were alone, which was so nice and peaceful. Spending time one-on-one with the person I love reminds me how much I enjoy spending time with him and much I still admire and love him.

The hiking trail was fairly easy but it ran along the mountainside, with drops that seemed to go a long way down. Didn’t I mention that I’m scared of heights? So I just kept my eyes to the trail and the mountain scenery.

I wish we had more time and could’ve hiked further. But, alas, the hiking resurrected a a knee injury I have that gets inflamed when hiking downhill. So maybe it was better we stuck to an hour hike.

I loved, loved, loved this time. The evening air was cooling off more as we got back on the lift for our ride back down the mountain. It was peaceful and serene. And high. (Scared of heights!) This might be my hand gripping the safety bar.

Sometimes I may have looked like this.

To top it off, when we got to the bottom John and I bought a chocolate-peanut butter milk shake to share from the Sundance deli. When I saw the total was nearly $6 I felt a little bad, but then I tasted it. Dang.

Daaaaaaang.

If there is a chocolate-peanut butter milkshake worth $6, this is IT. I think they used chocolate Haagen Dazs and very little milk.

Sitting there, on the mountainside, with my milkshake and my husband, looking up at the pristine blue sky and forest peaks, I felt things were perfect. It was a happy birthday.

The kids started the day with artwork for Dad. Wes drew this picture of Daddy. It’s the best I’ve ever seen him draw a person. On the right are the eyes, nose, smiley face and ears, with a big (half) circle around them for a face, and squiggly lines for a body. Really good!

The Primary at church gave out ties to decorate for Father’s Day. So the kids used ink to stamp their hands on paper, which I glued to the tie. The five hearts at the top represent our family of five. John was a good sport to wear it in public today at church.

John gave the kids some tickles.

The kids got really excited to watch Dad open presents. They suspected it meant a birthday and a party and cake with candles…but they were OK with it just being Father’s Day and being able to say, “Happy Father’s Day!” (although Wes keeps saying “Happy Mother’s Day!”)

The day before Easter we colored eggs as a family. Wes is 5 and Carissa is 2, but this is the first time we’ve done this. We’ll be doing it every year now, because they loved it so much.

On Easter morning the two older kids had an Easter basket with a chocolate bunny (not processed in a facility with nuts; that was hard to find), a couple Easter eggs filled with their favorite things (like M&Ms), bubbles, and a wind-up Easter toy.

Then, before church, we took Wes and Carissa outside to find Easter eggs. This was their favorite thing.

Afterward they pulled out their eggs (Wes lined his up in a neat row) and ate and ate and ate. While baby Elizabeth (nearly 5 months old) watched. It was a lovely, fun, sugar-filled day.

…Our attempt at such.

This is sort of actually what I was aiming for–except all of them doing it at the same time together. And smiling.