Dixie Round Up and More

Life as a family of six is just SO BUSY. I think we say that at the beginning of every blog post. It is just SO TRUE. 

In the middle of September, Mom finally made it back on Grandpa's boat with the two littles. She hardly made it out on to the lake this summer so Sam and Iva were a little leery. Can you blame Sam though? He has to wear a life jacket that smashes into his face. Haha! Iva eventually liked it and Sam just kind of played dead while he was in the life jacket. 

September also means it is the Annual Dixie Round Up which is really the only rodeo we go to. It's right downtown and has a lot of tradition. Aunt Angie helped us get to the rodeo while Mom finished training a client. We had fun! I loved wearing the cowboy hat that I found at Grandma's. I'm trying to figure out how to get enough money to buy boots.

Dad was teaching cello lessons and couldn't make it!

Oh my gosh...look at how bright and sunny this Saturday was. It was just BEAUTIFUL. We had to swim. Sam has figured out how to walk around in the water in the shallow end and loves to splash.

Me being silly with the jets...heehee.

 
While we were swimming, Dad was involved in the first (hopefully annual!) Dixie State University Cello Festival. We went and watched their performance that night. Unfortunately, it was a little long and bit over the heads of Iva and Sam so Grandma had to take them, but Cara and I stayed with Mom and enjoyed it. Dad is the best one in his row. (Can you name that movie?) It seems like EVERY single Saturday in September was full to the brim for us!

Tid Bits

Seriously when you are this far behind on your blog, you just kind of look over your photos and try and remember what you did.

September is so nice in St. George because the days are still hot enough for a swim, but the evenings cool off enough that you can use your backyard again. I'm looking at this photo of us playing on the lawn and realizing that the bushes have almost doubled in size in the last month! 

Iva loves to climb and hang on things. She's pretty brave!

Grandpa starts begging to take us out a lot when it cools down. So we oblige him and go climbing every now and then. We are so good at the wall in the backyard, but I tend to panic a little when I get on actual rock wall. It takes a minute to calm down.

The second Saturday in September was supposed to be a really big day for Mom. She was supposed to compete in her first ever triathlon, but due to a scheduling error on her part, she had to attend a training instead! We got to play at Summit's pool while she trained which was fun. But Aunt Angie and Aunt Becca competed along with Grandpa in the Kokopelli.

Mom is TRX certified now!!

Iva is still in a really terrible and awkward phase with sleeping. She needs naps, but she really doesn't need naps and lately it hasn't been mattering whether she naps or not. She just can't fall asleep FOREVER at night. We tried melatonin, but it coincided with some truly terrible nights for her where she woke up screaming. Not just crying, but screaming so we kind of stopped trying it. It was strange.  She seems happy enough. It's just Mom and Dad who are cranky!

Labor Day? Remember that?

Oh good grief. Labor Day was SO LONG AGO. We may never catch up here on the blog. We will keep marching one blog post at a time though. Mom says that she is afraid that she hasn't been capturing her favorite parts of us because of how long it takes her to write it all down. Hopefully that's not true. We are pretty great kids, after all.

So despite the fact that Labor Day weekend was actually a little crazy for us (Mom worked on Saturday and Dad had an awesome church activity where he got to shoot guns), we still decided we couldn't pass up seeing our family in SLC. We are great road trippers.

Salt Lake City delves into fall so much quicker than St. George. The evenings were already cooling off and were quite pleasant. Mom actually brought us jackets. And we actually used them!

Iva was so funny on our walk to the park. She was so insistent that her dress not get wet. The grass was a little damp, but she kept marching with her dress almost past her belly button because she was so worried about it.

We try to make time to visit Oma when we are up north. Sometimes it gets hard because her place is out in Taylorsville, but Sunday afternoons are a great time to visit. She doesn't really know who any of us are, but we all take walks with her and make sure to give her hugs.

And you know we couldn't pass up a zoo trip! We tried to take a picture with every metal animal sculpture.

You'll notice hot cocoa in the picture. It was a balmy 60 degrees! hahaha

Not Sam's best photo. 

This is Sam's best photo. He kept grinning up at Chase!

Mom just loves these photos of Iva and Dad.

As with most of our trips, it was over too soon and we headed back down the state. Mom had decided to try and catch The Green Show at the Shakespearan Festival in Cedar City. Unfortunately, they didn't have their regularly scheduled Green Show, but we did get to enjoy some bag pipe musicians and Daddy got to eat his very first tart despite having gone to the Festival for many years as a kid. We liked the tarts too.

Sam at 10 and 11 months...

Guest post by Mom:

Oh my goodness. Time seriously is just marching by. I mentioned in my earlier post that I haven't wanted to upload photos to my computer which meant that I never did a post about Sam at ten months and now here he is ELEVEN months. He is ONE YEAR OLD next month. Oh my gosh. It takes my breath away.

The last two months have kind of been big and not big for him. He's eating a lot more big people food, but with only two little teeth it's kind of hard! He loves to nurse. He has never taken a binkie at all and so I think I am his binkie. I am still co sleeping with him for the most part and I swear some nights he "nurses" all night, but really it's nothing nutritive and he doesn't swallow! I do start him out in his crib every single night though which is probably my first kid that has ever happened for!

Sam also loves selfie modes on the camera. He lights up at his own face.

It seems like he is constantly moving if he's awake. Crawling around, climbing around, falling over, pulling things off shelves and whining because he can't walk but REALLY REALLY WANTS TO.

He is still a snuggler though. He loves to bonk noses with me or give me big open mouth kisses. I'm not sure he really does that with anyone else.

He loves to tackle us on the floor and it's almost like he's hugging you, but sometimes it feels like maybe he's supposed to be a wrestler and he already knows how to pin you.

Dad has expanded his cello studio quite a bit and so the cello is out a lot more at our house and Sam loves it.

These big cheeser grins make a lot of the mischief worth it. He has gotten quite vocal in that he has started shrieking to get things or throwing tantrums when it's not according to his plans.

He's not exactly talking yet. He says momma and dadda and no and it does come across like he knows them, but he doesn't do it with a lot of frequency. I actually think no is his favorite because he hears, "No, Sam!" from me so much!

Another Diet Coke baby. (sigh...it's my own fault!)

Sam crawls everywhere all the time. He prefers to cruise the furniture though and LOVES to hold on to your hands and walk around. And I mean, just walk around. He almost has no agenda except to be mobile! Just tootling around on two feet and laughing. 

Everyone needs cute baby bum pictures of themselves, right?

Sam adores Grandma and Grandpa's dog, Roxie, because she plays fetch and it makes him giggle. She has even started trying to bring HIM the ball even though he can't throw it!

This is one of the first Sunday's that I put him in pants with a button up shirt and it made him look so big I almost cried.

Sam loves his Grandpa. He will even reach for him over Momma! It's been fun to watch especially since my dad LOVES having grandsons and loves babies and I finally was able to have a baby boy with big blue eyes who already seems to worship him. My girls love Grandpa too, but you can already tell it's different.

Sam has actually become hard to nurse because he doesn't sit still unless he's ready for bed or a nap. He squirms and bites down (sometimes hard but mostly just kind of testing it) and tries to flip over onto his stomach and it drives me bananas and makes me think I'll pull the plug sooner rather than later. And then this happens...

And he's so peaceful and we are connected and I get to just sit with him and watch him literally get what he needs from me. I realize in those moments, that if this baby is truly my last, weaning is gonna take me awhile.

These last two pictures make me laugh because they are me just trying to keep the kiddo entertained and flipping that camera on selfie mode always works.

As far as food goes, he loves pears and peas mixed, but not peas by themselves. Bananas and bread and pizza crusts are big wins. Yogurt and ice cream big hits as well. Graham crackers (as messy as they are) disappear at this house too.

Sam can take steps on his own and is really quite stable when he stands. That happened about two weeks ago...maybe even about ten days ago. He gets more confident every day and just on his eleventh month "birthday", he took four or five steps in a row which was big!

Oh my Sam-O. Iva and he are best buddies. They shriek and laugh together and sometimes chase each other around the house. She can get a little rough with him and he has dissolved her to a hysterical mess when he gets his hands in her hair, but I think they are going to continue to be nothing but trouble for me and I kind of can't wait to watch!