Pictures finally!

No, my computer isn't fixed but Brice took the camera to school and made a disk for me so now I can share all our news properly. Yay! Now where to start... I think I'll just get some pictures up and write what goes along with them.

I mentioned earlier that Alaina is crawling...

...and getting stuck..

...and sitting...

...and has a tooth (you might have to click on the picture to make it big enough to see the tooth--spit is shiny in pictures! Her second one is just breaking through the gums but I don't have a picture of that yet)...

...and eating solids...Alaina likes baby cereal but she's not so sure about fruits and veggies!

My Grammy Quinn sent me this cool puree thingy that I LOVE! I made a bunch of baby food with it: apple, pear, apple and pear mixed, and butternut squash. I was going to make yams too, but I forgot the thing was in the oven after I pulled out the squash and turned the oven off. I didn't realize the sweet potato was still in there until the next day!

Alaina's tongue is extraordinarily long. At least she got something from me!

Her brother sure loves her and Raelin can make her laugh like no one else can. Alaina thinks Raelin is hilarious!

Alaina is always full of smiles. Even when she's tired and grumpy she smiles.

Look at her go! I'm not sure what happened to the picture quality of this one, but this is one muscly girl! She's about 5 months and one week here. Maybe 5 months and two weeks. I'll have to check.

Ryker's birthday was on July 7th; he wanted a helicopter birthday. Here's his cake:

He got lots of nice things for his birthday and we had lots of family around: Mimi and Papa were in town and so were William and Angel and Liam. Uncle Jesse came back from Canada just in time, too. And Grammy and Granddad came, of course. So we had a fun get together with dinner and yummy cake (I thought the cake was a bit disproportionate and goofy-looking, but it had lots of pudding in it and it was tasty!) and presents and helicopter toys.

This is the gift Brice and I put together for him--his own work bench, complete with real tools and everything. The tools capable of doing the most damage are chained to the bench so he can't destroy the house. He's really enjoyed it and spent a lot of time out there hammering away. We thought an outlet might help him learn to control himself (thanks, Grandma, for the idea).

Birthday kisses

Granddad trimmed this tree just for Raelin. She loves to climb trees so Granddad cut the limbs leaving 8 inches or so for Raelin to climb to the top with. She got scared/stuck and Brice had to go up and coach her down. She fell out of a tree yesterday (don't worry, she's fine. Just a couple scrapes). That's the first time that's happened but probably not the last.

Uncle Jesse was only in town for a few days before he was off to Alaska for his next great adventure. We're taking care of his dog while he's gone. Lady and Cooper are having a blast together!

So, we had a (fortunately) short-lived problem with Ryker peeing in inappropriate places like his room and his sister's back. So after the third time it happened, Brice and I were trying to figure out what to do. In a fit of frustration I said, "If we can't trust him not to pee in his room, maybe he should just sleep in the bathroom!" So here he is asleep in the bathtub.

We went to Scofield the other day to collect some things and my dad and I were sitting in the yard making dinner and watching the kids when Brice came walking out with this:

My dad said, "Whoa, no way! Now that's impressive!" For any of you who don't know my dad, that's a big reaction! But apparently they usually move these things with a crane...

Pretty Raelin

Ryker has come down with a case of geeby smiles for pictures to match Raelin's.

And last but not least! I got a puppy! I wanted one for my graduation present/birthday present (back in April), but never got one. Until now. Brice's mom got her for me (I helped a little with graduation money I'd been given. Thanks Jack and Sue and Grammy Quinn!) when she was out for the Fourth and Ryker's birthday. The puppy was 8 weeks old when I got her and she's 10 weeks old now. She's a strange mix: Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mixed with Rat Terrier. Kind of an odd combination, but she's been great. She's got the short hair and the spunk of the rat terrier, and the features and cuddliness of the spaniel. Her name is Zuma and we love her! I never thought I'd be one to like a little dog, but I'm really enjoying it! Easier to train, take places, control, catch, and clean up after, and lots cheaper to feed. And she doesn't take up the whole bed. But she's got some sharp little teeth!

I didn't catch any pictures of this, but when we were in Scofield, she went with the kids and my mom to walk around a little and she found a patch of cactus! My mom (who's allergic to dogs) carried her back to us with big chunks of cactus stuck to her whole belly from chest to tail. She was so good about it (and my mom was a trooper for carrying her despite her allergies). She held as still as she could as we plucked out all the spines. She didn't like it when we had to get the ones out of her armpit and she yelped and squirmed. But then she slept for the rest of the day and now she's as good as new.

Raelin loves her to death and I often have to fight her to hold my own puppy!

The first time Alaina saw Zuma she laughed and laughed!

I don't know if I can move this video to the crawling part of this post without losing it, so I'll just leave it here. Alaina's got her own way of crawling, but it's effective! She's just started to alternate hands in the past two days instead of doing the fish flop.

Boring!

Another post without pictures. I know, boring. Sorry. One day we'll get our computer fixed. Until then, HELP! Alaina is having the hardest time sleeping! Or rather, I'm having the hardest time getting her to sleep. I don't want to use the cry it out method. I did it with the other two and there has got to be a better way. Plus, Alaina won't cry it out ever. She's too mobile (She sits, she crawls, she has one tooth and is cutting a second one, and she's on a potty strike--see other blog for more on the potty strike). I can't tell you how many times I've come in to find her on her hands and knees keeping herself awake but with her tired little head drooping. Or stuck with her legs between the crib bars. It's pitiful. I usually rock her to sleep or something, but there are days where trying to soothe her to sleep three times a day is just asking too much. That's how I know what the cry it out method would yield. She is so resistant to having help falling asleep (she arches, screams, flails, then calms just long enough to get almost asleep then we do it all again). For some reason, blowing on her face helps sometimes. I think it makes her close her eyes, and if her eyes are closed, she's more likely to sleep (duh).

So how do you do it? How do you get a 6 month old to learn to just GO TO SLEEP!? Why does it have to be a battle? Why does she fight it? You'd think I would have learned this with my human development major, but my infant development class was a joke. Plus, I've read 100 books on parenting anyway and I want something different. Alaina's such a happy baby, full of smiles and giggles, but when it comes to sleeping she's a totally different baby. I just want her to learn to fall asleep peacefully, but I don't know how to do that. No matter what I try, she never falls asleep peacefully. If she's overtired she will, but if she's overtired then she's been grumpy and fussy for a while already so that doesn't count as peaceful. We generally have a nursing, swaddling (but it's getting too hot for that and she's too wiggly), rocking, singing, white noise routine, but it's not helping. I want a simple, 3-4 step plan that works without making her cry and takes less that 15 minutes. Maybe I'm picky, but I'm just not into taking her for a walk every night and every naptime or going for a drive three times a day to get her to sleep. I don't want her to run the household due to her picky sleeping issues. I don't mind holding her or cuddling her, but I don't have an extra half hour to invest in getting her to sleep every time she needs a nap and I don't like fighting her to get her soothed. I need her to just calm down and fall asleep when she's tired. How does one go about teaching this? I guess, in the end if all the things I try don't work and she's going to cry anyway I might just have to resort to the cry it out thing. Oh, bother.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry for the long silence. Our computer is pooping out on us. We had to do a total reboot, which means I have to re-download my picture software and that is proving to be a bit of a pain. Then, my memory card malfunctioned and I need to get it fixed hopefully without losing the pictures that are on there. Especially the video I took on my camera the other day of Alaina learning to get up on her hands and knees. It took some effort that first day, but the second day, she was popping right up and rocking. The third day she would plant her toes and get up on her feet and hands! What does she think she's doing!? She's barely 5 months old! Today is the fourth day, so we'll see what she does!

We've had lots and lots of fun lately. And lots and lots of company. We've gone camping in the rain, shooting, swimming (Raelin suddenly decided that she was ready to be a swimmer and she removed her life-vest and immediately started swimming around underwater wherever she wanted to go! Go, Raelin!), to the Children's Museum in SLC, and I can't remember what else. Once I get my pictures going, I'll catch up. But for now, I mostly just wanted to brag about my 5-month-old almost crawler and my little swimmer. Ryker's been mostly breaking things, so I guess I could brag about how he broke Raelin's headband into 5 pieces with one snap... That's pretty spectacular, right?

Lots

William and Angel and Liam have been coming out to Utah from California frequently lately to work on their house here so they can rent it out (they've been working on an addition for...well, forever). We got some cute pictures of the cousins all dressed up for church on Sunday.
We took our kids for a good, hard hike one evening. We hiked to the Y. It's pretty short but super steep. It's so steep that if you fall over the edge, that's it for you. You'd just keep rolling. I was a little paranoid about Ryker falling over the edge, but if you've read much of our blog or you've seen Ryker in action, you know that he is unbelievable accident-prone. He's a magnet for catastrophe. I was constantly telling him to get on the uphill side of the trail and scolding him for not paying attention. But it was great weather and absolutely beautiful. Next time we'll just take a leash...

(Yeah, thanks, Brice. Just dangle him over the edge so you can get a good shot.)

"We made it!!!!" "Ryker SIT DOWN!!!!"

On the way down it was getting dark, so Brice really wanted to hurry. At one point I heard Brice's gleeful skipping song (skip, skip, skip to my lou) and Raelin's panicked shriek as they flew down ahead of me. In this picture she was getting the hang of it and was happy, but a few minutes before she was on the verge of tears. For some reason, I'm always carrying the baby. Usually it's because I brought a baby carrier that Brice doesn't know how to use or that hurts his back. On this hike, she would have it no other way. She cried and cried for the first 20 minutes while Brice carried her and then quieted right down as soon as I had her. Momma's girl.
Here are Raelin and Ryker planting corn in our garden. I was worried that we wouldn't get to do much for our garden this year but my Grammie Quinn sent me some money for graduation and we used that and a whole lot of hard labor (like 20 hours worth of really hard rock moving and dirt leveling) to get a perfect garden started. I'm really excited! A neighbor let me borrow a great book and I think we mught have a bit of success (finally). We've got tomatoes, tomatillos, summer squash, scallop squash, zucchini, watermelon, two kinds of pumpkin--one for carving and one for baking, corn, and herbs. Then Ryker wanted to plant potatoes. I'd wanted to also, but didn't have the room. But for Ryker, I'd figure it out. So they're planted in the flower bed. Then I realized that Raelin might want to have her own mini garden as well. She had mentioned strawberries at one point so I shrunk the corn area to give her a little strawberry patch.

To give you an idea of what kind of project this has been, here's a picture of last year's garden. If you've ever moved landscaping rocks, you know what a pain they are to shovel and move around. Also, the watering system I had last year was completely different from what I wanted to do this year, so I had to dig up the sprinkler pipe that ran the old system, move it to somewhere we could access easier in case we want it for something later, and then cap it off. I had to use the hacksaw because I couldn't find our handy-dandy PVC cutters. Bummer. Of course I found them the next day... Grr.

And here's the new garden with a nice path leading to the future gate and everything lined with wood to prevent it from looking like a mess and spilling over into the neighbor's yard.
Everything is growing well and the watering system (watering furrows instead of a drip system) is working great. We've had some trouble with some bug that sucks all the juice out of the pumpkin before it even really gets started but I replanted those and have insecticide on hand. Problem solved. I hope.


Just cuz she's cute. Love this girl!!! Even the pouty face. You don't see it much, but it is SO cute.

She's so little and petite and I love it. She's always got a smile for everyone and when she looks at you with those big eyes, it's to die for.
I was trying to get a picture of Ryker and I told him to look at his money monkey so he walked over to it (not what I meant) and this is what I got:
I told him to look at me and smile, but he was in a funny mood so he gave me this face:
Eventually I got this:

There's my handsome boy!


Could she be any cuter!?

Cute sisters

Ryker wanted to try on Brice's shorts. Um, yeah, they're a bit big. Brice held them up with his belt, which he had to wrap twice around Ryker's waist to get it tight enough.

Lot's of other stuff to come. We've been busy! So busy that I'm getting more and more behind on the blog every day it seems.

I wrote most of this post this morning and am finishing it at 9 tonight. In the interim I encountered something that totally bummed me out so I want to complain. I wrote this morning about my garden that I'm so excited about and that I have high hopes for. I really worked hard on it and have continued to work on it often since I planted it. I watered yesterday and spent a lot of time making sure it was all working well. Everything was looking great. Today, the same evil juice-sucking bug that killed the pumpkin plant I already talked about killed half of my remaining pumpkin plant and someone or something tore the other half of it. Also, my summer squash plant looks like it got stepped on or whacked with a stick (Ryker's a likely culprit in anything involving sticks). The main stalk is broken, so it's going to die too. It was probably the stupid cat rolling on it. Grrr. I hate cats. For a cat, I like the one we have, but today she's a stupid cat. So I'm moping and sad because I don't want to start over; they were doing so well. And I already had insecticide on the plants so it must not be working. I hate to spend more money to replace the plants and find a bug killer that works, but I also hate for the money and effort already invested to be wasted too. I'm sure things will have a brigthter face tomorrow, but for tonight, I'm sad and mopey and discouraged. Maybe brownie batter will get me out of my funk...

Random stuff

Raelin has been showing off her creative flair lately:

This is a robot made out of dominos

And this is her rendition of some of her plastic animals. I was amazed at how well she could draw from a three-dimensional model--That's hard stuff! (You may have to click on the image to see her drawings)

Last Sunday was a first for the Somers family. We spent the week without Raelin and Ryker. We sent our kids to California with Uncle William and Auntie Raru to visit Mimi (Brice's mom) for the week. They were gone until Friday evening. It was hard to watch them go and we were lonely without them. But we made the best of it :) by going out on dates (thanks, Mom, for lots of coupons and gift certificates) and getting the house in order. Brice and I (and Alaina) went to dinner one night, movies the next, got ice cream the next night, went to a birthday party for our friend BreAn, and went for a fun but strenuous hike (yeah, we're just a little out of shape).

I did a major overhaul of ALL the toys. I pulled out every blessed thing, including the stuff stored in the attic space and dumped it all in the loft:

I purged as much of it as I could. I mean, really, how many toys do two kids need?! I got rid of about 8 bags of toys and it felt great! Unfortunately, when I was done and I looked at how much stuff was left, I still thought it was too much. But they play with it all on a regular basis and there wasn't much junk or knickknacks mixed in with what was left, so I couldn't justify getting rid of it. As much as the mess and clutter drives me crazy, I didn't want to break my kids' hearts by getting rid of their "favorite" toys. So here's what we're left with:

That's right, this is every last toy in the Somers' house except for their set of wooden blocks. Still a lot of stff, but so much better than before. I don't think they've even realized how much is missing! That's what happens when you go from four toys for a month to all this. They didn't even put up a fuss when they watched me give away all their stuff. It had been so long since they'd seen some of it that maybe they didn't realize it was theirs... That's when you KNOW you have too much junk.


As usual, I had some fun taking pictures of Alaina--she's the only one that holds still long enough for me to get more than one shot before running off.

One afternoon, I was hanging out with Brice while he worked on William and Angel's house. Angel and Liam were also there trying to mow the grass (it was too tall to make much progress). Liliana came over for a little bit too.

Cute kids!

And here are pictures from our hike. We wanted to hike Squaw Peak but we started at a trailhead that made for a much longer hike than the 3 miles round trip we were anticipating. We hiked close to 4 miles and barely made it halfway. It was still a fun hike. It was REALLY steep. Our dog had a lot of fun running all over--he probably ran about four times farther than Brice and I hiked. He was surprisingly responsive to my whistle and would come check in when he heard it. He also got a name this weekend. FINALLY!! Meet Cooper!