Time is a thief

Ana is 2 months old, I can hardly believe it! The days go by faster and faster with each baby-probably because we're so much busier with the addition of each one. Ana is still loved to pieces by her siblings and is starting to become much more interactive and fun. She has grown a lot from her 5 lb days too and is looking so big these days! We had lots of help from both of our moms for the first month+ of Ana's life, which helped so much and we're so grateful to live closer to them for the first time! 

Learning how to take a bottle, she's been our best one yet! Lots of willing helpers too.

Early mornings with brothers.

She also gets lots of hang-out time with Caroline when the boys are at school all day. 

Comparing their sizes. Caroline is always telling us that she is humungous, and she pretty much is. She's just a few pounds shy of Thomas these days.

We traditionally have a birthday cake when our new babies are born, always a fun memory. Thomas' eye looks scary because Russell accidentally poked him in the eyelid with a hot s'mores wooden stick the night before. It looked pretty terrible for a while but has healed now with a small scar. Luckily he blinked at the right moment.

Post church naptime.

Hammock time with VoVo. 

First time meeting my dad.

Lots of walks to the bus stop wrapped up with mom.

Ana's blessing was lovely, I loved everything Ricardo said in the blessing about this sweet girl.

100 days of school! Best little old man ever. Russell is our costume master and made the beard for Thomas and the bald cap is Ricardo's from an old Halloween costume.

More school dress-up days, superhero day! These were their Halloween costumes a few years ago, still managed to make them fit haha. Russell told me some of his friends said his beard was a bit much (his idea by the way). He said he told them, "if you're going to do something, do it right." I love his 100% commitment to things he decides to do and hope he keeps that always.

Playing baseball again this spring. We love that the playground is right next to his field so the other 2 can always be occupied during the games!

Thomas had a birthday in January and turned 6! He got lots of legos and was a happy camper. 

He really really really wanted a birthday party, and I really didn't want to throw one since we had a newborn baby and it sounded like a lot of work. But we compromised and had a party a month later and it was actually really fun. Part of his birthday present was tickets to Repticon-which is just what it sounds, a convention for reptile enthusiasts. Ricardo took him and said he had never seen so many snakes. Thomas was thrilled to come home with a turtle and then we had his reptile-themed party later that afternoon.

Our church did a fun activity at the temple which included a tour of the outside, picnic, and family photos for children under 12. They can't go inside until that age so it was really special for our kids to have a temple activity to learn about the special experiences they will have once they're old enough to go inside. Also, fun that Ricardo and I were married in this particular temple. Feels like a lifetime ago!

We started our first vegetable garden and it's going well! Fun to see things grow a little more every day and we have plans for fruit trees in the future.

First spinach crop!

A few weeks later:

We got sushi for a date one night and Thomas really enjoyed the leftovers so Ricardo promised to take him out for a sushi date on another day. Thomas is such an adventurous eater and loved it.

Russell loves to read and is currently enjoying the Lord of the Rings series, which I could never ever get through! He did The Hobbit for a school project and had lots of fun working on it.

Caroline at 3.5: always happy, always wants to leave home and go somewhere, 0% jealousy about Ana (instead she takes care of her baby dolls by feeding them and putting them down for naps too ), loves her brothers, and is so forgiving (example one of many: one time Thomas hit her and she said "it's ok Thomas, it was an accident." It was certainly not an accident but she didn't care and didn't hold a grudge). She is such a fun soul.

She loves cosmic kids yoga. Also recently started gymnastics which is so fun for me as a former gymnast. She loves it and I love watching her.

Wears princess dresses 50% of the time. Otherwise, it's a carefully matched outfit, i.e. pink shirt with pink shorts, orange shirt with orange shorts etc. She gets dressed immediately after waking up in the morning, unlike the boys who would stay in pjs all day. We're still patiently waiting for her hair to grow. Maybe someday! :)

We're doing a home preschool curriculum this year since we moved during the middle of her old preschool group. One day we made a paper kite and she was so thrilled to immediately take her little kite replica outside and "fly it." It was actually windy and she had a heyday for 20 minutes running around with it. 

Lining up all her babies.

The kids had spring break this week, it was pretty low-key because Ricardo was working and then gone for military duty, plus the rate-limiting factor of having a little baby with us. I had aspirations of doing a beach day or visiting the aquarium, but in the end, we didn't do any of those things! But, we enjoyed the time together and it reminded me that kids have pretty low expectations most of the time. They were thrilled to do pretty regular things like having a cousin over for a sleepover, visiting a few new parks, picking strawberries, and working on crafts at home. 

Found a ladybug at the park.

St. Patrick's Day! Woke up to them all dressed in green and asking for Lucky Charms.

I asked Thomas why he did a thumbs down in the photo, he said it was because he had just picked a strawberry that turned out to be rotten underneath. They had a great time and we're excited to plant our own strawberries in the future!

Ana was there too!

Wild Kratts dragonfly costume that he made this week. I did not help with this. Russell has a whole bin of his cardboard costumes. He's so fun.

Meanwhile, Thomas worked on a popsicle stick tree frog.

Cooling off with the sprinklers.

I'll leave you with some cute baby photos. She's started to smile but I haven't caught a good one on camera yet. I'm sure by my next blog post we'll have lots of those! So bittersweet to say goodbye to the newborn phase. 

Happy spring!