happy, tiring and chaotic! Lots of parties, presents and FOOD. Ugh.....to the food part...it's not so good to be pregnant over the holidays because you overindulge thinking you are feeding two..but lets face it...the little one inside only needs 300 calories a day, not 30,000! The basketball pregnant belly is quickly resembling more of a rotund-ish football.We spent Christmas Eve with my family, which was lots of fun. We had dinner, then performances by all the grandkids (Jane, of course, was asked to do all her animal noises and her cousins got a kick out of it) then cousin present exchange. We finished with my favorite family tradition - we turn out all the lights except for the tree and one reading light, then Papa Tayler reads us a kids' Christmas story and then the bible Christmas story while we pass around chocolates and sparking drinks. So fun. Oh, and all the grandkids get Christmas jammies that match. In order to have Jane's jammies match, they had to get her size 2T...waaaay too big. It was pretty funny though to watch her walk around in them; it looked like her legs had been amputated at the knees as the rest of the jammy legs trailed behind her.
Christmas day was actually pretty tame, which was really nice. We opened the presents under the tree (the tree, by the way, was a real tree from the Fishlake N.F. that our friends got for us. It was a tall gangly thing that had super sharp needles! It definately needed them to defend itself from Jane - and it worked - she mostly kept away from the tree). Jane enjoyed opening the presents, mimicking what she had seen everyone do the past few days as presents were opened. She tore at the paper and would say "wow!" over and over. We got her lots of books (because she is obsessed with them), a Little Peoples Barn, some blocks and a few other random things. Jev got a really nice camera and I got some nice sheets...I finally got to toss the ones that had a hole big enough to swallow my leg everytime I got into bed! We then ran over to Jev's mom's house for a bit and then came back home. I had a pretty bad head cold (which I am still trying to get rid of!) so the rest of the day we just stayed home. It was really nice to relax. My mom and dad and Merrill came over that night for a few minutes to do presents again, but that was it!
The rest of the week was so exciting and hectic. Jevan's sister Stephanie came home from her mission! It was so much fun to see her. She has a very happy, bubbly personality that just flooded out the minute she got off the plane. She hardly recognized Jevan's littlest sister Tasha and had never met Jane or Calvin (Becca and Steve's babe). We spent the next few days playing and COOKING as we had to prepare for the feast/openhouse after Steph's homecoming on the 31st. It really was a food extravaganza. Jevan was off of work all week which was so wonderful. We actually had time to just sit down and play with Jane together and she kept us laughing.
We can't believe how much she is changing all the time. She picks up words and mannerisms so quickly now. She surprised us one day with being able to do all the hand movements to "Einsy-Wiensy Spider" and "Little Cottage in a Wood"(sort of - her spider is her drilling a hole in her hand and for her bunny, she contorts her fingers some wierd way and bounces her hand around). She tries to say "one, two, three" in her little sing-song voice whenever she wants us to swing her around or throw her into the pillows on the bed. Her new vocabulary words include ball, diaper, poo-poo (she will tell me sometimes when she needs a diaper change!), nose, eye, teeth (she hates having her teeth brushed - it's a fight every night) coat (kind-of) and hat. Actually, she is kind of obsessed with hats. Especially Jevan and his hat, or the hood to his sweatshirt. I get the biggest kick out of it. On Saturday, we ran lots of errands all together. Jevan was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and everytime we would get in the car, Jane would yell from the back seat "hat!.... hat!" over and over until Jevan put his hood on. Then she would be satisfied until he would take it off again. She would instantly notice and yell again until he put it back on. Putting on my hood would not satisfy her. It had to be Dad's hat. It was so funny. Needless to say, Jev had his hood on most of the day. She has continued this little obsession throughout the weekend.
It has been really cold and snowy here the past few weeks as well. It has kept us inside quite a bit but we have taken some adventures out into the snow. We have taken a couple of walks up Millcreek Canyon. The first walk we took, Jevan had Jane in our baby backpack and she stayed primarily warm and happy as long as there was always a new dog to look at (everyone walks their dog in that canyon) or if I was constantly putting cookies into her mouth. The second time, my friend Sarah and I decided to try the walk again. I knew our time would be limited with her in the backpack..and Sarah would have had to carry it because my pregnant belly is way too big now, so we figured out a different plan. I didn't have a sled, but there was one thing that could work that Jane loves to sit in. The laundry basket!!! Yes sir, we tied a rope to the laundry basket and towed her along (Jevan made lots of fun of us). Sadly, it didn't keep her as happy as we would have hoped. We even tried hooking Sarah's husky Kodak up to the basket and he pulled it for a while. She didn't think it was nearly as cool as we did. She was screaming mad by the time we reached the car. Oh well. It was entertaining to Sarah and me at least.Even though Jane doesn't seem to like being out in the cold much, she does love having her coat on in the house. She especially loves wearing my puffy goose down jacket around, and Jev and I think she resembles E.T. when she is wearing it. She has also recently discovered the joy of "swimming" in the bathtub. One night she rolled onto her tummy and found out how fun it was to kick and splash on her tummy. It was very cute to watch.
Jane has also started to mimick us in so many things. When I am getting ready in the morning, she loves to put on her "lotion", plastering it on her face and spreading it on her jammies. She will try to put color on her cheeks with my rouge brush. She also likes to wash her own hair in the bathtub and put soap on her washcloth and wash her face. She pulls out pots and pans and if I give her a wooden spoon, she will stir it around in her pot...and then bang on it for a while. She has learned to climb up on chairs and likes to sit up to the table...of course, then she climbs onto the table and gets mad when take her off. She has really learned the art of the temper tantrum, and gets frustrated with us much more often now. She wants to be so independent and gets mad when you put her shoes on for her, or take her away from some new discovery she has found in the kitchen garbage. She wants to do her own hair and if she asks for her Teddy Bear (she can say "ted-dee"), she wants it NOW. Are these images into the future that awaits us with Jane? Yikes I say.
Anyway, that was yet again another long-winded post. I must try to keep up. In a nutshell, Christmas was fun and crazy and Jane continues to keep us amazed, laughing, and oh so entertained.
Jane and her cousin Calvin on the lookout for RBOWPs out in the night:
Jane doing her practicing (we're teaching her early):
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