Happy Birthday Matt

Matt turned 33 last Wednesday. We celebrated with a somewhat traditional pool party at his parents' house. It's nice to have one birthday in the family that we can play outside. I brought dinner over and made Matt's favorite German chocolate cake. We just had family and some family friends, the Barretts and Thygersons over.



Cora and Olivia with Emilyn. Emilyn was liking Cora more than me this night!



Matt's favorite cake

Don't they both look entranced?!!



Matt's parents gave him some very fancy shifters for his road bike that he loved, and some movie tickets complete with babysitting which we both loved! The shifters were a pretty amazing present and Matt was so excited he already has them installed on his bike. His mom made him work for them though with a number of different layers, paper, and tape to get through before he could get his present. I thought it was pretty cute.

I think he's getting close now.

One of Emilyn's favorite sleeping spots in our bed.

Here is an example of the sleeping problems mentioned below. Matisyn goes and goes until she collapses. We found her asleep in her baby crib with her favorite poems on her lap when we went to check on her on our way to bed! This was too precious to miss a picture.

We have finally stopped swaddling Ems at night. She is too good at getting her hands out to suck on her fingers, and it no longer makes a difference for how long she sleeps. Thankfully she is sleeping longer on her own, taking multiple short naps in her crib, and using her fingers to soothe herself.

The other day we met Cora and Olivia at the Thanksgiving Point farm. There were baby animals that were so cute, and both girls loved feeding the goats and chickens, and riding the ponies.





Meet Chief. He caused quite the fuss, twice I might add, because Olivia got to ride him first, and Matisyn broke down because she wanted to ride him first. I guess the other ponies were not good enough.

The first ride she could not be reasoned with and she waited until she could ride Chief. The whole time she just kept saying, "I knew I wanted to ride Chief Mommy, I love him" over and over. The second time she was convinced that riding Nutmeg would be just as great.


Bless you Daddy for cleaning up the overflow made by darling Matisyn after she shoved one whole unrolled roll of toilet paper and three more complete rolls into the toilet. I had sent her up with four perfectly good rolls to put in her bathroom, and this was the result! This was her in the background saying oh, no, oh, no.

Here she is helping with clean-up


Matisyn Quotes:

After finding a little spider floating in her bathtub I said, who's your spider friend? She said, "Mommy he is NOT my friend. I am allergic to bugs!" I asked what allergic means. She said it means spiders and stinger bugs are not her favorite, but that grasshoppers, praying mantis's, and butterflies are her favorite. If that is the definition of allergic, then I can think of a few things I am allergic to as well! She used to love all bugs, but we finally had to explain that some bugs could hurt us so she wouldn't try to pick up spiders or hold wasps.

You would think that the daily tantrums would be enough, but apparently not to Matisyn. She has taken to having tantrums in her sleep. I guess they're nightmares to her, but they sound pretty similar to tantrums, except the reasons are a little more humorous. This week she has woken up crying on three different occasions all because a toy had been taken from her in her dreams. We've been regressing on sharing. Poor Porter and David have both been blamed for her tears in the middle of the night. Last night Matt ran in to her room because she was hysterically crying, and found out it was because "David took her blue bird with the A on it!" What a tough night!

Sleeping has altogether become difficult lately. The missing binky has decreased Matisyn's total sleep by quite a bit which makes her even more "spirited". She has not napped once since the binky fairy came, and it is more of a struggle to get her to sleep at night. She has more fears than she ever had before, including but not limited to the shadows on the wall made by her stuffed animals and being alone. She comes in in the middle of the night sometimes now because she's scared and wants to sleep with us or have us come to her bed. She often uses the excuse that she is cold even if it's hot because she wants to snuggle. She never used to do this. Once we put her in her bed she just stayed there and went to sleep. We don't want to start bad habits, but we also appreciate snuggles no matter what time it is. We prefer them in the day time hours though, and I'm starting to worry about her sleep deficit!