First tooth and some random thoughts

Daniel has been working on it for quite some time, but his first tooth finally started poking through yesterday! Today it's poking through even more, so pretty soon he'll be able to use it to start crunching down on some food (and hopefully not on me). His second tooth looks like it's not far behind, and his top gums are getting a bit swollen too, so I think it won't be long before he has 4 teeth. When it starts coming through well enough to actually see it better, I'll take a picture and post it.

Okay, now for my random thoughts. As you all know, I teach Gospel Doctrine in our ward. I've actually been pretty excited to be able to teach the Book of Mormon this year. I still don't know that I'm a great teacher or anything, but I really like the studying and learning I get to do as I prepare for the lesson each week. I'm sure that every 4 years, these things are discussed, but there's still usually one or two points in the lesson that really stand out to me and keep me pondering through the week. For yesterday's lesson, it was the point about where the Book of Mormon was in the whole scheme of the Restoration. The only thing that preceeded it was the First Vision. President Ezra Taft Benson pointed out that that should make us pause to consider the importance the Lord puts on it. This next week's lesson covers 1 Nephi 1-7. The lesson has you ask the question (again, something that was probably asked 4 years ago, but it stands out to me this time) about how you would feel if you were asked to take the trip back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates like Nephi and his brothers were. Would your response be more like Nephi's or more like Laman's and Lemuel's? That question itself didn't really cause my pondering, but when I turned it into more of a "if my dad, the prophet, had asked me to do that, what would my response have been?" We all know what the response should be to that question, but if we honestly look at ourselves and our attitudes, could we honestly say that we would go willingly without complaining that it's a "hard thing" he asks of us? And are there things the Prophet asks us to do today that we think are too hard to do so we don't do them? And does our response change at all when we realize that it's not the prophet who is asking us, but the Lord? I know that for me, I'm going to be looking at my life and my attitudes to see where my response really is and try to change it when I'm not willingly following.

Christmas and New Year

We had a fun trip when we went down to Utah for Christmas. It was fun to be able to see everyone and spend a little longer down there than we usually do. Ben was really upset when his cousins left and kept saying, "I wish all the cars were broken so no one could leave!" I think he's hoping people will come up to visit soon.

We started with a fun party with the Heinhold side of the family. You get all of us together and there are lots of kids running around. They seemed to have a good time playing together though. Well, except for Ben who had decided to be a little cranky.

The next night we had a singing party with the Toronto side. There were 100 people or so, a good number of whom were rather good singers, so it sounded really good in there. Since we were staying with the Torontos, I was able to put Daniel in bed instead of having to walk around with a cranky baby, so that was nice.

The boys had a really good time at McD's playing with their cousins on the slides there after they had a sleepover on Christmas night. They wore themselves out playing. In the van on the way back to the house, Ben said, "I'm tired. We played too hard."

We didn't always get to spend as much time with everyone as we wanted, but it was a nice trip down.

Alex had his 4th birthday on the 30th. We had cake for him and he opened a present, then got to go shopping on the 31st with his dad to pick out some more stuff. He says he likes being 4 and now he's almost 5.

For the New Year, we got to deal with sick kids. It's still carrying over, but at least we're home to deal with it and aren't still passing it on to everyone, unless you are a believer in the computer virus.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

Last visit with Dr. Lee

Daniel and Chris both had doctor appointments today. Unfortunately because of the change in insurance in January, it will be our last appointment with their doctor. We've really liked Dr. Lee and the office there. Hopefully when we decide on a new doctor, we'll like them as well.

Anyway, Chris's appointment was basically just a weight check. He now weighs 25 pounds, 10 ounces and is up to about 15% for weight. Apparently the vitamins are helping him, so yay! The doctor also checked his testicles again (mostly because he had decided to strip down completely naked in the examination room). She thinks he just has extra fluid around the one, but gave me the name of a pediatric surgeon to take him there to get checked out since it could turn into a hernia. So basically we'd take him to the surgeon to see how long we let it go before we do something about it.

Daniel had his six month check-up today. He now weighs 15 pounds, 6 ounces and is 25 inches tall, which puts him at about 15% for both. And if you've been paying attention, that's down from the 30% he was 2 months ago. Dr. Lee suggested that we start Daniel on the vitamins now too, just to see if we can prevent the same thing happening to him as happened to Chris. Of course, Chris went down rather drastically between 4 months and 6 months, only gaining one ounce rather than a little over a pound. So Daniel is already doing better than Chris did. She also suggested we take Daniel in to his new doctor for a 9 month check-up just to kind of keep an eye on that to make sure he's not dropping down. He also got his 2 shots and another oral immunization today. He did cry with the shots, but not as hard as he did the last time and stopped crying a lot sooner.

Both kids look happy and healthy. Chris and Alex were both a little crazy though. And not just running around the office like they usually do. Chris kept saying he needed a shot like Daniel and Alex wanted the doctor to check out his "pee pee" like she was doing with Chris and Daniel. Neither of them got what they wanted though. :)

Christmas Cheer

With all the things to be happy about with Christmas, I had a new one today. Well, it's not new as in never before thought of or anything like that, just a new one (and yet not new...read on and you may get that) for us.

Chris keeps wanting to be like his big brothers. They go play at Kyle's and he wants to go play at Kyle's. They start saying silly things, he wants to say silly things. They wear underpants, he wants to wear underpants. In fact, he keeps wanting the latter so much that he keeps saying that he wants to pee or poop in the potty just so that he'll get to wear them. I don't think he really gets the concept of how to use the bathroom quite yet, however. This afternoon as I was changing a poopy diaper, Chris decided he wanted to try to use the bathroom and stood there for a while and didn't do anything. I had to get them lunch and get Daniel down for his nap, so I didn't let him stand for too much longer and put another diaper on him and told him that after we got Ben from the bus, he could try again. He did manage to poop again about the time we were to go get Ben, so when we got back, I took him up and cleaned him off and told him he could go naked for a bit so he could use the potty. I put him on the floor, then I went into my bathroom for a bit, and when I came out, I found out from Chris and Alex, that Chris had run into their bathroom when I put him on the floor, stood on the stool by the toilet, lifted the lid, and actually peed in the potty! He was very, very excited about it and had us call his dad to tell him what he had done so he could get the appropriate praise from his dad, then he ran back upstairs to try again.

So my new thing to be happy about this season is having a kid who is starting to really show an interest in being potty trained (as much as I hate the whole potty training process with a passion), so that hopefully soon we'll be back down to only one kid in diapers.

Look alikes

So it's no secret that our children all look fairly similar. They definitely look related. Sometimes it surprises me how much they do look alike though, especially when they were younger. Take today, for example. I was cleaning out a drawer and found some old pictures with Chris when he was a baby and thought, "Wow, he really looks like Daniel." I showed the pictures to Alex and he said, "That's, me and Ben and Daniel." So it wasn't just me thinking they look similar.

Anyway, here are a couple of the old pictures of Chris. Tell me if you think he looks a bit like Daniel. (Of course, you don't see Daniel all the time, probably, so you may not notice as much.)