Updates on the girls

Bronwyn has been going through a particularly rough patch lately but I think we're getting through it. She wants to be treated like a 2 year old with no accountability but the reality is she's nearly 3 and a half. She's starting to wrap her brain around it.

Bronwyn is certainly keeping busy lately. Sadly, it's not always a good kind of busy. She has been spending a lot of time enjoying consequences but seems to be figuring out how not to have them. She loves earning marbles and helping Mom and Dad and her sisters. She and Aftyn love to play together most of the time with fairly minimal hitting. Her latest thing is "movies". She loves to go in the backyard and basically act out a play that she comes up with right on the spot. Her imagination is incredible.

Here is a recent MagnaDoodle drawing of hers. She's currently grounded from crayons. So her drawings look like this.

 She loves to play with Mirren and Mirren loves to pull her hair. Bronwyn gets the biggest laughs and easiest smiles from Mirren. 

    We were so blessed to find Aftyn a preschool that is small and taught by a lady who used to live in our ward and has a son Aftyn's age who is in the preschool. She is doing really well and goes 3 days a week and is FINALLY learning how to sound out words and other fun things. She is still really focused on animals and learning about them. This kid wouldn't surprise me if she grew up to be a zoologist. She has recently become aware of how to charm Mirren into smiling and she loves it! It totally surprises me because Aftyn has seemed to be pretty hands off so far with babies but she loves to get Mirren smiling. She also loves to feel like she's helping to keep Mirren safe and away from harm. She is a big help around our house most of the time. 

She's always on the floor like this.

Mid army crawl

Mirren is 11 months old. 11 months old!!! I can't believe it. It makes me sad and yet we just love this girl. She was a missing part of our puzzle. She helps unify our family more and generally brings us all together for love of her. She has the sweetest and most winning smiles. She gives the best hugs, to me only Reed says. She has started to pull up to things in earnest but on the whole is taking a very relaxed route to walking. She can manage to get up on her knees to get on her bum after crawling, but she never crawls on her hands and knees. She only ever army crawls. She's pretty fast at it!  She is showing interest in standing and we try to encourage that from her but most of the time we just follow her lead. She's hitting all of her milestones so we're not worried.
  She loves food. She makes happy sounds while she chews. She loves oatmeal, fruit, bananas, applesauce, scrambled eggs and pancakes, graham crackers, cheerios, cheese, yogurt, etc. The list could go on and on. She loves to eat and cries whenever I try to eat something in front of her. Evidently she feels that she should be eating if I am eating. She has gained nearly 2 pounds according to our scale since starting food. Her thighs have gotten so chunky! She has also grown a lot too. She is still toothless! That is some kind of record. We've never had a baby wait until 11 months to get teeth. Here in a couple of days she will be 11.5 months. Crazy. I don't mind but I just want to feel like her random crankiness has some kind of purpose.
   She sleeps through the night well, most of the time unless she's teething or cold, and her hair is definitely growing. She sort of looks like a clown with her hair being so curly and all hitting right around her ears. Oh well. It's that awkward stage of growing hair and she's just hitting it a little later than our first two. She has enough hair on top to easily get two little pigtails on top and she looks so adorable when I do it.