Binkie

Sophie does love her binkie.  I think just knowing it's close by comforts her.  The other night Hailey was sick and I was in her room with her in the middle of the night.  She could hear a strange squeaking noise, she thought it sounded like squeaky shoes, turns out it was Sophie sucking on her binkie.  She was sucking so hard that it was quite loud all the way across the hall in Hailey's room.

Big sister Aida

If I'm being totally honest I was a little bit worried about how Aida would be with Sophie.  I knew she would love her and want to hold her and help, but I wasn't sure if she would know how to be soft.  It should be noted that Aida is about the strongest toddler I know.  I have been completely pleasantly surprised!  Aida is an awesome big sister!  She is so careful with Sophie and interested in everything.  She wants to be right by her all the time, but thankfully has always been gentle with her.

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Aida loves being a big sister.

Aida does not like Sophie to cry, if she even thinks she might cry she immediately finds her binkie and gently holds it in her mouth until she starts to suck.

A trip to Gigi's house

I think the hardest thing about having a new baby is being so far away (really not that far, just not 5 minutes away).  We came down for a little get out of the house visit and got to spend some time with Gigi and Papa.    I feel so lucky for my kids that they have so many of their great grandparents alive and living close by, I'm so grateful that they get to know them like I do.

Bath time

Don't be fooled by how plump Sophie looks in this picture.  I've heard that the camera adds 10lbs. and I think that is exactly what it did in this case.

Sophie's first bath.  She was not in love with the water right away, but found out pretty fast that's it's really relaxing.

Cupcakes

These pictures are proof that the third child forces mom to loosen up a little.  We were making cupcakes for family  night treat the other day, but I had to stop in the middle and feed Sophie.  I let the girls fill the pans and get them ready to bake.  When I came to check on them this is what I found...

couldn't be happier!

I'm sure there was a lot of tasting going on.

Sophie Ella

We are so excited that Sophie is here!!!  She was born on December 30th, 2012 at 4:45pm, she weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz. and was 20.5" long.  The delivery went really well and her sisters were waiting to meet her 15 minutes later.

It feels like we waited a really long time for Sophie to join our family, she was totally worth waiting for.  She is as sweet as can be.  she's such a mellow baby, she rarely cries and when she does cry it's because she needs something and she quickly stops.  When we went to her two week doctor's appointment she was down to 6lbs. which is not good since they expect that they would have gained back to their birth weight.  She's so tiny at three weeks she gained 4 oz. we are hoping that will continue, she seems to eat all the time so hopefully her weight will soon reflect that.

We are all so happy she is in our family!

Mia

I've been wanting to do this post for a long time, but it took me this long to figure out how to upload pictures from my phone.  And I was hoping the right words would come, it's still so sad that I don't know quite what to say.  These are pictures of Aida with her friend Mia, they were perfect little friends, they always played so well together and enjoyed every moment.  Mia died in October and I have been trying to explain things to Aida ever since.  Some days she seems to understand that Mia is not coming back and that she is with Heavenly Father and Jesus, we've talked a lot about the plan of Salvation.  Then just when I think she understands she starts asking when Mia will get to come back to her family.  Today we were in the grocery store and out of the blue she started asking about Mia again, I'm out of answers for her I don't know how else to explain it.  I guess it's going to be a long time before she will really understand.  Every time the commercial where they show a smokers heart comes on she asks when Mia will get her heart back.  Sometimes she tells me she wants to go be with Mia and Jesus, it's so hard to know what to say when she says something like that, we talk about how it's permanent and that she couldn't come back.  So instead of playing with her we look at her mom's blog and watch videos of her and look at pictures.  I'm so glad that Aida had such a sweet wonderful friend, they had so much fun.  We miss Mia, because of her we are constantly learning about the Plan of Salvation.  I'm so grateful to have the knowledge we have about what happens after we die, what would I do if I didn't know the answer to all the questions Aida has about how things work?

Here are some of my favorite memories of these two girls.

Mia lived at the end of our street, one of Aida's favorite things to do was drive down in the jeep to pick her up or drop her off after playing.  They would both have huge smiles on their faces of pure delight (how many 4 year olds get to pick up their play date in a purple jeep?)

I love this picture, it totally captures their friendship.  They both thought they were so funny and were thrilled with each other.