Eden Turns 3!

 

On the fifth, we celebrated Eden's third birthday. Ben described her entrance to this world as," a watermelon size bullet" and my friends, that is exactly what it felt like. Remembering that day is still a little overwhelming.

 

Daddy took the day off from work and we spent a lot of time at the store looking at toys. Daddy was frustrated with our lack of birthday fun, but Eden loved it. She played with all the toys and when we left she said, "I have FUN!"

She opened her presents and we sang Happy Birthday and ate birthday cupcakes. She really only ate the frosting though.

 

 

For the next several days she would say it's her birthday. She also sang Happy Birthday to herself.

 

What Eden likes:

frosting (as noted above)

teasing her older sister

playing outside, specifically swinging

snuggling on mommy's bed

My Little Ponies

bathtime

pre-school

nursery

story time

playing with her siblings

helping with laundry

snuggling with Muffin and Zoe

the bookstore (Barnes & Noble)

the library

going for walks

washing her hands all by herself
using the remote to open and close the garage door
asking LOTS of questions
when daddy comes home
making messes
doing stuff she knows you don't want her to do

 

He's 11

Noah, or Mr. Handsome, as the nurses in the hospital where he was born called him, has turned 11 years old. I can't believe I have an 11 year old child...but that is for a different post. Monkey number one is well on his way to becoming a teenager and during his birthday this year he informed me that he is no more excited about it than I am.

Noah has had quite a difficult summer/fall this year and I wanted to make his birthday special and remind him of his many many wonderful qualities. I was determined to have balloons at his party and wouldn't you know that there was a helium shortage just when I needed 11 balloons. Who knew that one could have a shortage of helium? I guess helium is just one of those things I take for granted, but anyway, as I searched for a place that had some left I was starting to feel heart-broken. I know it's silly, and it's balloons for goodness sake, who cares? But I did. I felt very strongly that Noah needed balloons at his party and it wouldnt' be right without them. No where in town had helium, but when I picked him up in Salt Lake I decided to give one of their stores a try and what do you know? HELIUM! Noah would have his balloons! I was so happy I could've cried. As a special, and very cheesy, reminder to Noah of how great I think he is, I wrote a word that describes him on each balloon. After we had cake Noah read each balloon and let them go and we all watched them float away until we couldn't see them anymore. A few of the words I wrote were: talented, compassionate, caring, awesome big brother, artistic, imaginative, loving, athletic and several more that I can't remember at the moment.

 

This year I thought it would be fun for Noah to decorate his own cake. He thought that was pretty cool and wanted to do the Halo logo so we looked up a pic on the Internet and he went to work. Looks great if you ask me, and his sisters and cousins were in awe....drooling awe as they all were trying to taste the blue frosting.

I wrote Noah a special message in his birthday card. One that I want him to remember on a daily basis and as cards get thrown away, or misplaced I've decided to scan it onto our blog which is really our family journal. It's quite personal and really only here for the adult Noah's sake, but read it if you'd like.

 

 



Sunshine turns FIVE!

***Every now and then I get a little blogged out. Call it writer's block, call it lazy block, call it blogged out....today I'm calling it emotionally drained.  Several times I have started to update my blog and the thought of it just makes me tired. So much has been going on physically and emotionally that once an experience has past I have to refocus all my energy on getting through the next experience and I have nothing left to revisit the one I just got through, which let's face it, is exactly what journaling is all about. Or at least this "journal".  Lots of great things are happening during this most recent storm for me and in an effort to focus on the positive and being more positive in general, blogging about those little rays of sunshine through the storm clouds might just help me do that. So here's hoping I can find a plug for my "emotional drain" and build a reservoir again. :)***

 

A little over five years ago Hope Elizabeth Maxwell was born. She is my second child, but to be honest I was a little nervous about being mommy to a newborn again because the first time around included some severe post-partum depression and I was worried that might happen again. Fortunately for EVERYONE, it did not. I had the experience that I had hoped I would have with all of my newborns. I was in love. I was in awe. I couldn't stop looking at her. Even when she had woken me up for the third time in the early morning hours, she somehow made me smile. Somehow I could see those precious dimples through my sleep-deprived eyes and still feel amazement at how bright she could make a unlit room.

 

I constantly received compliments on behalf of her beauty. I remember one Sunday a lady touched my shoulder and said, "She is so beautiful I can't stop looking at her. Usually they aren't that pretty when they're first born." What can I say, I make pretty babies. :)

(Eden, Hope and Aubrey at the party)
 

Sometime in the first year we all began singing "You Are My Sunshine" to Hope. She loved it. It was her favorite, and if I remember correctly, it was the first song she memorized. She also has taken many liberties with the song. Once she changed the lyrics to be about her "toot". She hopped around on the bed singing, "I toot, I toot!" She was indeed our little sunshine. Since I've called her my sunshine and she's asked why several times. Once in response to her inquiry I said, "How do you feel when you see the sunshine?" She just smiled at me. "Do you feel happy, and warm and wonderful?" She nodded with her pretty little smile and dimples all aglow. "Well, that is how you make me feel. So I call you 'My Little Sunshine'." She giggled and seemed okay with that answer. Something about that little girl literally makes my heart feel warm and full. Even just thinking about her I can feel it. I think it partly has to do with her name.

(Eden, Ry, Hope and Aubrey)
 

When I was pregnant with Hope, once we found out she was a girl, I knew without a doubt her name should be Hope. I felt her name was Hope because I had been without actual hope for so long in my life until I met her daddy. He sparked hope in me again and that is something pretty significant to happen to a person. Now that Hope is her own little person I can see another side to why her name was and is HOPE. She emits hope. She hands it out freely like a gift to everyone she encounters. It is, no doubt, a gift from Heavenly Father (or Harry Potter as Hope confusedly calls him) that will only grow stronger as she herself grows. I am honored to be her mother.

(Hope, Aubrey and Eden standing on the "horse track")

 

A few fun facts about Hope right now. She still cannot fall asleep on her own. I have to sit in her room with her until she falls asleep. Right now grandma is visiting, so grandma "gets" to do it, because hey, when grandma is around what good is mommy? :) She likes to tell me to think about good dreams and she thinks about them too. This is because one night as she was trying to fall asleep she said she was scared she would have another bad dream. I told her that she can help herself to have good dreams if she just thought about happy things that she would like to dream about while she falls asleep. So now every night we have to think about happy dreams. Hope's favorite color is purple. It has been for a long while, and looks like it will continue to be. She has started drawing the past few months and has become quite talented at it. There have been many days when all she wants to do it draw. She gets better every day and loves to show off her masterpieces.Two Sundays ago, she was drawing in sacrament meeting and she told me she was drawing that picture for Jesus. Hope loves primary! She is no longer afraid and will skip on into the primary room, give her teacher a high five and sit in her chair with that sunshine smile on her face. She has said the prayer in primary twice now. She has made many friends with both the boys and the girls and is surprisingly outgoing for being the child of someone like Ben and I (who are not outgoing). She is an incredibly picky eater. She still doesn't like meat, but will eat Chicken McNuggets the few times we go to McDonald's. I don't know if that really classifies as meat, but you know..... she still likes Mac N' Cheese, but it has to be the right kind and the right brand. Still loves apple juice and will settle for water at night. She has been doing quite well at the dentist and the doctor's office. The past several visits were met with bravery and dimples. No tears. Like I mentioned above, she gets Heavenly Father and Harry Potter mixed up. She has some speech issues that certainly don't help. Now that she's started school I am sure speech therapy will be in her future. Her problem letters are "R", and "L". Grandma thinks it's quite funny to try to get her to say "Lizard Lickin Lemon", which comes out, "Yizzard Yickin Yemen".

(Aubrey, Grandma Verla, Hope, Grandma Nikki and Eden)

She does not like for me to fix her hair. She lets me comb it and will occasionally wear a clip on the side or a headband, but forget about anything else. She has NO interest in getting her ears pierced but will let me paint her nails sometimes. Sometimes she lets me paint them, but wants me to take it off immediately after. She adores her big brother who helped teach her how to swing all by herself. She talks about him often and misses him a lot when he's away. Her relationship with Eden is growing. Still not great, but they have their moments of wonderful, melt-your-heart kind of bliss. She loves school and is excited to go everyday. I can't wait to see how she grows.

(Hope, Eden, Grandma Bosley and Aubrey)

I love this picture of Grandma Bosley!!!

First Trip to the Park of 2012

On Eden's birthday we met some friends for a pic-nic at the new park down the street. The weather was perfect park weather and Hope got to play with some friends for a while. Eden took right off to explore the playground. She didn't seem afraid of anything and even climbed up and went down the big spiral slide all by herself. I'm very excited that she is at the age where I don't have to hover around her constantly and I can give her a little freedom to explore on her own. Of course, I am not far away...I'm not brave enough to let her get to far from me yet. The swings still seem to be her favorite. I pushed her in the swing for quite a while and every now and then would ask if she wanted to get down. "No thanks." she'd reply. What good manners she has. :)

She also enjoys this xylophone, but can't quite reach it yet.



Hope has started making very vogue-esque poses for the camera now. Reminds me of when I was Hope's age and Donna would dress me up to take pictures.

We are going to enjoy many more trips to the park this year!



Miss Chevious Turns Two!

Yep. She is TWO!
We celebrated her birthday last night because daddy had to leave this morning for a business trip.

A few fun facts about Eden:

*Happy Birthday is one of her favorite songs to sing. She will randomly break out singing it at any given moment. In fact, she sang along with us during her Happy Birthday song.

*As you know from many, many, MANY of my previous posts, the child is a firecracker. She is constantly into something and I really don't think it's because she's curious. I think it's because she likes seeing me and her dad freak out. Hopefully this will change before she can do some major damage in her teenage years. Oh....teenage years...I don't even wanna picture it.

*Part of eating is crumbling up whatever is left from what you want and spitting/throwing in many different directions, sometimes including at other people.

*She could sing her ABC's perfectly before she was 18 months old. She still sings it, but somehow it is less clear now that she is older.

*She loves to rub my arms. For about a year now, she rubs my arms to comfort herself or when she is tired. Lately, if I am wearing a jacket she tries to take it off so she can get to my arms. I love this about her.

*She loves to snuggle and give kisses.

*Her favorite things are Mickey Mouse and Winnie-the-Pooh.

*She asks "Why?" all the time. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen for another year or so, but she seems to be ahead of the game.

*Another of her favorites: drinking from her sipping cup only to spit it into one of her tea cups to drink it. Gross, I know.

*She has stopped nursing finally! This is a very recent thing. She was only doing it at night, but the past couple of times I've offered she hasn't been interested. She does still seems to be fascinated with my cleavage though and will try to play with it in public, which is very embarrassing. Well, when I realize what she is doing. I am so used to being grabbed and climbed on by my girls that sometimes I don't notice it until I see a stranger staring or feel a breeze tickling my chest from my shirt being pulled down.

*She still has no fear of getting hurt. Even after falling off a chair, she will almost immediately get back on it. I view this as a good and bad thing.

*She seems to have my knack for memorizing movie quotes and although she hasn't started applying them in daily conversation she can quote right along with a movie.

*She loves to sing and dance. She knows the words to many songs, including popular radio music. Her favorite is probably Adele. She has good taste. :)

*She thinks it is funny to run around naked after her bath, but she thinks it's even funnier to pee on the floor.

*She is very artistic. She draws on any surface and will try to use anything as a drawing tool. Her art adorns many of our walls, and furniture.

*She likes to hold hands just to walk around the house.

*She yells at her sister in the car, "STOP CRYING!!!" if she is crying or whining. Usually, she sympathetically asks, "What's wrong?" first though.

*Her favorite part of any visit to anyone or anywhere is leaving. She yells "Bye!" and waves. She also does this with "Hi". And if you don't see her she will change her position and continue saying it until you do.

Happy Birthday You Little Monkey! We Love You!

Hope's 4th Birthday

We celebrated Hope's 4th birthday in Texas this year! It was extra special because we got to have her party with my family that we don't see very often. Hope really enjoyed being around all of her family.

The Decorations & Carousel:

Ben and I put up purple streamers and got a few purple balloons for the kids to play with. Hope thought this was really cool.  Then most of us went to the one of the malls there in Houston where there was a two story carousel. We rode it a couple of times and then walked around and Hope got some cool pink sandals that she doesn't like to wear. :)

The Cake:

Since January Hope has been telling me that she wants a Tom & Jerry birthday cake. Since her birthday isn't until August I thought for sure she would forget and change her mind. No, she reminded me at least once a week from January til the day of her party. Of course Ben and I were going to make one, until we decided to go to Texas. It would've been too much trouble being out of our element and with so much other stuff going on, so I finally convinced Ben to order one. We ordered a Cinderella background and found the Tom & Jerry ornaments at Hallmark. I know Ben was disappointed, but I think Hope thought it was great and she really liked having the little figures to play with after the cake was eaten.

She really only wanted the frosting anyway, which we got to coordinate with her favorite color and the rest of the decorations which were purple. Love her dimples in the bottom pic where she is blowing out the candles.

Presents:

Everyone spoiled Hope with presents and she loved every minute of it. Luckily, we were able to fit it all in our luggage for the plane ride home. Thanks for all the presents!!! I would list everything that she got but I am afraid I will miss something. I will just say that it is obvious by the pic in the top left that she is very pleased with all her gifts!

My happy little Sunshine.

She is already talking about what kind of party she wants for her next birthday. At least she knows what she wants.

Noah's 10th Birthday Party - Zelda

***Let me preface this by saying that I feel a little guilty about posting Noah's birthday (which isn't really until Wednesday) before posting Hope's (which was August 5th). My only excuse is that all her bday pics are on Ben's work laptop and we keep forgetting to transfer them. No need to worry! It is one of hundreds of tasks on my mental "to do list" that is swimming wildly in my head. I'll make the post sooner or later.***

The planning for the party began exactly one week ago. Why? You ask. Simply because I have been so preoccupied that I didn't realize how quickly time was flying and that in order to have a celebration for Noah and his friends it would've had to have been last weekend. First thing I did was get on Facebook and ask for help. "How do I turn Noah's party into a life-size video game?" My ever witty brother soon answered, "Fill his room with bats and have him kill them with a boomerang." Once I finished laughing, I realized that I could do that to some extent; I would just find a pinata. This was the first idea for the party. Other siblings and mommy dearest gave me awesome ideas and called me several times trying to help. I can honestly say that this party would have been a complete disaster or never would have happened if it weren't for my family and Ben. So to them, THANK YOU!

The kids all arrived together, which was both a relief and weird. A relief because they were about ten minutes late and my heart started hurting thinking about the possibility of everyone being a no-show to my child's birthday party. Weird, because....it was just weird that they all showed up at the same time. First, I explained that this was a Zelda themed party and asked if anyone was familiar with the game. More relief...they were all familiar. I handed them each their homemade drawstring bags which contained a compass, a rupee, and an ocarina. Pretty proud of myself for sewing the bags. This was my second sewing project and granted they didn't turn out perfect, they were recognizably a bag. Next the kids told me whether they wanted red or blue potion which was funnelled into an a cool little potion bottle. Brian and Autumn helped with the dispensing of the potion since I was making a huge mess. Thanks guys! They also got a slice of pizza and then they all ate and Noah told them about his many adventures with playing Legend of Zelda.

Once everyone was full the adventure began. I gave them each a Bremen mask which Ben and I made from a mask, a feather boa, spray paint and a sharpie. I think I had to tie just about every one's mask on, as you can see from one of the pics they were having some difficulty doing it themselves.

 The first dungeon was Skulltulah's House. They needed to wear their masks as they ventured through the big spider web so that they could rescue bugs from the web. To open the gate to Skulltulah's house they had to play a song on their ocarina.

Dodongo's Cavern was next. I explained that they would find their power bracelets by killing the bat. Noah went last and after a couple of whacks candy and prizes...and power bracelets went flying!

The power bracelets had to be worn in order to accomplish the next task, which was target practice with bombs at Arbiter's Ground. I filled enough water balloons for each kid to get two bombs and they took turns throwing their bombs at the target (which Ben made to look like the Triforce) until their bombs exploded. One of Hope's bombs was exceptionally strong and survived many many throws at the Triforce. Finally daddy threw it way up in the air and when it fell it exploded and all the kids thought the grass crater that it left was very cool.

I don't know what was so cool about it, or why I felt the need to share the picture of the grass crater, but there you have it.

Caleb also had a resilient bomb. In the bottom right corner you can see Brian showing Caleb how to throw his bomb way up in the air.

The last "dungeon" was City in the Sky. Ben placed boards around the yard and dug a trench in the sandbox. The kids had to collect all the boards and build a bridge across the trench to get to the Triforce (the cake). However, I didn't communicate my intentions well to Ben before he dug the trench and the objective got a little lost. The kids still had fun though and I am just relieved that we were able to pull it off in a week.

Next, we sang Happy Birthday and had birthday cake. I was disappointed with how the cake turned out, but it was a learning experience and when Noah first saw it his face lit up and he said "Awesome!" That made me feel good because I thought it looked like a mess.

Last was presents. He got a race track and a couple of cars for the track, an AirHog rocket, and a Nerf gun with darts. From Uncle Brian's family, Brian's old comic books which Noah thought was amazing and kept making comments about how old they were.

It was a great party and hopefully a very memorable one for Noah. I have decided that these kind of parties will only occur on my children's 5th, 10th, 13th and 16th birthdays. With a big celebration for their baptisms around their 8th....but that doesn't count since it is technically not a bday party. They can have family parties in between and dare I say I am excited for the next "big" bday party. Which will be next August for Hope's 5th birthday! I think I will give myself the entire year to plan and prepare for it instead of just five days. :)

***This picture was after he opened the present from gpa Bosley, a laptop and a wireless mouse from Aunt Cheryl's family and a laptop case from our family.***

Happy Birthday Noah! You are LOVED!!!

Happy Birthday Eden!!!

Eden turned ONE year old on March 5!!! I can't believe it's already been a year. It has definitely been a tough couple of years, first with the miscarriage, and then getting pregnant right away and the very difficult pregnancy and the EXTREMELY traumatic birth and the fact that Eden was not a happy baby for about the first 8 months of her life. She just didn't feel good or couldn't get used to her little body. She wanted to be held constantly, even while sleeping(which she did very little of at night). Once she started crawling she got a little happier and it's been better and better ever since. She and Hope are slowly but surely creating a great friendship and she and Noah have always been great together. He asks if he can hold her and likes to play with her and has that awesome look of love in his eyes when he looks at her.

I still don't want to go into details about her birth but to be brief; I dilated from a 5 to a 10 in about 60-90 seconds while my epidural wasn't working correctly. Eden's precious little face was bruised from coming down the birth canal so fast and then she was having a little trouble breathing right at first. The placenta wouldn't deliver...so it had to be yanked and then there was still a piece left and I wouldn't stop bleeding for several minutes.....*sigh* my midwife finally got the remaining placenta and gave me like 3 shots to stop the bleeding which it finally did as they were discussing if they should take me to the OR.  Whew. Poor Ben was traumatized as well and all the doctors and nurses were saying they couldn't believe how fast it all happened. I remember being so surprised that a human being could survive that kind of pain. It took me a couple of days just to get over the trauma of it and start to heal physically.

Anyway, it was a long hard journey, but we got an angel out of it and here are so pics of her birthday celebration.

Playing outside with Noah and Hope.

Opening presents and reading the instruction manuals.

BIRTHDAY CAKE!!!

He's 9

Who is this kid and what did he do with my baby?

Hello Again

Here's what the Maxwell's have been up to the past several months.

We've tried to introduce Eden to as many members of her family as possible...and she's loved every single one of them.

(Eden with Grandpa Maxwell, Aunt Donna, Grandma Jones and Aunt Whitney)

We took a couple trips to the Zoo.

Hope turned THREE!!!

And of course Ben made the most amazing cake ever - a sunshine in honor of Hope being our little sunshine who is ever singing "You Are My Sunshine". :)
Grandma Bosley rented a cabin at Sundance that we enjoyed for a few days.



Precious little Eden has proved to be quite a high maintenance child, so bear with me as I continue to update our blog. We have lots more to come, including Noah's 9th birthday post!!!

Finally

Eden Lily

March 5, 2010 @ 2:51 pm

7 lbs 13 oz

20 1/2 in.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Thirty years ago today my husband was born. Ben is truly one of the smartest people I know (actually he may be the smartest) and the most talented. He is one of the few people on this earth that could not only do anything they wanted, but do it extremely well.

I don't necessarily believe in soul mates. I believe that few people have someone that they were actually meant to be with and that all the rest simply find someone to get through this life with. I don't know if Ben and I started out as soul mates, but I do know that somewhere along life's craziness that we were divinely guided to each other.

Happy Birthday Ben, I love you!!!

Noah Turns 8!!!

My little monkey is eight years old. I can't believe it. The Saturday before his birthday Ben and I took him to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Later that night the whole family met at Pirate Island in Orem for presents, pizza and games.

Sunday we celebrated his baptism with cake and a special present from mom and daddio (Ben).