Sleeping Beauty...

Potty training has been a roller coaster; she has great days, and then has not so great days. Luckily she has never had an accident in public (I guess she likes public toilets cuz they're different?! yuk)

However, it has presented us with a new problem. You can see she completely disrobed and threw her pj's and pull-up over the crib and onto the floor and then grabbed panties from her dresser drawer which is next to her crib and put those on. The problem is she freezes! We have our thermostat set at 64 while we sleep, so we have to make sure we check on her before we go to bed. This has happened a couple of times and it drives me crazy! She does it after Isa falls asleep, so we won't know what she's doing. Now she has switched to stripping first thing in the morning. She's the first to wake up and stands in her crib and yells over to Isa, "ISA-BEL! wake up!!" If there's no response, she plays in her crib and takes off her clothes.

Sadly, Gabs is taking after Brendan and is weaning herself from taking naps in the afternoon. I can usually get her to sleep 3 days out of a week, but the rest is becoming "quiet time". I've decided that I need quiet time more than she does, so she still goes to her crib from 1-3pm whether she sleeps or not.

I had high hopes that she would be more like Isa and take naps up through Kindergarten. Especially because she is SO active and I'm going to have a new baby in less than 7 weeks. Argh!

This was a cute picture because, like I had mentioned before, she doesn't fall asleep anywhere except her crib. The kids had thrashed her room playing, so Bren & Isa were cleaning up and to make it go faster, I took her out and put on the movie "Spirit" for her (it's her all time favorite-she loves horses!). I asked her if she wanted her soft bunny blanket and she said, "yes, i tired" and leaned over on the couch pillow. I couldn't believe she admitted it herself! Whenever we ask her (and it's obvious she is) she always says, "no, i not tired, i fine". I brought out her blanket, she snuggled in, and watched the movie with the lights out. Ten minutes later she was out!

Crazy (27 degree) Campout!!

So the young men invited the young women on a Mountain Bike Campout which sounded like a lot of fun. We were all set to go and then the weather forcast came in and said that a cold front was coming through that weekend and the low that night would be 27 degrees!!!

Danny & the kids were planning to come along bc we wanted to squeeze in one more camping adventure before it got too cold, but after hearing the weather report, Danny was very hesitant! His concern was legitimate though bc he was worried about Gabriela & me not sleeping well. After buying another 20 degree rated sleeping bag, pulling out all our snow gear from Utah, every blanket & padding that we own, and some deal making, we were all set to go!

Isa & Bren had a blast roasting marshmallows over the fire for s'mores, drinking hot chocolate, and just running around.

Bedtime made us nervous bc Gabs is used to being swaddled and put in her crib and goes to sleep on her own. She has never been able to cuddle with someone in their bed and fall asleep that way. We decided to skip her nap that day hoping that she would just drop at some point. At 9pm she was so cranky over everything that we decided it was bedtime.

She ended up doing ok after a LOT of tossing and turning and peeking at our faces to see if we were still awake :) When she finally fell asleep (around 10:30pm) she was on my arm, so I was unable to move around during the night. Being 7 mo. pregnant, I have to flip from side to side all night because my hips get sore, but was unable to that night. Needless to say, I couldn't fall asleep very well. In fact, I didn't get to fall asleep until after 2:45am when she woke up crying and went back to sleep in Danny's arms.

Bren & Isa decided to share a sleeping bag for added warmth and they slept great. We all wore about 3-4 layers of clothing and wore hats and gloves as well, so we all actually stayed pretty comfortable. Gabriela kept taking off her hat while she slept, which drove me crazy and kept me awake.

When it was time to break down camp, the girls got to help Danny squish all the air out of the tent and they thought it was the best game!

Despite waking up to insanely cold weather we all had a good time and it made for a great story. Gabriela talked about it for days "I sleep in tent! outside!" When we got home and got everything put away, we ate lunch and everyone took a much needed LONG nap! We can't wait until Spring and we can do it again!!

Happy Halloween!!

Last week I had my follow up sonogram to see if placenta previa was still an issue and to see if the cyst was still in the brain or had dissolved. Everything checked out just fine and she's beautiful and healthy!

We got some images in 4D and it was awesome to see her moving around. The sonographer printed out a few for me to take home bc no one came with me to the appointment and she figured they'd want to see how she'd grown. She was quite shy at first, but after some "jiggling" we got her to move her hand away from her face!

You can still see her finger tips against her cheek; she looked like she was sleeping. We still haven't come up with any names, so I'm hoping sometime before the baby's born it will just come to me!

Only 10 weeks left to go...

Gabriela has had a week or so of "prep" time for Halloween. We just barely put up decorations and started explaining that witches, pumpkins, ghosts, bats, costumes, & candy are all part of Halloween. The Halloween section at Target really helped put it all together! :) Gabs was SO excited to have her very own pumpkin!

It's our annual procrastination carving celebration...we always end up carving the pumpkins right before we trick or treat. Gabriela was fascinated and wanted to draw her pumpkin face too, so we gave her a light highlighter so we could keep her busy while the others carved.

Gabriela was so funny when she looked inside the pumpkin and saw the seeds and stuff. She was wide-eyed and very inquisitive. As Danny pulled it all out and put it in the bowl, Gabriela got up really close to examine it, smelled it, and said, "ewww papa!"

Here the pumpkins are carved and ready to be put out front. The kids were very proud of their pumpkins!

In fact, when it was time to go trick-or-treating, Gabriela just wanted to sit on our front lawn and look at the pumpkins-she didn't want to get in the car :)

Our last stop was our friend's house (Matt & Sarah) and everyone loaded up on candy again. (They were our first stop as well!) They got a decent amount of candy, about a half-basket full from one neighborhood, and we called it quits (I didn't want anymore candy in the house :)

We had a trunk-or-treat at church last Friday and almost was rid of the candy from that. I ended up giving away goody bags to the young women on Sunday to empty out our candy bags!

Bren & Isa were really good about donating their candy, realizing that it's fun to have a treat once in a while, but bottom line is it's not an every day healthy snack.

Gabriela surprised us and was quite the trooper-she walked around for an hour without complaining! and she kept up-sometimes even ran!!

After two houses or so, she quickly figured out that she had to say "trick-or-treat" to get candy and "thank you" when she was done. She even added "bye! happy halloween!" as she left each house.

I have never seen her so happy & giddy. She loved looking around the neighborhood at the other kids' costumes, the house decorations, and lights. Needless to say, everyone, especially Gabriela, had a blast.