Oh, Christmas Tree...

Raise your hand if Sam reminds you of a mountain man in this pic!

You may have heard, we were planning to move around the holidays. It just didn't work out-for some reason none of the places we were interested in worked. Either they chose someone else or there was one thing wrong with them or...anyway. I got the impression that we really weren't supposed to be moving yet, I just didn't want to accept it. Bah.

But after I finally did, that meant we had no reason not to go get a Christmas tree! So we did. On December 16th. :) Funny thing, we bought one that was still all tied up because we forgot we had to figure out a way to get it home, and we only had our car. But turned out we had excellent choosing skills. Nice.

Setting it up...

Carefully, and gently, the smallest person of the household places the inaugural purple globe on the velveteen pine boughs. What a stunning act of brilliance.

Carefully, and gently, the smallest person of the household places the second purple globe on the velveteen pine boughs. What a stunning act of brilliance.

Yum

Fully decorated. Except we only had this cloth, gigantic angel, so our tree didn't have anything on top for a while until Sam made a paper star.

I have labored many long hours for the chance to delight at least one face on the face of the earth, I hope that its yours. That's what that face says to me. Or like "hu-HA!"

Good times. :)

Not bummed anymore!!

So update on Jori's sleeping:

after that last post, I felt like I really needed to buckle down and endure to get Jori sleep trained. So I borrowed my parents' cot, so I could sleep downstairs in our kitchen (the farthest away room I could possibly be in from Jori) and I turned on the fan of the bathroom that's between the kitchen and the stairs, to try to muffle the sound. And I was able to endure!

And Jori is doing great!!!

She's not sleeping through the night, or anything. But I just committed to not going in to check on her until she was already asleep, except maybe once if it had been like, 9 hours since she'd last eaten.

Really, she's doing stupendous. She is waking up-six months of one way is hard to forget!-but she's putting herself back to sleep within 5-10 minutes. Oh I'm SOOOO proud of her!!!

You know honestly, the plan WAS to do what this friend from our old ward did with her two girls, and let them cry for an hour but if they were still like really wailing at that point, go in and feed them. I thought I could endure that. But the combination of me not being able to hear her much and just utter exhaustion won over, and I kinda accidentally just left her there...but I'm now so glad I did. She's doing better for it.

I think it also helped that I decided I would comfort her to sleep, in the beginning at least. So that at least the night starts off right. And we bumped up her bedtime significantly for this process-she's going to sleep at 6:00 currently. Both were talked about in the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," which was my favorite of all the sleep training theories I've come across thus far.

SO! Our next step is now putting her down still awake to bed at bedtime, and then I think putting her down awake to bed at naptime.

But she did so awesome today! She took 2, 2 hour long naps!! Holy cow!!! I was very proud of her.

Just thought I'd share all about it. I'm so pleased. :)

I'm kind of bummed

You know how people do things for attention, and post things online for attention when they're down? This is kind of like that, but I figured a blog wasn't as dramatic as facebook. Still kind of pathetic but I figured it'd also make me feel better to type it out, so not totally pointless.

I'm rather discouraged about sleep-training Jori. I keep asking people how they did it and people are super nice and tell me, and I've looked up stuff about it online and read some things about it in different books...but I just can't do it. It seems basically the only way to do it is to make them cry themselves to sleep, period. This makes the most logic to me-they learn to comfort themselves that way, out of necessity. But it's so impossible in practice. I'm what my mom has always told me is 'tender-hearted,' and that's certainly true with Jori-she's got me wrapped around her tiny little fingers. I don't want to be a push over but she's only six months old-it seems so harsh to do what feels like is me saying "No, I don't care if you want me and I don't care if you're sad and cry. I'm leaving you here. In the dark. Alone. All night long. Bye."

I tried it ONE night, only one, and it went like this:

Jori was really tired when we put her down at...8? I can't remember, it was late that night, so she fell asleep within about 15 minutes. But then...

12:30 woke up, crying

1:30 still crying, panicked, frantic

2:30 still crying,

3:00 mommy breaks down and goes in. I picked her up and she like, passed out in my arms. Just collapsed. She was so exhausted. She fell asleep in like 10 seconds. Then I put her down, relieved but also stricken with guilt, and she stayed asleep. But then...

4:44 awake, crying. And I gave in and went in and fed her, because I had figured that it was ok if she needs to wake up at 5 and eat, I'd read that was normal. She fell asleep after I fed her...

7:00 awake, very upset. I go in and pick her up; she cried for 45 minutes anyway. Because the ordeal was so awful for her. She even made herself gag/wretch 3 times, since she was so upset.

I can't do that to her! But I can't keep going as it is. Two nights ago she woke up FIVE times, at 10:30, 12:30, 2:30, 4:30 and 6:30. Last night about the same but it wasn't as consistent, with the timing.

It's just frustrating that the only thing I'm really expected to have taught my daughter how to do so far, sleep, I haven't succeeded at.

:(

No menace to society here!!

Sam turned 25 this just past year. His birthday is November 8th, for those of you who don't know. We both for our birthdays this year signed up for all these birthday clubs that restaurants have, and so we got a free Red Robin burger for it. On my birthday we just split the one but this time it was 'buy one get one free.' Still a steal though.

So the actual day, we had only a small window of opportunity where Sam could celebrate between classes and working. But we made the most of it: we went to Red Robin and then watched a fun movie (I think-I really don't remember that well). We both skipped classes so we could make it work.

And btw. Have you ever tried Red Robin's sweet potato fries? Because they are absolutely divine. I could eat those bad boys all day long. Yum!!

We also got a 'buy one meal get one free' to Tucanos. Have you ever been to Tucanos? It's a Brazilian grill that is absolutely delectable. What's better, we had Britany join us when we used that one because it was when she was here! So much fun. :)

Halloween 2011

For Halloween Jori dressed up real scary!!

Sam loves this picture-he says it's her "Where da party at?" face

Don't you want to just pinch those cheeks?

Happy little teddy bear

Sam made sushi,
And we watched a 'scary' aka funny movie, the original Dracula.

We also got two trick or treaters this year! :) Overall a success in my book.

Solid foods...

Brit's friend Kasi (who I also love, she's great) came to hang out when Brit was here, and one day picked up Cafe Rio for everyone.

Jori really took to it. :)

...followed soon after by Britany

So as the title says, soon after Jandel came Britany did as well, also sans her husband but with her little one, Evie. (sans means without, right? Well, if not. It does here.) I was a bit better about pictures because Evie and Jori are so close in age (12 weeks!) and this was their first meeting. And these were the first we got of three of the four girls this year on the Christensen side! Little Elena was born before Evie left, but she was still in the hospital at the time. Anyway, Here's Britany's post about her visit-she has one on here of the two little ladies that I absolutely love!

So here are some of that adventure :)

From left to right, Miriam, Evie and Jori

I have a few others of when Brit was here but I wanted to add them as separate posts. :) But overall we had a great time when Brit and Jandel were here with their kids-I sure do love my sistas!

Jandel comes for a jaunt...

Hello Jandel dear. This is a short blog about your visit, since I failed to take any pictures. Lame of me.

So also in October, my brother Nate's wife Jandel and their two boys came to stay at my parents house for a visit. Unfortunately Nate couldn't attend, but it was great having Jandel, Zach and Jared here in Provo for a stay. Turns out they (along with Nate of course) will be moving here in a matter of weeks, which I'm quite thrilled about I must say. :)

Obviously these were taken during the meal where we were all together. Judging by the food I'm guessing a game was on? But I can't remember.

I'm so excited for them to live in Utah for a few years!!! :D

I'm so 'crafty'...

Back in October, I finally did something that I'd looked up online a while ago but hadn't dared try out till then: I made Jori a baby carrier. I didn't dare because I was afraid of wasting the money, but after I told my sis-in-law Chantale I could make one for her as well, I realized that meant I had to order the fabric for it. So I did! And it was super easy, and I made 4!! Because all I had to do is cut it. :) I'm not going to show the process because...hello, I didn't take pictures. But I took pics of Jori in it for the first time, so feast your eyes:

What a cutie. :)

Trip to Franklin, Early October 2011

I forgot to say: at the beginning of October, my parents redeemed the Mother's day gift Sam and I gave her, which was a trip up to Franklin to ride horses with Sam's parents. Neither of my parents had ridden a horse in years, and my mom used to love it so I thought it'd be a fun experience. Plus both of our sets of parents in one place-what fun! Other than the drive up, which for the second half, Jori was screaming/crying so much that she was hoarse for the next 3 days. :(

Here's some pics of the trip:

Our mamas

Our dads

A wonderful little daddy

A cute little lady

hahahhaaaaaaaa

Don't they look great!

...oops

Ok, so we actually have taken or had others take quite a few pictures of the past three months, just didn't post anything about them. But I just copied a ton of pictures my dad took with his camera, so I'm hoping to catch up on at least the holidays over the past three months. Fair enough? Ok. Break!