Ben, Paige, William, Lucy and Madeline Lewis: March 2017

Life with THREE kids- March 2017

We are trying to get used to life with THREE little ones over here.

Three kids age four and under!

I haven't gone out and about with all three by myself in the car yet.

We have walked to a nearby park THREE times! I was really feeling brave there.

This week we have been blessed with beautiful weather and I'm trying to take advantage of it the best we can. The most helpful thing has been that Ben isn't teaching this semester. He can work from home in the mornings, or in the afternoons. This makes my life easier only bringing Lucy to preschool carpool pickup or leaving her home during her nap to run to the grocery store.

Madeline is THREE weeks and we have had pretty good "luck" with her sleeping so far.

She usually only wakes up in the night between 2-4 am and then again around 5-7 am. I've been really lucky with her sleeping habits and knowing her nights from days from the beginning. Even though she is small (probably low seven pounds now) she has gone 5-6 hours between feedings at night a few times!

William is pretty obsessed with sweet Madeline.

He is at a good age where he can be helpful but knows his boundaries. He helps bring diapers, puts in her binkie, holds her hand, and sings to her. It's really sweet. He loves being near her and knowing what she's doing/thinking/looking at. "Is she looking for me?"

Lucy loves Maddie as well. Whenever she hears her cry Lucy makes this high pitched voice and says "Maddie!" She will run over to her excitedly and repeat Maddie a few times while deciding whether to kiss/touch her. It's cute seeing Lucy's face light up with a big smile to see her sister.

Lucy has been doing better than I thought "dealing" with a baby. Basically she can play by herself contently for most of the day and not need any help/attention. She will go upstairs or in the basement alone and not be worried about where I am. This has been a huge help! William won't even go in the basement by himself regularly. William is luckily old enough to have patience when I'm feeding Madeline, but he still asks me to play games or sports with him.

We are slowly getting the hang of it, but it might be awhile before I can comfortably leave the house with all three of them! We will just take it one day at a time :)

Lucy's 2nd birthday parties

We celebrated Lucy's birthday a week early up in Salt Lake.

My brother was in town skiing with Ben and we made it a Sunday night birthday event.

Lucy had recently become obsessed with Elmo, mostly a large Elmo stuffed animal we have and an iPad game. We decided to go with that as her "theme" and enjoyed dinner with family.

On her actual birthday, January 25th, we had a fun day together.

She opened presents in the morning and then went to the Rec Center to swim with dad.

It's always nice having an extra set of hands and being all together during the day.
In the afternoon we went to a class with pizza and Lucy fell asleep on my shoulder at 11:45.

I honestly can't recall the last time she did that, probably before she turned one?!

She must have not felt well, as she did feel warm and had a runny nose.

She had a later than normal nap and opened a couple more presents. I was going to save one of the presents for the evening time, but she reached it off the piano and kept saying "presents, open." She was pretty persistent, so I let her have it! It was fun having her more interested in opening presents and playing with them right away. That night we went to Chick-Fil-A with DD/Adam and CJ/Taryn + Holly. Ben was gone building snow caves with the scouts for five hours. Boo.

We enjoyed brownies with candles and Happy Birthday duet sung by me and William.

Lucy had fun saying "Happy Birthday," "TWO" and "SO big" all day. She is so much fun!

A few days later, on Sunday night, we had Ben's family over for birthday dessert.
We continued with the Elmo theme making cupcakes and fruit platters.

She's our little sweetheart and is happy all the time!

January 2017

Over Christmas break, Ben's grandma Smoot passed away.

It was sad to miss her last few days of life, but we did visit her in the hospital a couple times before heading to Arizona for Christmas.

Luckily they didn't have the funeral until January when we were back in Utah.

The Reber family drove from Texas to be there and it was a wonderful time being with more family, coming together and remembering her wonderful life.

Lucy loved cousin Ella

All of the grand kids sang "I am a Child of God" at the funeral.

Ben got to be a pallbearer at the funeral

It was a cold day with a little bit of snow flurries that fell that afternoon at the graveside.

It was fun having the Texas Reber girls over for fun and games.

Everyone got in on the "up jinx" game

Doug and his son, "EO", stayed at our house for the funeral. He and Lucy are only two weeks apart in age.

We had fun at the bounce house, Chick-Fil-A and the Trolls movie one afternoon.

Doug, EO and Lucy bonding at Cafe Rio.

Doug got to join the Jolt soccer team's game and they came out victorious.

We supported them from the sideline with enthusiastic cheers!

There was a BYU basketball game we all got to attend together.

We said goodbye to Jennie at Provo Bakery as she headed back to Las Vegas.

The rest of January went by very quickly and we tried to enjoy our last moments with two kids.

I started having Lucy sleep in a toddler bed. It went well at the beginning, but then she started to get out and stopped napping. We went back to her regular crib and will try again later this spring.