Christmas 2009 - Part 2

Maya got in on some of the gift opening action!


Makenna was absolutely thrilled to finally own her new favorite movie!


The best present ever! A Dora house!


Makenna, Eden and Maryn singing "Jesus Loves Me"


Maya watching her big sister try out her new toy...


Now trying it out for herself!


Smiley Maya!


Serious Maya


Eden with the Curious George we got her :) Big smiles! George is her favorite!


Makenna and her pink guitar from Poppy and Peepie!


Maryn helping Maya try out her new sled :)


Maryn in awe of her new gift!


Maya taking the new sled for a test drive!



The girls favorite gifts from Christmas 2009 -

Makenna: Make-up set, guitar, Easy Bake Oven
Maryn: Dora house, Dora mermaid doll
Maya: anything else the other girls are playing with :)

Christmas 2009

Despite the constant bad weather over the Christmas holiday this year, we were still able to enjoy our holiday with loved ones! We spent Christmas Eve day with the Budkes, Christmas Eve and all of Christmas day at home by ourselves, and then Sunday was the Boutott Christmas. The girls enjoyed themselves immensely and we loved celebrating Jesus' birthday with Maya for the first time! Here's our holiday in pictures...


Maya's 1st Christmas! She's so smiley! We've never had a baby in the mobile stage at Christmas, but she actually did really well with the tree and all the decorations. She tried to eat the lights on the tree a few times and she would throw decorations on the floor but other than that she was fine!


All three of our girls at Christmas Eve church!


Makenna showing off one of her favorite gifts... a make-up set from Papa and Nana!


Maryn talking on her new phone "just like Daddy's!"


Opening gifts at Papa and Nana's house


Our house after Santa stopped by...


The girls before we let them dig into their gifts on Christmas morning!


Maryn with her new Dora Mermaid doll. It was a BIG hit!


Makenna's Easy Bake Oven! She's been talking about this gift for months! Good thing Santa listened!


Maryn and Maya with the new ball pit. One of the hilarious things Josh and I have talked about is that the girls all seem to want to play with everyone else's gifts. Maya loves Maryn's ball pit and all the balls that go in it!


And here is Maryn playing with Maya's new blocks! And yes that clock is right... we stayed in our jammies extra long on Christmas morning!


Maya enjoying the ball pit some more.


Maya got a little tired of all the gift opening and decided to go hang out with all of her old toys in the other room :)


Baby's 1st Christmas! We love you Maya!


Maryn checking to see if her new Dora Mermaid can really swim in the sink!


Maya taking a rest in the ball pit.


Me prepping my first big holiday meal. I made a 9 lb brown sugar ham, sweet potato casserole, green bean with feta cheese, fruit salad with a poppyseed dressing, and Hawaiian rolls. It all turned out very well but took a lot longer to get ready and cook than I thought... we ate an entire hour after I thought we would. Maybe it was a good thing we didn't have any company.


Our Christmas dinner table. It was my very first big holiday meal and there was no one there to eat it except us five. Oh well... we enjoyed it and ate really well! And I am my mother's daughter... had to have the holiday tablecloth and all!


Maya's 1st Christmas dinner... ham, kiwi and pineapple. Yum!


Happy Birthday Jesus! Of course we had to make a birthday cake for the guest of honor!! The girls did all the decorating!


More pictures to come of our Boutott Christmas....

Christmas Program

What a joy it is to see our girls singing about Jesus' birth! We had our Christmas program this past week at church and both Makenna and Maryn were able to participate. Maryn was an angel with the little kiddos and Makenna got to sing with the older kids. Both of them did a phenomenal job :)


Makenna and Maryn all dressed up and ready for the program! Maryn kept asking all day if it was time to put on her princess dress yet :) She came walking down the stairs after her nap holding her dress and when she asked again I could finally tell her yes!


Aren't they beautiful!?


Maryn's 2nd year of being an angel in the program... she actually looks angelic here.


And this pictures seems to capture her true personality coming out :) The angel costume can't mask everything!


Makenna and Maryn


Maryn got so excited when Makenna went up on stage! She kept yelling "Makenna! Hi Makenna" and over and over again! It was pretty sweet!


Maryn on stage


Makenna on stage

My Baby's Getting So Big!

My baby sure isn't acting much like a baby anymore. She is fully on the move! She pulls herself up on anything and everything, moves from object to object, and has even started cruising! Today she made 3 full trips up the stairs all by herself (with mommy very close behind!). It's hard to believe sometimes that she isn't even 10 months old yet!

And Maya and her eating... another way in which she seems so big! She has decided that she is too cool for bottles and only prefers a sippy cup. I didn't even realize this was happening until all of a sudden I realized I hadn't given her milk in a bottle for a few days (because I didn't have any to wash). I still nurse her at least 4 times a day, but the other times she wants to drink she has her sippy cup. I'm both excited and sad about this. And she has also decided she doesn't care for baby food... She likes the real stuff! She eats whatever we're eating, just chopped up into itty-bitty pieces and she LOVES it! She devours our food and turns her nose up to anything "babyish". This past week she ate homemade turkey and veggie soup, sloppy joe's, pork stirfry, sub sandwiches and many other foods. She has a fondness for green foods and I can almost guarantee you that any green vegetable you feed her will be missing from her tray first (peas, zucchini, cucumber, green pepper). She does amazingly well considering she really only has two full chompers on the bottom to work with (the upper two aren't thru enough to do much work). Every night at dinner now we just pull out the big chopping board and knife and dice up whatever we're having for Miss Maya :) Looks like she is continuing the trend of non-picky Budke eaters.

A few cute notes about Maya... she LOVES when we pray. When we all fold our hands and bow our heads to pray she lights up. Some nights she will even fold her hands with us. I'm glad that at such a young age she already enjoys this family tradition. And Maya is an absolute ham. She loves to smile and laugh. I can't tell you how much we hear about her beautiful smile and how happy she is! Oh and she is finally saying "Mama". It took a few weeks after "Dada" but she now says it regularly :)

And another story... Maya was getting in the habit (while she was sick) of having Mommy get her too much at night. So I decided that she was going to have to cry it out one night. She cried for probably a half hour and then after she got quiet I snuck in her room to make sure she was okay. She was sitting upright with her legs criss-crossed and her face planted straight down in her lap! Poor baby! I felt horrible! But at least she went back to sleep.

Maya and her big blue eyes!


Maya and Nenny... she is even starting to try and say "Nenny"


And I had to include this picture because I thought Maya looks so grown-up in it!


Miss Maya

Christmas Party

TrueNorth put on a family Christmas party this year. We had so much fun! The best part was when we pulled in the parking lot and sitting there was a LIVE reindeer and Mrs. Claus with an elf!! I was so giddy you would've thought I was the kid! I've never seen a real reindeer! The girls were so glad they got to meet Vixen! Then they each sat on Santa's lap and got to pick two toys from the Toy Shop. Maryn ran right up to Santa (cutting off all the other kids in her path), Makenna was a little more reserved but did well as always, and Maya was on the verge of screaming and she was only on his lap for 30 seconds while we snapped a picture! Maya didn't want Daddy to be more than 2 feet away from her. We then decorated some Christmas cookies and enjoyed the wonderful food provided by TrueNorth. Josh and I were just thrilled we didn't have to waste hours of our weekend standing in line at the mall to see Santa! On the way home we asked the girls what they asked Santa for. Maryn said toys and Dora and Makenna told us a chalkboard. Surprised by Makenna's answer (as she has been asking for an Easy Bake Oven for months now) I asked her why she didn't ask for the Easy Bake Oven. Things were quiet for awhile and all of a sudden we hear sobs from the back of the van. She was so upset that she forgot to tell Santa that she really wanted an Easy Bake Oven. We mailed an emergency letter to Santa that night so he would know what she really wanted :)

Later that same day we finally finished decorating our tree. It's weird having older kids now... I put on the lights and ribbon and they do the rest. Maryn and Makenna did a wonderful job! I loved that the tree was fully decorated four feet and down! I don't know if they noticed that the ornaments were slowly being rearranged over the next few days ;)


The girls with Santa! These pictures are pretty bad b/c I was trying to steer clear of the professional photographer and what he was doing. TrueNorth bought us the professional pictures so at least I have some good shots to keep!




Me and my girls!!


Maryn and Makenna with our decorated Christmas tree. There is a very funny story to what Maryn is doing in this picture... she is biting her fingers because she got superglue on her fingers. Josh was trying to fix an angel that she broke (accidentally) and she went back to check on it and ended up getting super glue all over her fingers. Josh tried to get it all off, but obviously as you can tell by this picture he wasn't successful. It was absolutely driving her crazy. She finally held up her fingers and said "I ask Santa Claus to fix this!"

TEETH!

Teeth! Teeth! Teeth! It's a hot topic at our house lately! Maya got her very first tooth on 11/21 and got her second one just a few days later! Fast forward only 3 weeks and she is now getting her top two teeth! Four teeth in less than a month!! Add this to the cold turned into a bacterial infection she had for a week and a half and she has been just plain miserable! It took her forever to get that first tooth, but they sure came fast once she got that first one!

And right around that same week Maya got her first tooth Makenna chipped her upper front tooth (we're not sure how) and one of her lower teeth is now loose! It was very exciting when she first discovered that the tooth was loose. Now that it's weeks later and the tooth is still there it's not as exciting. Now it's just annoying :) Poor kiddo just wants the tooth fairy to visit!

Maryn Update

We seem to have gotten in to a pretty good rhythm with Maryn lately. Or maybe I should say we've gained a greater understanding of her and how to deal with her effectively. Being the strong-willed child that she is, sometimes we have power struggles with her that can be quite frustrating for mommy and daddy. Well the first thing we figured out that she is still desperately in need of a nap everyday. We were getting to the point where we thought maybe she was weaning from her nap, but it is now clear that she isn't. If she doesn't nap, I will guarantee you that we will have at least one meltdown in the evening and most likely a few instances of not being able to cope as well and a much sassier child. Thus we are liking Maryn's newer sleep schedule... she gets up a little earlier than she used to (around 7:00), takes a nap in the afternoon for about 2 hours, and then lays in bed a little longer at night until she falls asleep. The beautiful thing is that she still goes to bed at her regular time, now she just lays there and reads books and very rarely even comes out :)

Maryn has really made remarkable strides with her behavior and we are very proud of how much she seems to have matured lately. In addition to realizing how much a nap impacts her behavior, I think the extra one-on-one time with mommy while Makenna's at school has helped as well as all of the classes she has been taking. She now attends Flyers at church on Wednesdays nights and took a music class and swimming lessons this fall and loved them both! She told us that she wants to be Miss Paula (her music teacher) when she grows up and tonight she thanked God for Miss LuAnn (her swimming teacher) in her prayers. She does so well in instructional settings and the teachers thoroughly enjoy her. And I love watching her. She always has a huge smile on her face!

And on to the big topic... Maryn's voiding dysfunction. We had an appointment at UIHC in November that went very well. We gained a lot of insight into what's going on with her and made the appropriate changes. We were told her bowels were playing a significant role in her bladder problems so we needed to solve her "constipation" issue (which we were shocked to find out she was constipated... if you knew how much this kid goes, you wouldn't think so either). We made all the appropriate dietary changes, but it only worked for a few days and then went back to "normal". We were prepared to take the next step when Maryn decided she was tired of diapers and wanted to use the potty again. Not knowing how difficult it would be for her given her voiding dysfunction issues, I was a little tentative (afraid she would fail and get frustrated). But I supported her and we went about like she was a typical kid potty training. Thank God for the blizzard we got last week... seriously! We were trapped in the house for 3 days straight and I think that helped the situation! I am happy to report that Maryn only had five accidents all week long and most of those were instances where she started to go and caught herself and finished in the potty. She is so proud of herself and I must say I am to! It is honestly an answer to my prayers that somehow the dripping issue seems to have disappeared. I'm going to pray that it stays this way, but we have a back-up plan if it doesn't. The big thing to celebrate right now is that she is potty-trained again and loving it!

And of course with it being Maryn, there has to be a hilarious story to share. She was in the bathroom finishing up her business and I walked by to check on her. She had her pants up and was walking out but then suddenly turned around. Went over and pulled some toilet paper off the role, pulled her pants open in the front, stuck the toilet paper down the front of her pants, wiped, put it in the potty and walked out again. She remembered all the steps, she just needed a refresher course for what order they go in!


Now that Maryn's on a more regular nap schedule again, I'm not too picky about where she naps. As long as she is in her room and quiet, she can pick the spot. These are a few of the places I've found her in the past few weeks. One day I also found her sitting upright in her laundry hamper. Luckly she wasn't sleeping yet so I could move her!