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AnnaBelle started going to nursery a couple of weeks ago and is a little timid about it...and grumpy. Church during nap-time is a challenge. She is growing so quickly and quite the little talker. The common phrase now is "I don't like it". She enunciates every letter and it sounds like she has an accent. She also routinely asks for "snuggles."
Last week Anna went to the dentist and we were told no more binki. What a sad day. I told the dentist to tell her no more binkis and then we walked over to the garbage and threw it away. She was very cheery at the time but the next few days were HORRIBLE. We had a lot of tantrums and of course regression in all of the work we had done to get Anna to sleep by herself. She is doing much better now, however, I just put her down for a nap and heard an odd noise. When I looked she was sucking her thumb! It was funny and irritating at the same time. I took her hand away and she said, "Kaylee does it!" Isn't she too young to talk like that?
Anna also loves to swim and gets to go often because steph and jared live in a complex with a pool and her aunt shawna and uncle derek just put a quite impressive pool in their back yard. They are just minutes away and very generous to share.
Saturday Anna came down with the stomach flu. It was so sad. She was quite sick for the better part of the day.
Anna has become quite a friendly little lady. She says hi and bye to people all of the time. My favorite is when she tells strangers to "drive carefully."

Michael is doing great. He too loves to swim although his time span for it is much shorter than Anna's. He smiles and coos at everyone and melts any heart in an instant. Monday he had shots. So sad. He gets the most precious frowny face I have ever seen. He is getting close to rolling from his back to his stomach and loves to spend time on the floor. He has less reflux these days so he is getting more and more floor time. He is growing great and is now 14lbs 10oz. Of course he may have lost some of that because the poor guy came down with the stomach flu yesterday. He only threw up twice in the morning and seemed to be doing pretty well by mid afternoon. But that changed in the evening when he started to feel worse and had diarrhea with blood in his stool. I called the on-call pediatrician who sent us to PCMC for tests to make sure his NEC wasn't returning. It was awful. We really worry about him. In the ER we waited for a total of 5 hours and only had an x-ray of his abdomen done. At 1am the attending came by and said we could try some clear fluid and see how he handled it or put an IV in him and stay overnight. I chose the try clear fluid route. He did great and an hour later I asked if we could go. They said yes but it took forever. Finally, satisfied that he would be fine (no evidence of NEC in the xray and holding fluids down on his own), I packed up and just walked out. They were so busy and I had Anna and Ryan waiting in the car for Michael and I. I felt bad but I certainly didn't need to wait an hour for the papers to sign! We arrived home at 3:30am.

AnnaBelle in her own bed!

Anna has been sleeping in her own bed for over a week now. She transitioned better than we thought she would although she still cries out in the night. However, we have now entered into a new phase. Last night at about 3am I was sitting in bed feeding Michael when little Anna came bobbing in the room with a smile on her face! It was cute this time. How many times will it take to become very un-cute?

Quick updates

We have finally moved to our own apartment in Pleasant Grove! Yay, yay, yay!

AnnaBelle is one smart cookie. She can recognize most of the alphabet and loves to sing it (as well as any other song she can think of). She is such a sweet little girl. She loves drawing, going for walks, learning, going to church, temples...but unfortunately most of all she loves to watch movies (favorites are Kung Fu Panda, Tinkerbell, Wall-e, Madagascar, and vegetales). She also gets a kick out of jumping as high as she can and playing with Michael. She is very good with him. She is growing so tall and beautiful.

Michael is doing great. He is such a happy little clam and is starting to giggle. Thursday he started soy formula and seems to be handling it just fine:). In about 4 months we will try a milk based formula. In the end of April he followed up with a cardiologist and had a chest x-ray, ekg, and echocardiogram. The echo showed some narrowing in his aorta, which may be insignificant but to make sure he will have a sedated echo in the end of August. He is still a little fella at 12lbs 8oz, but he is tough and so cute.

We sure love our family and are very grateful to Heavenly Father for all that he has given us.

Poor little man

Michael was circumcised on Wednesday and he is soooo sore. I feel really bad. Last night he developed a fever so I took him to the dr who sent us to the ER for a bunch of tests. Thankfully, he passed them all and we were able to come home this afternoon but not until Michael had to endure a lot of trauma (IV, catheter, suctioning for flu test).

Meanwhile AnnaBelle has been so cute today running around and making up stories. Tonight she had Grandma's scripture case and would ask Ryan to unbuckle it. Then she would put the buckles back together and run off saying "bye, bye," but as soon as she touched the kitchen floor she would turn around, run back to Ryan and giggle "open." She went through that routine over and over again. She is learning her colors and doing quite well. Her favorite color is purple. And, the other day I was pouring water into a cup with her name on it when she pointed to the letters and said, "A, a, b, e." Pretty good for a 19 month-old.