I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas!

We had a great Christmas!! Sydney was feeling so much better. We had Christmas Eve dinner at my parents house. Then had the Grandkids open their Christmas PJ's, we then read some stories and watched the nativity story, and Mr. Kroogers Christmas. We slept over at my parents house, and woke up bright and early (5 a.m.) to open presents!

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, only a Hippopotamus will do. I don't want a doll or dinky tinker toys, I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy! I can see me now on Christmas morning creeping down the stairs what joy and what surprise when I open up my eyes and see a hippo hero standing there! " -Hippo Song
Thank you Aunt Sarah for my hippo toy, I love it! - Love Sydney Jo

I love this look on Sydney's face, the magic and excitement of Christmas is clearly sinking in!

Santa brought Sydney a walker toy for Christmas. She loved to look at it and stand next to it, but she was to afraid to actually walk with it.

I told my Mom that I wanted to get Sydney a doctor kit someday. Mostly so that Sydney could start to be more familiar with all the different instruments that the doctors use and where they go. I want her to be as ready as possible when her next surgery comes around and my hope is that this will help her be less afraid.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Banks for this uber cool doctor kit, and for letting us sleep over! - love Sydney Jo
*Pair of Christmas pajamas.... $15
*Wrapping paper and tape.....$5
*seeing the look on your baby's face as she opens her first present Christmas Eve....PRICELESS!
Sydney's favorite toy was the ball popper, every time we turned it on she would sequel with delight! We had a great Christmas, thank you everyone that gave us presents we were so spoiled!

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Sick Sydney Part 2

Sydney was able to fight her high temps all the way into the next day, so we called her doctor to see if we could take her on our planned weekend trip to visit family in Salt Lake. The doctor agreed, stating that she wasn't contagious any more and to make sure we kept her extra warm. So we packed up our stuff and headed north, the car ride there was great we only had to stop once for potty breaks. We checked into our hotel then immediately left to visit with Seth's brothers family, who have an adorable new three week old baby boy, Elijah. We spent a great evening with them, then went back to our hotel for the night, we were so tired. Sydney didn't sleep well during the night she seemed to be up every half hour until she woke up for good at 5 in the morning.

It was about then that we noticed three things; one, we were in a smoking room, two, Sydney's face, arms, chest and back were covered in a rash and three, Sydney had came down with a cough. Since it was Saturday I called my mom instead of the doctors office. My mom said that when I was little and I would get a virus, I usually became allergic to that virus and would develop a rash all over my body. She said that the rash would sometimes last a week and when it was over I would sometimes have bruises from the welts that would pop up from the rash. Poor little Sydney she was so miserable, we went to the store for some medicine and soothing lotion for her. Then Sydney and I spent the afternoon snuggled in our king size bed in our new nonsmoking room, where Sydney took a four hour nap!

Sunday her rash was worse, it had spread all over her face and even on her eye lids! We went to church with or family and watched baby Elijah get blessed, then headed home soon after lunch. Sydney was so sick that she slept for almost four hours again, and then woke up around beaver. This little trip was so hard on Sydney and us that we were very relieved to come home!

Now that we are home Sydney is acting a little better! I have been able to get her to eat,(she was on a hunger strike during our trip) and her rash isn't has bad as it was! She still has a cough but that will clear up soon I hope. I can't wait until we can visit Seth's family again we really did have so much fun, we just need to make sure Sydney isn't sick next time so we can enjoy ourselves more!

Sick Sydney!!!

Sydney has been so sick the last few days, it started out on Tuesday with just a temp of around 101 degrees and diarrhea. That night I woke up at 3 in the morning and felt like I should check on Sydney, her temp was 103.5 and climbing! I immediately woke her up gave her medicine and put her in a tepid bath. All that day Sydney had high temps and she was very lethargic, it was all I could do to even get her to drink her bottle. We went in to see her doctor around 3 in the afternoon, Dr. Smith ruled out ear infections and decided to give her a catheter to check her urine for a possible urinary tract infection, after that we went and got her blood tested to rule out any bacterial infection. To make a long story short we still don't know for sure what is making her sick. Sydney's Doctor thinks she has a really bad viral infection and told us not to let her be around any children while she still has a fever. This afternoon I finally got her fever to come down below 100, which is the lowest I have been able to get it to go for the past three days!

This morning she had a temp of 103 again so we gave her a bath, after that I sat her on the floor for a minute while I was getting ready. I knew she must still feel sick because she laid down on her blankie and fell asleep right there on the floor!


Despite her high fevers she still had enough energy for a rousing game of Peek-a-boo with her Mommy!

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For Aunt Julie!!

Thank you Aunt Julie for my Puppy I really love it lots!!! Merry Christmas!!!
-Love Sydney Jo

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Nap time!!

Sydney has turned into a funny sleeper, when I go and check on her she is usually in a funky position, this one she is sleeping bent in half.
This picture I took on Friday, she had reached up and got the baby monitor and fell asleep cuddled with it!

This one was taken just this morning, she is once again cuddled with the baby monitor. I guess it is time to move it out of her reach!

Christmas Miracle

As many of you know this has been a very difficult year for me and my family. Sydney having her surgery, the long hospital stays, and helping Sydney through her recovery. The trials that seem to be at every turn has been very stressful and emotionally draining. The only reason we made it through those long hard months were the many prayers offered from our family and friends and ward members. We were able to live for many months with out my income because of the many money donations from family and friends and ward members. Because of this we were allowed to focus all of our attention on our tiny baby and making sure that she recovered fully from her life threatening surgery. I know that with out all the love and support and prayers from all the many people in our lives, we never would had been able to make it through what was the hardest trial of our lives! Surviving those few months seemed to be a true miracle in our eyes!

Our family has yet again been blessed with another miracle. Sydney's surgery left us with many bills that for the most part we have been able to pay. We were notified in October of a $1400 hundred dollar bill that our insurance was not going to cover, frantically we came up with the money, using all the savings we had in our Emergency Fund. We also had to come up with the money for a new AC unit that died on us over the summer needless to say we were broke. With Christmas approaching I have felt a lot of stress wondering how we were going to be able to afford gifts for our family and friends, when we had nothing in our savings. To our joy we were informed that most of the $1400 hundred dollars was going to be refunded to us from our insurance. Overjoyed I made a budget as to how we were going to spend this unexpected money. A new car seat for Sydney, a few bills, gifts for family and friends and a small trip to Salt Lake the weekend before Christmas to spend time with Seth's family, since they just had a new baby we also budgeted for a few nights in a hotel. As I added it all up I realized that we needed another two hundred dollars for our food for the rest of the month. I had no idea where this money was going to come from, worried, I tried to redo the budget, but we still came up short. Last night after Sydney had gone to bed we heard a knock on the door, we answered it to find two men from our Bishopric standing on our door step. We invited them in, has we shook hands with them they handed us an envelope from the ward. Inside the envelope was exactly two hundred dollars, I saw this money and burst into tears.

How was it that they came to us with the exact amount of money that we were lacking. A true Christmas miracle! I am so humbled at the ways our Heavenly Father chooses to bless us through his earthy angels. He truly knows each and every one of us, he knows our weaknesses, our trials and our worries. He knows that we must struggle in darkness and pain in order to feel joy as we experience the light if his love. Those small glimpses of his light that push away the darkness can be so overwhelmingly beautiful, and for a moment make all the trials worth the struggle and pain! I am so thankful for our wonderful ward and the giving people who donated money yet again to those that are in need. I am thankful for a Heavenly who truly knows me and what I am going through. Most of all I am thankful of the hope that Christmas miracles bring. A hope for a better time, a time with less struggles more giving and more joy.

Gotta love Baby Einstein!!

So Sinny has learned yet another thing from Baby Einstein, she goes around with this scrunched up face, sniffing in and out of her nose like a dog! Some of you might think that all I do is let my child watch Baby Einstein videos, I really don't. We watch them maybe two or three times a week but for some reason a few of the things are sinking in like her singing E-I-E-I-O, and that dog puppet on the same movie that sniffs all over with his nose!

Here is yet another cute scrunched up face! I love it!!

Sydney has started to cruise along the furniture! She takes really slow careful steps but she is slowly figuring it out! She takes for granted that I am not always going to be there to catch her when she falls. So she has been getting lots of bumps on her head, because she will just let go and suddenly come crashing down!
Sydney has been kind of sick that last few days. She has had diarrhea for four days now and for the last two days she has been refusing anything to eat besides her bottle. I don't think that she is teething(she just got her 4th tooth), I am wondering if she might be forming an allergy to milk. 3 of the 6 grand babies in my family are allergic to milk(2 of the 6 are still on breast milk). When Sydney had her surgery, they mixed my breast milk with formula and she had diarrhea for a few days until they stopped. Sydney has been loving yogurt lately, I stopped feeding it to her when she started getting sick, but there is no change yet! I hope that we can get this figured out soon so that she can start feeling better!

The little Girl and the Plant

There once was a plant...and she loved a little girl. Every day the little girl would come and visit this plant! When this little girl was small she would come to the plant and gaze at her lovely green leaves, this made the little girl smile and the plant was happy! As the little girl grew older she learned that the plants pot was the perfect spot to pull herself up to. When the little girl was standing next to her plant she could see many things that she had never seen before, and the plant was happy!

Soon the little girl brought gifts to her special plant for she to loved this wonderful plant! She brought her, pens and markers, T.V. remotes and her favorite Binky. This made the little girl happy, and the plant loved the little girl even more! One day the little girl said to the plant "I am hungry" and the plant smiled down on the little girl and said "Eat some of the dirt that is in my pot so you wont be hungry." So the little girl did, but she did not like the taste of the dirt. So instead she dumped the dirt on the floor, and the plant was still happy!

The little girl grew still and so did the plants love for the small child. One day when the little girl was bored, she crawled over to her favorite plant, pulled her self up, grabbed on to the plants trunk and shook with all her strength. The little girl smiled, she thought that this was fun! The plant still loved the child, but felt a little rattled! The Mother decided to intervene, she moved the cute little girl away from the plant that she loved and put a gate up, for the mother also loved the plant and did not like seeing it rattled! The plant still loved the child as she watched her grow and explore from a far, and the child still loved the plant!

A Rare Giggly Momment!

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Thanksgiving Fun!

This Thanksgiving Sydney was not thankful for the leaves on the ground,

but she was thankful for pickles, sweet potatoes and the green bean casserole!

If you look really careful you can see that both of Sydney's feet are not touching the leaves! She HATES the feeling of the grass and leaves on her skin! She kept loosing her balance because she would lift both feet as high in the air as she could so she wouldn't have to feel the texture of the leaves on her feet, but she would not put her hands down on the leaves to stop her from falling over. Then she would try to get on her hands and knees to crawl over to me to pick her up, but when she felt the leaves and grass on her hands she would give up and try lifting her feet up again so that she didn't have to feel anything!

Here is my nephew Kimball, my sister Mary and my other nephew Tolman eating Thanksgiving dinner! We went to my moms house and had a great time seeing most of my family and eating way to much food! I am so thankful for my wonderful family!!

Sydney's Blankie

Sydney LOVES her pink silky blankie! When she is mad or sad just give it to her, she then will rub her face on it and stop crying! If her blanket is laying in the middle of the floor while she is playing, she never fails to stop what she is doing and lay down on it and cuddle for a few moments. When I go in and check on her when she is asleep, she almost always has her blanket completely covering her face!
Its is so cute to see Sydney try to crawl with her blanket in hand, usually she gives up and leaves it behind, but she will always come back to it and snuggle. She has become really snuggly lately and loves nothing more than to snuggle up with her Binky and her blankie and be rocked with her Mommy and Daddy!

Yesterday morning Sydney and Seth were on the couch watching Baby Einstein Neighborhood Animals, and "Old McDonald had a Farm"started to play introducing the farm animals. To our astonishment, Sydney started to sing the E-I-E-I-O part of the song! This is not a song that I sing to Sydney and we only watch this dvd maybe once a week, but somehow Sydney caught on and now sings it all day long!

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10 Months Old

Sydney is 10 months old, and getting into EVERYTHING! She is such a curious little thing that she is in constant search of something new to discover. Now that she can crawl on her hands and knees she goes everywhere as fast as she can! She loves to pull the cords out of the outlets and to play with the door stop springy thing.

She has started to make all kinds of new sounds and noises! She loves to blow raspberries on any surface she can find (usually me!), and lately has started what I call singing. She is constantly saying new words yesterday she said Daddy and this morning she said Uh-Oh ! She also says Mama, Mom, Dada, Dad, Baba, Bob, No-No, Ya, Pa-Pa and will sign the word milk.

Since she has been so curious lately I have been trying to keep most things out of her reach. Yesterday she somehow was able to open the sliding door to the bathroom which was mostly closed so she wouldn't be able to get in! She somehow got it opened any way and was starting to play with the toilet plunger.....gross! Needless to say the toilet plunger no longer resides next to the toilet!

She loves to stand, although she can't yet do it by herself she will sometimes try. This picture is so funny because she is balancing all her weight against the rocks behind her!

She also loves to shake her head no all the time, it is so funny. Most of the time she will shake her head no when she is done with what I am feeding her for dinner or when she wants to get down or out of her car seat.

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Kirtland, Ohio

Since Kirtland was on the way to the airport we decided to leave a few hours early and spend some time there before our flight. The only thing that we didn't take into account was that the visiting hours had just barely changed because of the winter weather and we didn't make it in time to see any tours. So we walked around and took a few pictures until a cute Brother missionary took pity on us and gave us a tour of the Whitney Store and the School of the Prophets as he was closing the building up for the night.The Whitney Store was also a bishops storehouse, it was neat to see the room were all the goods were stored that would eventually get given back to the people in need! There was such a strong spirit around the store, especially in the School of the Prophets that it almost felt wrong to me to take any pictures so here are the few that we took of the outside of the buildings.
This is the Whitney home, it was such a cute little place with two kitchens, this along with the color of their house are supposed to be a symbol of their wealth. That whole area next to the front door was a garden, it had beans, chili peppers and lavender planted right next to the door. It was really cool seeing how everything was set up and put together as we peaked in the windows of the house.

I really loved having the chance to see what we could of Kirtland, there was such a strong spirit felt as we walked the very streets that our dear prophet walked. I can't wait for the next time that we come to visit my sister, we will defiantly take a day to explore this beautiful place!

Niagara Falls Aquarium

After our freezing cold trip to Niagara Falls we decided to visit a near by Aquarium. It was really fun to see all the different fish, they also had penguins(Seth's favorite animal), Sea Lions, and sharks. Sydney's face in this picture makes me laugh, she's not sure what to think about the huge shark head in her face!

Me and my nephew Sammy, what a handsome boy!
We forgot the double stroller for our little trip to Buffalo, New York, so we played musical babies all day, when our arms got tired we passed them along to the next person.

Aunt Julie and Sydney.

Sydney loved watching the penguins, we arrived right at feeding time! It was so much fun seeing them gobble down their fishy lunch!
This was one of my favorite finds, its reminds me of the opening scene in Finding Nemo, where the two parents are protecting their new little eggs. Sorry it is blurry, but you can see the two Clown fish and the bright orange eggs they are protecting.

We also made it in time to see the Sea Lions perform and that was so much fun! My niece Gracie kept yelling "Look at the Sea gulls!" and "Hey Sea gull, get in the water!" We tried to correct her and tell her they were Sea Lions but she wouldn't listen and just kept yelling to her "Sea Gulls"!

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Cider Mill

On our trip we went with my sister and her playgroup to a Cider Mill to see how cider is made, it was so cool! I loved watching the process that went into making all the cider, the kids also had a great time watching how the cider was made. We bought some cider after our tour and it was so yummy! The really sad part of our cider making experience was that the Cider Mill (that was 111 years old) burned down two days after our tour, we were probably the last group to see how the cider was made!

The cider making begins by the washing and rewashing of all the apples, the man said that to make really good cider they like about 10 different kinds of apples. Then the apples get put in a grinder that grinds them into small bite size pieces. The apples then get wrapped into a huge piece of cloth, they layer the cloth bundles of ground up apples until they are about 4 or five feet thick. The tower of apples then gets moved into the presser where they smash the tower until all the cider is removed. The cider then goes into a huge holding container were it is pasteurized and then sold in the stores.



This is a pictures of my niece Gracie looking at the left overs of the apple cider. This is all thats left of the apples after the cider making process, dried bits of skin and seeds that get sold as feed for cows and pigs and horses.

Baby Ballerina

"Look Mom I ate all the candy!"

Sydney did so great in her ballerina costume she only cried at the very first and then was fine with her tutu for the rest of the evening!

As you can see Sydney has conquered her hatred of suckers and now tries to eat them two at a time!

Thats my girl! She went for the chocolate first!!!

We went to the Sonju's first and had some Chili before going trick-or-treating! Maddi was a PV cheer leader, Macey was Sharpe from HS Musical, Halle was a 70's chick and Andie was a china girl!
Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa Banks house, Sydney had a great time hanging out with her Grandparents, Aunts and cousins!
This is a picture of my cute big sister LeAnn, and her cute daughter Eden who is dressed up as a witch! Kimball (Buzz Lightyear) loves Sydney so much and kept kissing her and giving her hugs! In the last picture Sydney is kissing him back. Sydney has been so cute with her kisses lately, yesterday I caught her giving her glow worm kiss after slobbery kiss it was so cute!