31 December 2007

Medication



Sydney's reaction to antibiotics...and really any medications.

25 December 2007

Christmas

We had a pretty good Christmas, once we finally got to my parent's house. Sydney enjoyed the paper the most, but she does love her new toys that she got.

24 December 2007

Tied up in strings



The best part of Christmas.

Tasty



Sydney eating rice cereal for the first time at my parents' house in Nebraska.

18 December 2007

Victory, Victory!!!

Tonight Valerie laid Sydney down in her cradle and she didn't even cry. We didn't hear any crying for a while so Valerie went and checked on the baby. She was just laying there looking around. After five to ten more minutes we decided to have another look and she was fast asleep, no crying. Go Sydney and Valerie!

17 December 2007

Fighting the Bedtime Battle

So, I've been a bad mother and have always gone and picked Sydney up as soon as she cries at night since she was born for two reasons: 1) It just kills me to hear her cry...to the point that I get physically distressed and can't take it and 2) If I don't fix her crying quickly, I cannot go back to sleep and get even less sleep than I already do (which is a really small amount as it is). But, since we're going home this week (YAY!) and I want to be able to spend time with my family and not always be fighting the bedtime battle, I've been working on letting her cry it out a bit and teaching her to put herself to sleep. Instead of letting her scream until she falls asleep, I let her cry for five minutes, then go comfort her and give her back her pacifier and leave the room again. Sometimes it doesn't work for a while, but today at nap time, I only had to go in once and then she went to sleep. And, while it isn't working right now, it's nice to think that maybe, one day, I won't have to rock her to sleep every night, making myself motion sick in the process.

07 December 2007

Babysitting and Cookies


This Tuesday, Jamie Phair, one of our friends, entered boot camp for the Air National Guard. His sweet wife, Karen, and their three kids are still here while he's gone. Because of this, Karen needed a babysitter Tuesday night so she could go to a dinner. We gladly volunteered and thought that the kids might enjoy making some cookies with us. It was a ton of fun, even if it was a bit hectic watching four kids under five. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

04 December 2007

What a big girl!


She looks so tiny in the cart like this.

01 December 2007

Snow!

We woke up this morning and were surprised to find that it had snowed. We were even more surprised that it snowed ALL DAY! And what an eventful day it was. Charles got up early to head up to campus and take the LSAT. He got home from that around 1:30 and felt pretty good about what he did. Too bad we have to wait until January 2nd to find out how he did.





After Charles got home, we decided that we should introduce Sydney to snow for the first time. It's snowed before, but never enough to really stick and so this was her first real snow. Here she is testing it out. She seemed to enjoy it, since she kept going back for more. It was pretty cute.



Later on that evening was our ward Christmas party. And this year we had a special visitor reappear, Santa. (Our previous bishop didn't think Santa was church appropriate and banned him. He also teaches his kids that there is no Santa and they decided to yell this at the top of their lungs when Santa came...his wife was not happy about that) Anyway, this was Sydney's first time meeting him and I was quite thrilled that she let me get this picture without any problems.

30 November 2007

Hunting

One of my favorite activities is to look for the headstones of various people in old cemeteries. For Charles' church history professor, we went to the Springville City Cemetery to find the grave of Sophia Bundy Packard, one of the original twenty members of the Relief Society. Charles volunteered for the project yesterday, thinking it would give me something to do for a few days, and was a bit surprised when I finished it so quickly.

28 November 2007

Baby, It's Cold Outside


Sydney, ready to brave the cold.

26 November 2007

Happy Birthday, Charles!

Charles turned twenty six! Since it was Sunday, we enjoyed spending time together as a family and then, in the evening, had a party with family and friends from work and church. It was nice to have everybody here to spend time celebrating Charles. I'm so thankful for him and everything he does for me and our daughter. He got football cleats, movies and some computer games from us and a gift card to a Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar here in the area.


<--McKayla enjoying some birthday cake.




--->
Chris and Rachel Wiggington and Jaime and Karen Phair


<---Charles and Cameron Phair

--->
Skyler and Meghan Christensen playing with Sydney

25 November 2007

Holy War?


This is a normal scene on any Saturday that the BYU football team plays in the Chamberlin house. This game was especially important
since it was the BYU v. Utah game. And, like last year, the game was a nail-biter. Thankfully, BYU won, 17-10. (Thankfully, because the outcome of the BYU game greatly affects Charles' attitude for the rest of the weekend.)


This was at a particularly tense time in the game.

24 November 2007

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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We went to Temple Square last night to see the lights. It was cold! We bundled Sydney up in the Mei Tai and used body heat to keep her nice and warm. She loved the lights. She kept talking to them and just chattered away the whole time. It was adorable.

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18 November 2007

Toys

Recently, Sydney has started to show an interest in toys and she has a few favorites to play with/munch on.

Books: She loves books. We read them to her and she can "turn" the page, when she gets ahold of it. She gets several books read to her each day by her Mama and every night, we try to read her some from the Illustrated Book of Mormon. She may not be getting much from it, but she is reading the scriptures regularly with us, not to mention putting her two cents in when we teach and read to her.


Cows: Sydney loves her swing and her cows. She has two stuffed cows that she loves to chew on and love. This thrills Charles as he figures it means she will love beef and steaks, unlike her mother.

This thing: I have no idea what this toy is called, but she loves to chew on it and throw it and just generally abuse it.













Her papa: She loves to play with her papa. They laugh and play every chance they get. I especially love this pictures, which perfectly captures how much she loves Charles

08 November 2007

Per Charles Request

This morning, after I got out of the shower, I came in our room to find Charles and Sydney watching football and singing this song.



For those who may need translation, the words go like this:

Baby farts, my baby farts
My baby farts for me!

And then she adds her part.

Church History Museum

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Charles and Sydney with David Patten's rifle.

We went to the Church History Museum for one of Charles' school assignments. It was Sydney's first visit and ,while I know she won't ever remember it, it was fun to take our daughter to one of our favorite places to visit.

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Seeing how the General Authorities feel.


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Partaking from the Tree of Life.

31 October 2007

Greetings!


From the Chamberlin family.

Rolling



I finally got a video of her rolling over.

29 October 2007

Babywearing Family

I just have to brag about my latest accomplishment. I, who have never stitched anything together in my life, made a Mei Tai (an Asian-style baby carrier) all by myself. I used a pattern from the internet and even added some of my own variations to make it more like some of the ones I have seen. It took some work, but I did it. And it has made our life a ton easier. We were able to go on a walk in Rock Canyon and I can get even more done in the house, since being in it helps Sydney fall asleep while I get things done.


New Hairdo


Sydney finally has enough hair to pull up in a ponytail on the top of her head. Hurray! Mom was getting tired of her hair being everywhere and not being able to do anything with it. She just looks so cute with her hair up and her bow in her hair.

Smiley


Doesn't she just have the greatest smile?

28 October 2007

The Great Pumpkin


Yesterday, we went for our first trip to pick out pumpkins in a pumpkin patch. We went after Papa got off of work and took Aunt Elisha with us and drove to Springville to visit Jaker's Pumpkin Patch. It was just a field filled with pumpkins, but it was perfect for our small family.







We arrived and Charles sprinted off with the baby to go find the perfect pumpkin. I trailed behind, taking pictures and trying not to trip on the pumpkins.

<----------- Charles shows Sydney the qualities of a perfect pumpkin.

After a little while, we found one pumpkin for each of us there and we went and paid for our finds. Thanks to a BYU discount, we had some extra money to go get Pumpkin Spice doughnuts from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts for a treat afterwards.

24 October 2007

Talker

So, yesterday was Chelsea's 17th birthday and I called her to wish her a happy birthday. After I had done so, I put the phone up to Sydney to see if she would talk (usually, she just tries to eat the phone) and she just started cooing up a storm. It was pretty awesome. She actually talks a lot now, especially in the car, when I'm taking Charles to school in the morning. She also likes to "sing" her self to sleep when she's trying to fight going down for a nap.

19 October 2007

How time flies


It's hard to believe that our little girl was born three months ago. This first picture was taken when she was one week old. She look so tiny now in that picture. Seven and a half pounds and 19 inches long.

The second picture was taken when Sydney was a month old. Already you can see that she looks older in the second picture. She had gained at least a pound and maybe half an inch.

And here she is at two months. Her face has filled out more. For her two month appointment, she weighed 11 lbs, 14 oz and was 21 inches long. She had also started to out grow some of her newborn clothing...which was a sad day for Mama...I loved some of those clothes.


And on the right is the picture I took yesterday, three months after she was born. She really no longer looks like an newborn, but is an infant. She can roll over and laugh...when she wants to...and is starting to be a lot more interactive and reactive to what is going on around her. She gets the biggest smiles when she sees her Mama or Papa and those smiles can totally make your day if you are the recipient of one. She is such an important part of my day, even more than just the fact that she is still totally dependent on me to live. I can barely remember what life was like before she was born.

16 October 2007

Giggles



This was late one night last week, while we were playing when Papa got home from work.

09 October 2007

Playing


Today, we went to the park with our good friends, the Phairs. It was a ton of fun. Charles threw a football around with Jaime and I got to practice taking pictures of moving targets. It was a beautiful day outside, and it was great to spend it with Jaime and Karen and their adorable children.



Pretty!


These came in the mail for me on Saturday! I was so excited. These are called teething bling. It's made of silicon and is totally safe for baby to chew on. Not only that, but they actually look pretty cool too. It's so nice to at least feel hip while still being a mom.

06 October 2007

LSAT Prep

This week, Charles started his LSAT prep course. The class meets for three hours on Tuesday afternoons and then has a practice test every Saturday morning for the next eight weeks. Then, on December 1st, Charles will take the LSAT. What is nice about this prep course is if he doesn't do as well as he would like on the December test, he can take the prep course again and then try again in February. So, while the next two months will be very busy (and a little lonely for me), we should see the fruits of our labors in a good LSAT score and acceptance into a great law school for next year. Any suggestions on where we should apply?

02 October 2007

Breaking News!

The baby "napper" strikes again!

Super Mom


This is how I have started making dinner. I took a piece of fabric that I had laying around the house and found a website that is dedicated to babywearing. There, I found instructions on how to wrap the fabric around myself in a way that is safe to carry Sydney around the house. Now, if I can get her on my back, I would be nearly unstoppable!