Medication

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

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.

Tied up in strings

The best part of Christmas.

Tasty

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

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!

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.

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.

What a big girl!

She looks so tiny in the cart like this.

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.

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.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Sydney, ready to brave the cold.

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

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.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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.

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