Meredith’s Month 4 Recap

The girls’ 4 month comparison: Amelia, Samantha and Meredith. Meredith is still trending toward the Samantha side, but is also taking on a look of her own.

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Going through the twins’ 4 month old pictures, I was struck by two things: I have approximately 11 million more photos of the twins than I do of Meredith (third child syndrome), and I have maybe 5 pictures of  the twins not frowning or being grumpy at this age. In photo after photo, the twins are either staring blankly at the camera or visibly perturbed. A stark contrast from our happy-go-lucky Meredith! My blog posts were also substantially longer back then (ha!): the twins at 4 months.

Even at this age, Samantha and Amelia were stubborn and full of mischief.

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Meredith is a little more like Amelia personality-wise. Almost every photo of Samantha at this age features her sticking her tongue out or frowning.

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A rare smiling picture. 996823926836645061257992119n

Meredith kicked off last month with her baby blessing, in which she looked and acted like an angel. Even the twins talking and crying from the pews didn’t faze her (I’m sure she’s used to it by now).

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Meredith enjoyed commissioning a mural for her room from Grandma Celeste who visited from Utah.

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Meredith ate up all the cuddles from Aunt Gigi and Uncle Kip from Washington and Uncle Jarom and Aunt Jen from Idaho.

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The twins never say no to a sister photo shoot.

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Meredith happily awaiting a diaper change, looking around at her favorite pictures– the owls in the girls’ room and giant canvas pictures of the girls eating cake.

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Happy to be out and about.

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Eating out and basking in all the compliments from other diners.

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She’s slightly terrified whenever the twins ask to hold her (which is about every hour or so).

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Playtime!

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Celebrating our first Mother’s Day since Meredith’s arrival.

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Meredith loves to play with the dresses hanging from the shelf by the changing table.

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Conked out during an afternoon walk.

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Saturday morning snuggles.

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I love me some baby rolls.

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Out and about in her wrap.

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Comparing notes with her friend, Maple, who is two months older. Meredith inherits many of her clothes from Maple and loves her fashion sense!

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Four squeezable cheeks.

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Friends holding hands.

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Grammy came to visit from Utah and Meredith wasn’t put down for an entire week.

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YOLO during bath time.

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Post-bath ‘do.

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4 month birthday!

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Lots of love,

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Meredith 4 Months

Hard to believe that this little sweetie is now 4 months old! Meredith is such a happy little cuddlebug and five million times easier than the twins… and not just because there’s only one of her. She has such a mellow personality, hardly whines and sleeps 11-12 hours at night. We call her our star baby!

At her four month appointment, she cried for about 20 seconds after getting her shots, and then decided she was done being sad about it. Compare that to the twins’ ten minutes of shrieking after every shot, plus nonstop crying throughout the next few days afterward due to feeling sore and having a fever, which happened every time they went into the doctor’s the first year. Meredith doesn’t have time to complain… she’s too busy being delighted with the world!

4 month stats:

16 pounds, 13 ounces and 26 inches (both in the 97th percentile). Clearly, this girl likes to eat and wants to catch up to her sisters! I am getting a great bicep and shoulder workout carrying her around; she feels every bit of those almost 17 pounds!

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Meredith wears 6-9 month clothing and is now sporting size 3 diapers due to major blowouts happening in size 2. She smiles, laughs, coos and babbles, does her mini pushups, grabs at her toys (and mama’s hair), and loves to suck on her favorite toys… her hands! She still refuses the pacifier and seems indignant whenever we try to get her to take it, but is constantly looking for her beloved thumb.

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Meredith takes 4 naps a day, goes to bed between 7 and 8 p.m. and wakes up between 6 and 7 a.m. She’s a remarkable sleeper considering the constant noise going on from the dog and the twins. The times that she is fussy, a walk outside or her bath are guaranteed to get her laughing again.

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Meredith’s least favorite time of day is when the twins are napping or when she needs to go down for a nap. This girl has major FOMO (fear of missing out). As much as I love to play with her, I’m boring compared to her fascinating sisters! If I can time it right, all three nap at the same time (bliss!) and when they all wake up, Meredith lights up with a huge grin, excited to go see what adventures are in store for the afternoon.

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The amount of drool this month has been epic… maybe we’ll see a tooth soon.

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Meredith watches every bite that goes into our mouths with rapt attention. It’s fun observing how much more aware of the world and of routines she is now, for example, after she wakes up gets her diaper changed and sees her bottle, she usually starts going crazy, flailing her arms and letting us know in no uncertain terms that she’s hungry. She also goes crazy with delight and arm flailing when she wakes up from a nap and one of us comes to pick her up out of her crib. IMG_1411

Meredith also seems to be super focused and has a great attention span for her age. She’s content swatting at toys, looking out through the window or sitting and observing her sisters play… definitely not a squeaky wheel. She loves to sit on my lap and just take it all in.

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Meredith enjoys playing on her mat, swatting at toys, laughing at her sisters, eating, bath time, going for walks, watering the garden with me, and playing peekaboo. We love you, Mer Bear!

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Lots of love,

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Meredith’s 3 Month Recap

Meredith at 3 months:

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3 Month Comparison:

Amelia, Samantha and Meredith

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Maybe it’s just the fat rolls, but Meredith still seems to be trending more toward Samantha’s looks.

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Amelia and Samantha, 3 Months

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This girl wears 6 month sizes and sure loves to eat! At just before the 12 week mark, we dropped the late night dream feed and she started sleeping 8 pm-5 a.m. She’s since stretched her wake up time to 6 or 7 a.m. I can count on one hand the number of times the twins slept like that their entire first year!

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Meredith, you are a star baby!

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Overhead shot of Amelia and Samantha at 3 months. I was reminded about how fussy they were at this age looking back through pictures– any pictures of them smiling were few and far between. We have tons of smiley Meredith pictures in comparison!

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No shortage of girl clothes around here! Amelia and Samantha wearing the same dress:

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Meredith has started drooling a lot more and loves to chew on her hands. She refuses to take a pacifier (shocking, since the girls were so attached to their Wubbanubs), but loves to suck her thumb. I have an ultrasound picture of her sucking her thumb in the womb, so I guess she’s been that way since the beginning.

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Ripping off her bow and sticker, just like the twins used to do.

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Meredith has great head control and loves to view the world from her tummy. The twins absolutely loathed tummy time back in the day.

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Meredith’s favorite activity is going to the park and watching all the crazy kids play. She certainly gets out and about a lot more than the twins ever did. A typical week for her includes going to the park every day and watching the girls during gymnastics and music, plus play time and arts and crafts at home with her crazy sisters. She’s just along for the ride!

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I came across this picture of the twins and had flashbacks of the girls and I hanging out on the bed near the 5 o’clock hour when Jake would walk in from work and find us all in tears! It was so much harder to get out with the twins back then… I think they were so fussy due to boredom at the end of the day!

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More of the twins hanging out at 3 months:

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When Meredith goes out, everyone comments on her chubby cheeks! Meant to be squeezed.

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Meredith loves bath time and post-bath snuggles.

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She’s usually so bored with me, but as soon as the twins are around, Meredith lights up and gets so excited to play!

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Meredith enjoys watching everyone eat and was jealous she was too little to try Auntie Lynn’s matzoh fry.

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The girls kept pretending to feed Meredith  at Auntie Lynn’s post-Passover breakfast. IMG_2506

Snuggles with Great Grandpa.

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Stroller ride!

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Meredith visited Great Aunt Linda and Great Uncle David this month and had a blast in Palm Springs/Palm Desert/Yucca.

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Happy birthday mommy snuggles.

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Trying out her cute moccs from her friend, Maple.

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The fan still mesmerizes her.

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Amelia and Meredith getting ready for bed.

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Ready for adventure. Meredith naps really well when she’s in the wrap, stroller or on the go somewhere, but in her crib, she generally takes pretty short 45 minute naps throughout the day. This girl has major FOMO and has a hard time settling because she wants to be a part of the action  ALL. THE. TIME. While she’s generally super mellow and happy, if she hasn’t napped well during the day, she tends to melt down in the evening, but more often than not, she’s happy to hang out and read stories with the twins before nodding off to sleep peacefully at bedtime.

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Play time on her mat.

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Meredith is a great sport when the girls want to hold her.

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Please don’t drop me!

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Such a happy-go-lucky girl. Her personality is so bubbly!

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Happy 3 Months, giggly girl!

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Lots of love,

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Meredith’s Baby Blessing

If I had to classify Meredith’s blessing day as a movie genre, it would be a mix between a drama, comedy, and horror show.  Let’s just say I was almost in tears by the end of church… and not with spiritual tears!

Since her blessing was at 1 p.m., we had the morning and lunch to kill, which is usually fine, but trying to keep the twins occupied, food prepared, house cleaned, and not forgetting the baby in the mix made for a hectic morning. Thankfully, Grandma Celestia had been staying with us for a few days and helped with the girls before we all packed up and headed to church.

An hour before go-time, the original family that had lived in our house prior to us were randomly in town, had stopped by to visit with other neighbors, and wanted to meet us as well. If it were me, I would have loved to see my old house, so we let them in for a tour, which was fun for us seeing their reactions to all the updates, but also took up the time we should have been getting ready for the blessing.

The last fifteen minutes of throwing random items in the diaper bag and squeezing the girls and Meredith into their dresses was an exercise in emergency evacuations, but we made it! We ran into church just in the nick of time (everyone seemed visibly relieved when we ran through the door).

Sacrament Meeting is never the most peaceful hour of my week due to the twins’ squirminess and need to talk about all of the random thoughts that pop into their heads (“Who made rainbows?”) at about 10 decibels above their normal already loud voices, but this Sunday of all Sundays was absolutely the worst in recent memory. The twins were overtired, squirmy, and obnoxious, (they are also THREE, which I tend to forget), which was all compounded by the fact that they don’t get a nap on Sundays because of the timing. We were squeezed into a pew near the front, when we are usually in the back where they can roam about a little more.

When Jake got up with Meredith to do the blessing, Amelia kept crying over and over, “Where’s Daddy?!” even though we had prepped the girls on what would happen on blessing day the entire week prior. I didn’t catch most of the blessing dealing with them and even though Jake recorded it while he was up there, most of what can be heard in the background of the recording is what sounds like banshees screaming. The little I did hear was about Meredith being kind and a light to the world, but I have yet to sit down and transcribe it because it will take a lot of effort to actually hear what was said!

The saving grace of the situation was, of course, Meredith. She stayed asleep the entire blessing and looked like a little angel up there. She got lots of “oooohs” from the audience after Jake was finished with the blessing and held her up. Jake’s sister-in-law and sister, who were sitting behind us, took turns cuddling Meredith for the remainder of church and she was happy as a clam.

The twins, on the other hand, continued to be holy terrors. There are so many hordes of squirmy and loud little kids in church that no one cares, but when you are sitting up front and it’s your own kids, the noise seems like it’s magnified by a hundred.I found it very fitting that the twins screamed during their own blessings three years ago, and during church the day Meredith was blessed. Times have not changed!

The funny part is, as much as I roll my eyes and grit my teeth every Sunday, it’s inexplicably their favorite day, hands down. As soon as we tell them it’s time to get ready for church, the twins dress themselves and get out the door quicker than it takes them to get anywhere else during the week. My theory is they think of it as a special form of torture for me and are excited to get started!

After futile attempts to quiet the girls down, Grandma Celestia offered to take them out and walk around with them outside. Bliss! The best thirty minutes of church I have had in years!

Afterwards, we took pictures outside and planned to go straight home to eat, but the girls started loudly protesting because they wanted to go to nursery. Grandma Celestia again saved the day by offering to stay at church the rest of the afternoon so that the girls could go to nursery while we all went back and had lunch.

We ate in peace and had a fun time catching up with Jake’s family until it was time to go grab the twins and Jake’s mom. The girls ate a few bites at home and promptly cried overtired tears as they conked out for an early bedtime, while we hung out with everyone. Even with all the chaos, Meredith was an absolute star!

Meredith had been eyeing this dress in her closet all month wondering what it was for, and on her blessing day, she sure was happy it would be the only time she would wear it… those things may be cute, but comfortable they are not.

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The twins’ dresses three years ago. I was tempted to reuse one of them, but would really like each of them to have her own dress as a keepsake, even though part of me cringes at the fact that they are a one-trick pony.

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All dolled up!

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Amelia, May 2013:

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Amelia and Samantha:

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Meredith, May 2016:

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She didn’t end up wearing the bonnet during her actual blessing because she was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up to put it on, but we did get a few pictures of her in it afterwards.

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Meredith is such a thumb sucker!

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Another pointless, but adorable “waste”: baby shoes.

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The star baby.

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Ready for my close-up.

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She is the happiest girl, truly.

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Fifty different angles.

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Her name also means “noble leader,” but I chose to have the other meaning done for her name canvas because people are always remarking that her eyes are the color of the ocean. Her name is fitting!

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All three with their name canvases.

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Cute sisters.

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I don’t know about this…

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WAAAAAAAAAHHHH! (Samantha always has the best expressions in these situations).

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Trying to comfort sister.

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I survived one hour of church with these hooligans and all I got was this lousy picture!

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2013: Two was a lot easier to deal with back then. I love how Samantha’s neck is totally not being supported in this photo!

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Despite the two crazies being obnoxious from the pews, Jake did an admirable job ignoring them completely and gave a thoughtful blessing (at least from what I could hear). He received lots of compliments afterwards!

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Trying not to let Meredith slip out of my arms… her dress was deceivingly slippery.

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Crazy girls.

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Attempting to get a sweet close-up photo of mom and baby, but Meredith was mostly annoyed.

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And then angry.

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Last time with the twins, we had a huge group and a fun Mother’s Day brunch with tons of family, but this time around we kept it low key and had some family over who hadn’t yet met Meredith. Jake’s sister, Gigi, and brother-in-law, Kip from Washington; his brother, Jarom, and sister-in-law, Jen from Idaho, and mom, Celestia from Utah.

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Fun to catch up with family we haven’t seen in a while. I pretty much didn’t have to change diapers or carry a baby all day with this crew around as they couldn’t get enough of her. It’s too bad Meredith isn’t a little bit older, or we would be joining them this week on a family reunion Alaskan cruise. We were happy they could come out to see us before their trip since we can’t be there.

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Meredith giggling at Uncle Jarom.

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Check out this baby!

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Uncle Kip on baby holding duty while keeping the twins entertained. Jake tells the girls stories about spending his summers working on Kip’s farm in Washington all the time, one such story being about how Jake did something stupid with a tractor and Kip called him a piece of poo (that’s not the real world he called him, but the girls don’t know that!) The girls dubbed it the “Uncle Kip Poo Story” and are constantly asking me when we can go visit Uncle Kip’s farm.

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Tuckered out after a day in the spotlight.

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Thanks for being a blessing to us all, Meredith!

Lots of love,

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