Nyah's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe Nyah is already 3 years old. The time has just passed too quickly and I don't like to even think about it. She is such a smart little girl and makes us laugh all of the time. Here are a few of the many fun and new things she's doing:

• She knows an amazing number of nursery rhymes. I must admit most of this comes from one of her teachers, Ms. Diane. She goes from Hey Diddle Diddle to Humpty Dumpty to Little Miss Muffet. I can't believe how quickly she catches on.


• She loves to sing. She is always singing songs for us and they range from "I Had a Little Turtle" to "Popcorn Popping" to "Baa Baa Black Sheep". I love hearing her sing. There is even a song Ryan plays in the car all the time by "Boxcar Racer" and she has managed to memorize lots of those words as well.


• She loves to talk. She has so much to tell us. The other day we got home and I seriously think she talked for over a half hour straight. She went from topic to topic with very little time to stop and think in between, I love it.


• She is so excited for her baby brother and to be a "big, big sister". She tells people I have a baby and a baby brother in my tummy and I'm just grateful they are one in the same. :)


• Nyah tells you exactly how it is. The other day she pointed to my belly button and asked what it was. When I told her it was my belly button, she informed me it's in the wrong spot (It should be under my belly according to her) and that there's no hole.


• She's a daddy's girl and I love to watch the two of them interact.


• She is 37 1/4" tall and 33 pounds. She is in the 50th percentile in height and 75th percentile in weight. She has only gained about four pounds this whole year.


• Nyah has an amazing amount of energy. She can just run and run forever.


• She loves to ride her tricycle (very fast I might add).


• She loves tumble time.


• Nyah loves to be outside whether that's at the park, playing on her swing set, or just blowing bubbles and using sidewalk chalk. She loves it.


• Nyah loves to boss Toby around and it's amazing how well he actually listens to her. She is one of the only people he will let win at a game of "Tug of War".


• She can count to 13 and knows her ABC's.


• She has lots of opinions and is a very determined little girl.


• She has compassion and really wants to nurture those around her. I told her Grandpa Grandpa had broken his hand and she looked at me and said, "That's so sad". Then she asked me how it happened and said, "He needs to be careful".

So I had to take the following picture because this is the only baking I did for her birthday. She wanted to take pink cupcakes to school to share with her friends so that's what we did.

Then we were trying to decide what she would like to do for her birthday. She is always telling us she wants to go to the "Monkey Bizness" by our house. That's the name of a business where kids go to play here in Denver and that is also what she calls the McDonald's. She had never played on the toys so we decided to give that a try and she absolutely loved it! She played for hours and had the time of her life. I didn't realize quite how much it was snowing until we left the restaurant and there was about five inches of snow. The good news is McDonald's wasn't very busy due to the blizzard. You will see some pictures of Ryan and I in the pictures (on the toys with her). I went through once but told her she would need to wait for her baby brother to be born before I try that again. It was a lot of work!

Next we went back home to open presents and have cake. That was a great bribe to get her to happily leave McDonald's. :) She loves opening presents. Every time we order something in the mail, she has to be the one to open it.

Ryan and Nyah checking out her new lego set.

Baby stroller and car seat she got for her baby that she has hardly stopped playing with and hauling around ever since.

Nyah with her cake. I decided Dairy Queen does such a good job that I would let them take care of decorating the cake this year. She picked Mickey Mouse and the ice cream cake was yummy. You also see Nyah sampling the cake before we could even get candles in it. She was a big fan of the purple frosting.

Even though it was totally late at this point, you can see our happy little girl below. I love her smile and laughter and am so grateful we have been blessed to have her in our family for the last 3 years. We love this little girl (our cutie patutie) so much.

Big Girl Bedroom

So we decided to turn our spare bedroom into Nyah's bedroom so the nursery will be available for the baby. Nyah has always been in the crib and has never tried to "escape" so we had just left her in that room. However, once we mentioned her having a big girl bed and a new room, she was super excited. We picked out the comforter and then had to move on to paint colors. I am not a decorator by any means. First of all, I'm not any good at it. Second of all, I don't even like it (those two comments are perhaps linked). I wish I had lots and lots of money and then I would just pay somebody to come and do all of the designing and they could do the painting as well. :) Having said that, I really did end up liking the end result.

We kind of put ourselves in a tight spot trying to get it done before Nyah's birthday and before Ryan's mom and sister came to town. The first picture is of Nyah sitting in front of the computer with a pillow and blankets watching cartoons. Since we had to work on it every evening after work, she had to entertain herself quite a bit.

This next picture is when she decided she REALLY wanted to help! She kept coming into the bedroom, and I'm afraid she doesn't really understand the concept of wet paint. She kept bumping into things and getting paint on herself. It was too funny. I did help her paint for a bit though so she could be part of the action. She was so excited to be involved. What a cutie.

Following is the end result of her new room.

She is loving her new bedroom. There have definitely been some challenges with this additional "freedom" at bedtime, but she's adjusting well. Plus she has done really well considering she has been in her new room for about 3 weeks and has "shared" her room for almost 10 of those days. She stayed in her "old bedroom" so her room could be a guest bedroom again. We sure love this little girl!

Handy Man

I'm so grateful that Ryan is such a great "handy man". We are going to be moving Nyah into our other bedroom so she can be in a "big bed" and the baby can be in the nursery. As we talked about what we wanted to do to the room, one of the things we wanted to do was install a light fixture/ceiling fan. When the house was built, they just put in switched outlets and "lamps" rather than actual light fixtures and it's kind of a pain.


Anyway, we bought some light fixtures/ceiling fans and Ryan ran the electrical yesterday and installed them. It took some time but I love the result. It looks so much better! He also installed dimmer lights so that will be really nice. Last night, Nyah decided she wanted to sleep with a "little light". We love the new light fixture, such a nice change. This is something we should have done a long time ago. :)



Nyah is super excited for her new room so I really need to get going on it. After talking to Lisa and Shari, I think I have finalized how I'm going to paint. One thing is for sure, if I had an unlimited supply of money, I would pay somebody to come and decorate my house. Not only am I not good at it, I don't even enjoy it (I realize these two statements are probably linked). So it goes.... Plus we waited to do the nursery until I was about 8 months pregnant so I'm determined to do it sooner than that this time around.

So one last thing, Nyah is finally getting to where she likes when I take her picture because she wants to see it on the camera. Good deal for me. :) I love this little girl!

It's a Boy

We had our ultrasound on Friday and found out we are having a boy! I'm the oldest of my siblings and then number two in my family is a boy as well. I'm sure Nyah will be a great big sister and super helpful.

Technology is simply amazing. I can't believe all of the things they can tell in the ultrasound, and the amount of detail they can see considering the baby is only .8 lbs at this point and about 10 inches long. We took Nyah and it went fine, but her attention span didn't last nearly long enough. I don't know how much she really understood... It was definitely more work for Ryan to try and entertain her and keep her happy. Now we know. :)

Christmas Lights at Temple Square

While we were in Idaho over the Christmas holidays, we decided to go down to Utah to see the lights at Temple Square. Aaron thought this was a long ways to go to see Christmas lights, but we figured it's a lot closer than we usually are to Temple Square. Plus we decided we thought Nyah would really enjoy it, and we weren't disappointed. She loved them. The thing we didn't anticipate is she also absolutely loved the water features. I never realized there were so many water features at Temple Square. When you stop at each one for a few minutes and it's 25 degrees outside, you soon realize just how many there really are! We kept going into the different buildings to warm up so that was handy. It had been years since we had been there. It really is amazing how many lights there are at Temple Square.

My mom and Jana went with us to enjoy the evening. Thanks for coming with us. It is so fun to be able to spend time with Jana again. We are so glad she is home from her mission!