Character Parade

Caleb's elementary school had a Storybook Character Parade where all the kids chose a character from a book to dress up as, then paraded around the parking lot for parents. Caleb is Nate the Great; he's holding a magnifying glass as well as his Nate the Great book.

First Haircut

Bryson had his first hair cut about a week ago. His hair was getting pretty shaggy, and I don't have any sentiments about postponing that first hair cut to keep the "baby hair" as long as possible like some other mothers do. I think it's fun when my babies start looking like little boys.

And guess what Bryson learned how to do today? Climb down the stairs feet first. He did all the stairs today. Still not interested in walking yet...

11 Months

In the last month, Bryson learned to crawl up the stairs. We're working on learning to slide down the stairs on his tummy.

I've cut out the mid-day nursing so now he's down to nursing when he wakes up and at night near the time he goes to bed. I'm already getting sad about quitting nursing; I love this time with my baby.

Bryson learned to flush the toilet a week ago. We have to keep all the toilet lids down because he loves to play in the toilet water.

He loves to "play" the piano.

He loves it when we brush his teeth.

He's still completely a Mama's boy. Sometimes we'll play games as a family where we put Bryson on one side of the room and the rest of us will sit on the other side of the room. Then we'll see whom he crawls towards. 95% of the time it's me.

Both my other boys started walking at 10 1/2 months. Bryson's content to get around by crawling still.

Reflections

As 12 months of Happiness Projects have come to a close, I can reflect back and see that I've made some "subtle but significant changes"in my life this last year. (Those that are LDS might recognize this as a quote from Elder Bednar's talk from Saturday morning General Conference.) It really is remarkable to set small goals to focus on throughout the year and then to look back and see how those small goals have led to something much bigger.

The goal that was the most important for me to change: making a conscientious effort not to yell at my kids--at all. Prior to that goal, I'd noticed that I was increasingly frustrated with their messes, their whining, their fighting and more and more often I was responding with losing my temper. I needed this goal to take a step back. To laugh more. And most especially to love more.

The goals that I loved the most: Without question my two favorite goals were the goals where I practiced the piano for an hour each day and when I read The Book of Mormon in a month. With the first goal, it reconfirmed to me just how passionate I am about music. I am ever grateful to a mother who pushed me to practice and develop this talent.

As I am now a couple months out from the goal of reading The Book of Mormon in 31 days, I can see now just how powerful and impactful this book is on my life and how there was an increase of the Holy Ghost that month as I devoted my extra time to reading in this book. It really was a different experience reading The Book of Mormon more quickly than I ever have before. It flowed differently rather than being a little disjointed with only doing a couple chapters per day. It gave me a different perspective and helped me link all the people and places together better. I'm excited to do this goal at least once per year.

The goal that provided the most peace: focusing on our food storage

The hardest goal: Sadly, not nagging my husband or saying anything negative for a whole month. I realized my positive to negative ratio was off and that I needed to put more effort into doing more of the little things--leaving notes in his car, sending him a random email mid-day to say "I love you," etc.

I made great strides and improvements throughout the year, but unfortunately old habits die hard. My goals of being more charitable, not judging, and being friendlier are probably areas I'll always have to work on improving.

Each month I also had the on-going goals to index 200 names, read a church book every other month, exercise regularly, and work on turning my blog into books by year.

-I am proud to say that I have now indexed over 2200 names since I started my Happiness Project!! (I missed a month of indexing when we moved. Too busy.)

-I ended up averaging reading a church book every 3 months...could have done better.

-I faithfully exercised most every day. I ran a half marathon 4 months out from having a baby, and I'm running another half marathon in a few weeks. This is a whole other blog post, but I've signed up for another marathon! After running the first one, I swore I'd never do that to myself again. Long story short: peer pressure from a friend. I'm just hoping to figure out some of the aches and pains that have been creeping up during and after my runs.

-Over the last year, I finished 3 blog books and am halfway through the 4th book. It's so fun to have a hard copy of "my journal" with lots of photos included!

Overall, my Happiness Project was a success. As the saying goes, "when Mom is happy, everyone is happy." While I worked on areas that I didn't like about myself or that I knew needed a little attention, I was able to more completely love me and feel happier. Most importantly, it was worthwhile to strive to reach the potential that my Father in Heaven sees in me. There's still lots to do in the refining process, but it was a neat experience to track some goals and, at the end of a year, look back and see the improvements.

Playing in the Rain

Torrential downpour = mud, slippery slides, and lots of fun.

10 months

Bryson is not a big fan of these pictures anymore!

Look at what a big boy he is!

I'm starting to increase my mileage that I run on Saturday mornings which means I'm starting earlier in the morning before Bryson wakes up, so I have to make sure I have a bottle of pumped milk ready for him. The boys enjoyed feeding Bryson this morning!

Look at how big Bryson is compared to Carter! 

Caleb's bed head and Bryson's look of "Leave me in peace, I'm trying to eat here."

Bryson loved holding his own bottle.

Bryson now crawls and gets into everything. He enjoys walking around the house while holding my fingers and also walking along the furniture. He says, "ma ma ma ma ma ma" frequently. And he's starting to eat more table foods rather than baby food. With preschool starting a few weeks ago, Bryson has been a great sport. He naps from 9:15 am to 10:45-ish (a few days he's gone till 11:30!), which helps a lot for the 3 hours I teach.

Month 11: Food Storage

For the month of August, I enlisted my husband's help and we worked on the goal of improving our food storage. Since I knew we were moving, the 6 months prior to moving, I didn't worry about replenishing anything that we used. It would be less to move! Now that we're moved in, it was time to take stock of what we had and figure out what we needed to fill in any gaps. There is definitely a large measure of peace that comes with working on your food storage. And I love that I have a small room in the house devoted only to food storage!

One aspect of this goal that I will carry over to the month of September is 72 hour kits. Matt ordered some items to improve our 72 hour kits, but we haven't reassembled them yet. (It's been a few years since we've updated them, and you're supposed to do it every 6 months!) So we'll do that for FHE one Monday this month. August was also a super busy month getting ready for preschool, so it was difficult to work on anything else!

September is my last month in my Happiness Project, and as I looked at my initial month where I talked about all the things I wanted to work on, I've realized that I'm down to one month and didn't do everything I wanted to do! I didn't do a craft month or a family service month. For the service month, I wanted to organize a family service project so my boys could realize the importance of service and its value in helping others as well as the benefits in our lives. We'll have to set it as a goal in the future.

One other thing that I didn't do that I wanted to was to spend a month stimulating the mind in a new way...reading books I normally wouldn't read, taking time to learn new things. Throughout the year, I've read a few books that were outside of my normal genres including Killing Lincoln, a fascinating book about the death of Lincoln and the events that surrounded it. History was always a subject I did not enjoy in school, so I usually steer clear of historical fiction/nonfiction. The way I've decided to meet this goal of stimulating my mind in a new way is fairly simple and something that I think most people do already (but I don't!). I'm going to spend at least 30 minutes reading/watching the news each day. I am embarrassingly naive about what is going on in the world, so this month I'm going to work on that weakness and hopefully establish a habit!