Richardson Report

Josh and I are trying to give the kids an "experience" gift each year, instead of a "thing".  This year we gave Hannah, Brynne, and Logan tickets to a BYU football game!  They'd been totally jealous of their Utah friends going to BYU games.  We happened to be watching a game on TV one night this fall and they advertised that BYU would be participating in a bowl game in San Francisco.  We had to take advantage of the proximity.  We hoped it would be a hit...and it was! Sadly, BYU lost, but I think they enjoyed themselves anyway.   Josh said that they were in the second row of spectators, so they had great views. The outing also included a trip to IKEA to pick up new bookshelves for Hannah and Brynne.  They had old bookshelves that Jenny and I used a LONG time ago when we shared a room (remember those Jen?), but a few days before Christmas we heard a scream and a crash...and those shelves were laying in a broken heap on the floor.  So...

I really can't believe it's been three weeks since Faith was born. She is an angel of a baby.  I always thought all my kids were pretty easy babies (well, except Kenna - she had challenges that caused us both a lot of frustration).  Faith tops them all.  I don't know if it's my increased experience as a new mom, Faith's personality, a special blessing from the Lord, or some combination of the three, but we have had a fabulous three weeks with this girl. Faith doesn't cry very much, as long as she's not being ignored.  Not that she gets ignored very often, but occasionally I've been in the middle of taking hot things from the oven and she's had to wait - she cried then.  But usually she's pretty laid back.  Even when she's hungry, she's easy to distract. She put herself on a schedule starting on day one.  What newborn does that?  She wakes up fairly consistently, sleeps her long stretches at night, and has awake times in the morning ...

If you're looking for something sweet to do with your young children, I highly recommend the craft in this month's Friend magazine.  My girls thoroughly enjoyed it, and were able to do it themselves (I cut out the window opening to make it simpler for them). http://media.ldscdn.org/pdf/magazines/friend-december-2013/2013-12-05-make-your-own-manger-eng.pdf

I can't find any photos of Hannah on our computer, but here are pictures of the other kids. Who does Faith look like? Brynne Logan Logan Kenna Natalie Faith

This song came out three years ago.  I've been in love with it since I first heard it.  One of the best "pop" Christmas songs, in my opinion.

Faith is a week old now.  Things are going incredibly well.  I mean, compared to all my other newborn experiences, this one is a breeze.  We are all so thoroughly enjoying this little girl.  It helps that she seems super chill and laid back.  I'm making a special effort to find time to chronicle some of these early weeks in the blog so that I don't forget them! Sleep - Faith is fairly predictable in her routines.  She sleeps for two four-hour stretches during the night with a feeding in between.  So sometime between 10pm she settles into her deep sleep and wakes up around 2am, eats (which takes awhile, usually - I watch a good chunk of a movie during this time), then sleeps for another four hours or so - until 8 or 9am. I'm starting to be more careful not to let her oversleep during the day - no more than three hours at a time.  It seems like after a long nap, she spends about two hours having intermittent periods where she eats, snoozes, "pla...

We had no name chosen before going to the hospital.  We did have several revolving short lists. When the kids came to visit we decided to have them weigh in and help us choose the perfect name for our newest family member.  I think Josh, Hannah, and Brynne were the most decided about what names they liked best, with Faith being the one that they all had in common.  Logan gave it a thumbs up (that was about the extent of his contribution - ha, ha).  Choosing a middle name for Faith was harder because it is such a solid sounding name that doesn't really flow into anything else. In August when we were in Utah, our friends helped us make lists of potential names.  Aspen was on those lists and was one that we instantly liked, but we didn't think we wanted it for a first name.  We have a tendency to shorten names/create nicknames...and Aspen leads to a doozy.  So we had ruled it out as a name option, but still really liked it.  When Josh suggested u...

Ah yes, so many lovely plays on words with our new little one's name. So much is running through my brain.  I'm sure this will be broken up into several sections as baby duty calls.  I can hear her starting to rustle even now. First, the birth story.  After my last freaked out post about inducing, I ended up....getting induced!  Actually, I thought about it all week and eventually decided that not only was it going to be okay once I got over my disappointment of a pitocin-free birth, but at 42 weeks, on a holiday week, it would make way more sense to have the baby at the first part of the week when I could be fairly sure that the hospital would be fully staffed (and I could be home for Thanksgiving).  So when I had my appointment on Monday and the doctor told me his recommendation was to induce starting that night, after a brief discussion with Josh, we agreed.  My doctor had still said that he would do whatever I wanted, and if I changed my mind to cal...