So I had this idea today that I ought to write down what a day in my life is like right now. I think I’ll look back one day and wonder how I did it, because there are days now when I wonder how I managed to make it through the day only to wake up and start all over. I have to warn you that this is very detailed and therefore long.
you might see a scene like this if you checked on the children after bedtime:
Isaac will likely be found surrounded by non-fiction books. He often has one propped up or will fall asleep with his finger in one. The globe is not atypical. He loves to study maps and other such things as he lays in bed (or when he’s on a road trip). He’s also a little heater so he’s often sweaty.
Charlotte typically sleeps with a doll or water bottle and sometimes both. I have to admit that the light saber is not typical, but I took this picture on the same night as the other.
Nicole will likely be fully away sitting up in her bed singing or talking for hours after you put her to bed. She generally doesn’t cry much if at all when she is put to bed, but it’s not uncommon to still hear her awake as much as two hours after putting her to bed.
Ila is still establishing her sleeping pattern. At two months old, she doesn’t usually settle down until about 11:00 (which is much better than last week when she didn’t settle down till 1 or 2 each night). She can be a little fussy in the evening which is fairly typical for her age, but once she settles down she usually only wakes once to eat before my alarm goes off at 6:30AM.
I don’t think anyone who has had a little boy could make the argument that masculinity 
is something that we train in our kids. When Isaac was 17 months old, someone handed me a book full of trucks to show him. I assumed the book would not hold his attention for long, after all it was a book with nothing but construction trucks in it—I thought it seemed rather dull. Imagine my surprise when his face lit up as he pointed to each vehicle. From there he became captivated with anything that had an engine. Since that experience, I’ve noticed that every little boy I’ve known has gone through a stage where he is obsessed with trucks, trains, and planes.
My girls on the other hand, like girly things. Sure they’ll play with a truck or drive a car around the room, but they show their gender identity in different ways.
This is old news now, but I thought I ought to update my blog and decided to scroll 
through recent pictures for inspiration and all of Charlotte’s recent pictures make me think of this event/story.
Charlotte gave herself a haircut. I was lucky—it wasn’t too bad and it was on the verge of being much worse when I interceded. She made her cuts right in the front forming a very choppy upside-down V and forcing me to cut some shorter-than-I-ever-would-have-chosen bangs. I was mostly sad because we’ve been trying to grow out her bangs since birth and now we have a new set of bangs to grow out.
This is a continuing tradition because many (all?) of my siblings and I cut our hair at some point during our childhood.
6.20.07 Today Isaac brought his toy jeep over to me and said “mom, want some noise†then he turned it on.
6.21.07 Today I took Isaac to the post office with me to buy stamps. 
I let him put the money in, make the selection and then collect the change at the end. As we drove away he told me “mommy buy money at the Post Office.†I guess he thought that when the change came out it was what I had purchased.
I brought a chair into the bathroom for our nightly teeth brushing ritual. Isaac and Charlotte each climbed up and as Isaac looked in the mirror he excitedly proclaimed “big and little†in reference to the height difference between him and Charlotte.
Isaac got a birthday card from Great-Grandma Cochran a few days ago. After he opened it we read it and he looked at it. Then he opened some junk mail and said “yay, another birthday card from Isaac.†For the rest of the day any piece of mail or paper was another birthday card for Isaac!
I scrolled through my log and choose a date at random—here’s what I wrote on February 6th of last year:
2.6.09 Here are some recent things the kids said: "I would sleep so hard that I couldn’t wake up. I’d be stuck asleep and you’d have to kiss me to wake me up. Would you kiss me?"
"And after her birthday I would be stuck sleeping if you don’t kiss me." Isaac (possibly before Charlotte’s 3rd birthday)
After biting his finger accidentally, Isaac said "My mouth thought my finger was food. My mouth thought it was salad"
"Mom, what time will Tigers eat us?"
"Mom, don’t let tigers eat us until we’re ready to die." <<so, when we’re ready to die we should let Tigers eat us?>> "yeah" Isaac
“that’s the Tiger’s pretzels? Because of the white spots?" Isaac upon seeing footage of a Tiger eating a deer that had white spots on it’s back
In answer to the question "What are kids made of?" Isaac replied: "They’re made of everything that skin covers."
“What happens if a Lion goes into a machine that turns him into food for people, that would be chicken?†Isaac
After getting a light spank for getting out of bed at bedtime, Charlotte said "I need pajamas that doesn’t have a spank on themâ€
<<The picture was taken February 1, 2009>>
Here’s a little video of Charlotte and Isaac playing with her birthday present:
She wanted “a magic car that goes by itself”. I think this works.
I also think Nicole is destroying a book in the background.
DAY 9: On Wednesday we set off for Knoxville. 
It was a long crowded ride in my mother’s Tribeca, but the kids behaved well and the trip was uneventful. We stopped for lunch at Wendy’s and Nicole enjoyed dancing to the music and making faces with my mother. She was in such a funny happy mood that I was glad I had my camera handy to capture a few moments.
The only other noteworthy thing was the few times that Isaac announced that he needed to use the bathroom right away and we frantically exited as soon as we could only to find out that his need was not nearly as urgent as he had claimed.
When we arrived at our new place, the movers were still unloading the truck and a neighbor from the ward had provided a hot meal for the family.
The rest of our moving experience is not blogworthy as it consists of me unpacking and organizing our things into our new house, but I think 9 days of moving details really should be enough detail for the few readers we get to our humble little blog.
DAY 7: We spent much of day 7 exploring my parent’s property. We kicked off our adventures with the traditional forklift rides. Isaac and Charlotte took turns riding the forklift with their grandfather. He showed them how to lift a pallet up and down and even gave them a ride on the pallet and loaded them onto a truck.
Next they had a tour of his warehouse which included showing the children the kiddie rides that grandpa Bird has been storing for a company.
DAY 5: Our first day in Ohio was mostly spent relaxing at my parents’ house.
Lee stopped over as we were having some lunch and introduced us to his girlfriend, Jen. We had a nice visit with Lee and Jen as we munched on french fries and BBQ chicken. Nicole took to Lee right away. She snuggled up to him as soon as he picked her up and enjoyed smiling at him and making faces.
DAY 4 CONTINUED: The airport experience with three little kids is a little crazy. The kids were actually quite good, but just the management of them all would have been 
impossible on my own. Once we made it through security, we stopped at a little play area before going to our gate. This provided a perfect opportunity for a potty break. Unfortunately, Charlotte managed to get her underwear wet while sitting on the potty so I had to make the trek back and forth to the bathroom with a fresh pair of “airplane underwear.†By the time I was finished (the play area was not close to the bathroom), I could only allow Charlotte 10 minutes to play before we scuttled them all off towards the gate.
DAY ONE: We were lucky enough to have Zach’s new job pay for a moving company to 
pack and move our belongings. I think if not for that I really would have lost my sanity. They came at 8:00 AM and worked until 7:00 PM packing and loading our things onto a gigantic semi-truck. The beginning of the day went well, Grandma Cochran took Nicole and Isaac went to school so I just had Charlotte with me and Zach’s Aunt Neta who had come down to help. We sat on the couch and talked as they worked through the morning.
I don’t have anything really funny or inspiring to write. . .but I am very excited about a great 
deal I got yesterday.
Getting a good deal on something always makes me happy, but the icing on the cake is when I go out with the express purpose of purchasing a specific item and I get a good deal on that item.
So I was thrilled yesterday when I went out to buy some BYU clothes for the kids to celebrate the kick-off of BYU foot ball and found these outfits for just $3.00 each! Yes, you may all tell me how much I rock ;) GO COUGARS!!!
Isaac has been really interested in going bowling since he saw the icon for it in his 
magnetic calendar. The longer he had to wait, the more interested he became. He checked out books on bowling at the library which he chose as bedtime stories multiple times and talked about it periodically through the weeks it took us to get around to actually going. On the day of the big trip he saw a truck filled with tall skinny propane tanks and excitedly announced that the truck was filled with bowling things (because they looked like bowling pins to him).
On the way there and on the way back he excitedly intoned “Bowling is a fun sport?!†When we told him his score at the end he proclaimed himself the winner. To see a video of Isaac bowling, click here. To see Charlotte bowl, click here.
It turns out my assumption that Nicole is too short to climb into the bath was wrong. I’ve 
seen her along the edge of the bath lifting up her little leg up to climb in and she’s never even gotten close.
Yesterday, Charlotte had a bath in the middle of the day (she has been suddenly deciding that she’s dirty in the middle of the day). I was helping Isaac with something when I noticed Nicole wasn’t in the living room. As I started down the hall to locate her I heard Charlotte yell out “Mom, Nicole is in the bath†and sure enough there she was, fully dressed and happy as can be.
I had the kids make cards for their dad for father’s day. Basically, we make a little book and I ask the kids what it should say and then they draw and I label. Their books always make me laugh. To see the cards, click on the link below
As we walked into the grocery store today, Charlotte was listing things she likes. She said “I like chocolate, cats, and spiders.†By the end of our short shopping trip her list had grown from three to six. As I bucked her in the car she said “mom, what’s five plus one?†She was holding up five fingers and a thumb. After I answered her question, I asked her to list her six things for me. This is what she said “I like chocolate, cats, spiders, sticks, rocks, and lemonade.†The last one I assume she added when she saw me purchase a lemonade drink mix that was on sale (discounted from $3.99 to $.99—I love a good deal).
I thought I’d start with the middle child for once. I really think the best way to describe our recent trip to Zion National Park is to tell the story child by child.
The way we have our car seats arranged, 
Isaac and Nicole sit in the middle and Charlotte sits all the way in the back by herself. This seems to be the best arrangement because it allows me to easily buckle and unbuckle the two kids who need help and the hardest seat for me to reach is Isaac’s and he can buckle himself. I do sometimes feel bad when we go on trips or long drives because we have a hard time hearing little Charlotte all the way in the back. She does well to entertain herself, mostly by singing and sleeping. In fact, I can’t think of a time that she complained about her seat, unless you count the non-verbal complaint about Zach’s music choice pictured above.
As a girl who loves to play in the dirt, She couldn’t have been happier to camp. 
She was constantly playing in the dirt and finding sticks and rocks. Even the threat of spankings couldn’t keep her hands clean for 5 minutes. She did receive a few spanks and often when Zach called out her name she’d stand up and run away with her little hands covering her bottom as she yelled: “don’t spank me.†Ironically, when we got home I asked her what her favorite part of the trip was and she said “playing in the dirt.â€
She was a good little camper. She loved watching the fire, although she was sad that it was orange instead of pink. One of her other favorite things seemed to be the “silly bus†which was “a bus attached to a bus.â€
We went on lots of little trails. 
She walked most of each trail, but often insisted on holding mommy’s hand or held onto the stroller that I was pushing. Charlotte and I often trailed the rest of the group as she walked along the dirt next to the path and would stop to pick up a rock or stick. Once she had collected a stick she’d trace the dirt along the path with it and poke any small stream of water she saw along the way. When she got to tired she was hoisted up to Zach’s shoulders where she happily rode along wearing her father’s adventuring hat.
Charlotte wanted me to play a game with her.
I told her that I needed to unload the dryer first. As a form of protest, she climbed into my laundry basket as I was pulling the clothes out. I just continued my work and pulled clothes out on top of her. Soon she thought this was fun. She stayed in the basket as I unloaded the washer and loaded the wet clothes into the dryer. She said she was going to wait until the next batch was dry so that I could pile them on top of her too. I walked out, only to return a few moments later and find her sound asleep in the laundry basket.
I took some days off this week, so I thought I’d spend a day with each of the older children. When I asked them what they wanted to do, Isaac wanted to go to a mountain far away, and Charlotte wanted to look at fish.
So Thursday morning, Isaac and I set out for Arches National Park. It’s not the best for mountains, but it’s accessible in this cold spring. When we set out, we had a solid foot of new snow; I had to put Grandpa’s truck in four wheel drive to get out of our driveway. Things were sloppy on US 6 through Spanish Fork Canyon and on into Price as well.
That little Toyota is probably the finest piece of 20th-century automotive technology. While it’s a little underpowered and noisy at any kind of speed, it’s pretty near indestructible. With 275,000+ miles on it, it’s still sporting the original clutch, transmission, and motor. On top of that, any trail I’ve thrown it at (and I confess I haven’t gone too nuts) has been no problem. There are some quirks; as we hit Soldier Summit, the right side wiper popped off. A helpful clerk at Checker Auto in Price got us the right part (these pick-ups don’t have j-hooks for the wipers, so you need an adapter) and got us on the road again.
When we got to Arches, Isaac and I headed up to Delicate Arch. Isaac is a chatty kid when he wants to be, and he had questions and thoughts about everything. I use a pair of trekking poles when I hike, and when they’re not extended, they’re just the right size for him to use. He calls them “hikersâ€, and talks about how the help us not to fall over. Any time we’d go up a hill or along a ledge, he’d talk about how we were helping each other not fall. We would look for the cairns of stones
Isaac is a good hiker. Delicate Arch is 1.5 miles each way, and he did just fine.
After we hiked to Delicate Arch, we went down and roamed around in the Double Arch area. He was a pretty fearless climber there, and scrambled all over the rocks.
The GPS recommended the Willow Springs road to get out of the park, and I figured since we had the truck, we could give it a try. It was very bouncy, and by this time, the boy was very tired. Even going slow there were a few obstacles that tilted the truck a lot or bounced it. Once we hit pavement again, though, he got a nap in. Then it was off for home.
Charlotte wanted to see some fish, so we went to the aquarium in Sandy. It was very crowded, and while they had a few nice displays, it was just a little underwhelming. Charlotte still liked it, though. She especially liked one of the Amazon displays, where they had little caiman, turtles, and fish swimming together. I showed her an octopus; it made her very nervous, though. When we were done with the aquarium, I took her to Cabella’s so she could look at a lot of fish without a crowd. She fell asleep on the way up and on the way back, so I didn’t push it; we’ll have lots of times together if I have my way. Unfortunately, it was really dark in the aquarium, so my pictures didn’t work out well. Here’s one of Charlotte helping me admire a spider.
