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!!!
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.
Taking Nicole camping with us turned out not to be our best idea. 
Our first problem was that since she couldn’t walk she became filthy very quickly if allowed to crawl around. She spent most of her time either in someone’s arms, in her high-chair, or in the stroller. She seemed happy enough most of the day. She was a little wiggly on the bus at times, but in her stroller along the paths she would either sleep or ride along contentedly.
Our biggest challenge came at bedtime. Typically I read her some stories, sing her a song and then lay her in bed where she cries herself to sleep. She usually doesn’t cry too much, but in a strange place I 
thought her crying might be worse and I didn’t dare annoy the entire campsite by letting her try. First I walked her around until she fell asleep, but she woke up as soon as I tried to lay her down. Then we thought we’d see if she’d be content laying in our bed with us. She just wiggled endlessly and became quite unhappy. Frustrated and tired, I put her back in the stroller and walked around in circles until she fell asleep. It was too dark to go far and I didn’t want her to wake the campsite while I found a flashlight. I carefully removed her from the stroller and laid in my bed with her in my arms and she was awake within five minutes. I put her to sleep again by holding her close and rocking her as I paced around by her bed and once I felt that she was sufficiently sleeping I laid her down and she stayed asleep, sometime after 11:00 PM. She woke up a little after 4:00 
AM ready for breakfast and play. I grabbed a few things quickly and found my way to the bathroom which was lit and had a floor not made of dirt. I fed her and let her crawl around on the bathroom floor until about 6:30 AM when I could see that the sun had come up. At which point I could see well enough to take her on a walk in her stroller. She actually fell asleep, but I only got a 10 minute break on my bed before the other kids started waking up and woke Nicole up in the process. We decided we didn’t want to try another night like that and so instead of sleeping one more night in our tents and then leaving in the morning, we packed up our campsite and left after dinner.
My little Nicole turned one on Wednesday. So I thought almost a week late, I might write 
a little bit about her. Being a third must be hard. Number 1 is naturally spoiled with attention, on number two you try really hard to show them as much attention as number one, but by the time you get to number three it gets even tougher—especially when one and two are still home with you all day. In some ways poor little Nicole gets the short end of the stick. For example, I recently discovered that Nicole really likes to look at books with me.
Nicole is at the age where her personality is really starting to bloom. She loves to dance and yell. She yells when she’s happy and when she’s mad. If she likes a doll or stuffed animal she usually growls and buries her head in it. I even saw her do this to a cat once. She squeals with delight when she sees an animal,
particularly a cat or dog and giggles when a dog jumps up on her and licks her face.
She loves to climb the stairs, especially at grandma’s house. She crawls up a few steps and then turns around to make sure you’re following her. Once she sees your face she laughs and climbs a few more steps as fast as she can. Unfortunately, she hasn’t mastered the proper down technique.
She has a bit of a fearless streak in her that is very different from her older siblings (who are both big chickens). In the bath she splashes and lays on her stomach and tries to lay all the way down on her head sometimes. When she climbs onto a chair she immediately grasps the back of the chair and starts shaking it.
Some of her favorite foods are pickles and grapes.
Does anyone else think it’s weird that we celebrate Christ’s triumph 
over death by saying a bunny hops around hiding candy and colored eggs? Were still at that stage where we are developing our traditions and I just didn’t have it in me to hype the Easter Bunny—I need more justification for his “existence†I suppose. We tried to be simple this year, we hid a bag of jelly beans and a bag of Reces Peanut Butter cups and gave each kid one gift. We decorated hard-boiled eggs, but then I just fed them to the kids instead of hiding them.
I tried to put more emphasis on Christ by talking about the Crucifixion and showing them a few movies about Christ and his Crucifixion. Charlotte and I watched “To This End Was I Born,†and talked about the events at the end of Christ’s life. I’m grateful for the special moments we had together as we watched that film. After Church, we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for dinner followed by a short Easter devotional. Krista helped me fill 12 plastic eggs with scriptures and items surrounding Christ’s Atonement, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. I hid the eggs around the living room and the kids found the eggs and delivered them to family members who read the scriptures contained therein. We followed that activity by watching our Church’s Easter message (given my one of my very favorite Apostles).
She must be teething, there’s no other explanation for her mutilation of this package of bologna. I had to pry it from her cute little hands so the cashier could ring it up and Nicole cried until the bologna was returned to her. The cashier said she’d never seen a kid do that with bologna, but I suppose I’d be more concerned if it was a common occurrence. You may also notice that someone had second thoughts about buying that bleach in the background—not really an impulse buy.
I am grateful that I got to see my mom last weekend, even if it was a very short visit. 
She is seriously one of my very favorite people and no matter how much time I get with her, I always want more.
She flew in on Saturday and spent Monday night at Krista’s before flying home on Tuesday morning. We had just enough time to swim at my Uncle Toby’s house in Lindon, make cookies, play two hands of cards, stay up late talking twice, drink a 
cup of hot cocoa, read stories to the children, play games with Isaac and Charlotte, hold Nicole, and make some soup.
After my grandmother’s death last year, we realized how few pictures we had of us as children with our grandmother so although we prefer to look at adorable pictures of the children by themselves, we have decided that it’s important to take pictures of the kids with their grandma and made sure to take more pictures this time.
***Grandma Cochran beware, I intend to take more pictures of you with my kids as well****
My youngest brother moved in on February 11th and will be living with us for an unspecified amount of time (we’re still building his room–sorry Bryan). Anyway, I thought his first week was worth writing about, so here goes:
He arrived on Wednesday night just in time for dinner. Little Nicole stared at him all through dinner with an expressionless face that made us laugh. Every time I would look at her she was staring at Bryan.
Charlotte welcomed him in by showing him his chair at the table and telling him that he sleeps downstairs.
The cats showed their displeasure by leaving a ‘surprise’ by my washer. I responded to their ‘surprise’ by locking them downstairs with Bryan. Jack was so unhappy that he camped out at the top of the stairs. The next morning when Bryan attempted to come upstairs Jack hissed and threatened to scratch him. Bryan was scared of Jack so he went back downstairs and climbed out the window, but discovered the doors were all locked and he was without a key so he went back inside and found that Jack had abandoned his post and it was once again safe to go upstairs.
The blog publishing software that I usually use is not working, which is annoying because I don’t know javascript well enough to figure out how to get my pictures exactly where and how I like them. So I wondered if I could still insert a slideshow, Here are a series of pictures of Nicole (yes, I know I just inserted one of the pictures from this slideshow below, but I love it, so I’m not changing it).
I just love this picture of Nicole so I had to write a post about her as an excuse to post it.
She is growing up so fast. My little Nicole loves to hear laughter. She can be in the middle of crying and if she hears laughter, she’ll stop crying and smile as big as she can. She has also figured out how to clap, but she’s not great at it yet.
She’s been working on gross motor control the most lately. She still hasn’t quite mastered crawling forward, but she has been pulling herself into a kneeling position against toys and other such things regularly and tonight she pulled herself to a standing position in her crib and got stuck that way since she didn’t know how to lower herself back down into a sitting position.
Nicole has gotten really good at crawling—backwards. She can’t seem to figure out how to go forwards. I’ll put her down on a blanket with toys while I clean up after lunch and when I come back she’s backed herself in a corner and can’t get out. The worst is when she’s trying to get a toy that’s just out of reach. She starts crawling backwards and crying because she keeps getting farther and farther away. Although she still hasn’t figured out forwards, she’ll step with her arms forward out of sitting position and step each hand forward once before going backwards the rest of the way.
With the exception of a few lines on Nicole learning to splash, I think my last blog about 
her was a candy-coated gripe session. I love my little girl, but in some ways she has been my most challenging baby.
I think the Zantac she’s been taking may have worked because her fits of uncontrollable crying have stopped. She still spits up constantly, but I can deal with that. Since starting the Zantac she has gone from a fussy baby who could tolerate less than 5 minutes of not being held unless she was asleep, to a very pleasant and happy baby who enjoys playing with toys or sitting in her excersaucer. She has also increased the amount of time she generally naps in a day, although she still has those days where she hardly naps at all.
The best part is that her funny little personality is starting to show more and more. She’s very expressive and makes lots of funny faces. She also likes to growl (like a tiger according to her siblings). She thinks Isaac and Charlotte are hilarious and regularly laughs and smiles at their antics. When she’s excited she flexes all her extremities with joy. Isaac loves to call her wiggle. She also seems to enjoy locating voices. Zach enjoys singing and then watching her jerk her head around until she finds him then as soon as she looks away he repeats his song and she repeats her search.
Things have been going so much better that I even took the doctor’s advise and took away her pacifier at 6 months and she does fine without it.
Yesterday I put Nicole in the sink for her bath (yes, I know, I’m sorry Erin) and she started splashing. She splashed and splashed and had a ball. It was so cute and fun, but the kitchen was soaking afterwards from the counters to the floor! 
I took way too many pictures which you can see by clicking here!
Krista and I decided we wanted to send my mom a package to make working in my dad’s office less depressing so we decided to make her those motivational posters with the word and then quote, only we thought we’d select pictures of our kids. We had some difficulty figuring out a good way to make them until I discovered this neat little tool. Here are the results of our work: (If you don’t see a slide show of pictures you may have to actually go to our website instead of reading our posts in a blog reader)
Click here to see the ones Krista made.
The kids got a letter from their cousin today. Isaac was excited to write back. Here is what he said and the responses from his sisters:
Dear Joshua-
I want to tell you about everything that we do. Like when we made a sugar mess today. We were spilling it. Mom was not happy.
I like big boy legos. I maybe would like different little blocks. I like to help my mother. I want to write all the things we do, me and Charlotte. . . play with big boy legos. . and playing with the building set. . .and um watching Nicole and. . um doing everything that I do.
I want to write about I can come there. I can’t get out the door without my 
mother. I can’t put the big boy legos on the floor.
I want you to write all that tigers do. They do. . Killing things, and eating the things that they killed, and kill things for dinners, and wake up in the nighttime and eat kids when they are naughty in the night and how they do everything that they do. How they get on trains is by scratching and breaking them. Tigers swim in water. Kids can’t be awake in the night. No letting Joshua go out of his bed in the night and his mom will look at this letter and not let her kid not to, not let her kid not to do that.
Lets tell them the mommy and daddy part about you guys. Tell them about when mom 
and dad got married and how Nicole looks at everything and how Nicole touches the floor sitting like that and how she plays with the toys on that and how she does everything and how she bees nice to Zebras and nice to Zebras like that. The Nicole part is talking about how babies do and the Nicole part is how much babies do.
I want to do how our family does. Tell how much we do. Tell them that I say what time will it be the last day. Our family does um, our family says different kinds of words. And like to not get sick and fat, but I want candy. And I like to put my fingers like this way right between my buttons (on his computer).
I like to drink water. Now the milk part. That we drink milk at every dinner time. That’s the whole milk part. Then we get out of the milk part. When you’re all finished typing it you will close the milk part.
From,
Isaac
Nicole says: “ahhh”. . .drool. . .. squeal. . .smile. . .”grrrr”
Mom: Charlotte do you want to write a letter to Joshua?
Charlotte: I have to close all of them
Mom: Do you want to write a letter
Charlotte: I will close the window like that.
My mother pointed out to me that in some pictures it looked like one of Nicole’s eyes was turning in. I asked the pediatrician about this and after examining her eyes for several minutes he determined that she has pseudoesotropia (essentially that nothing is wrong and it’s more of a visual illusion created by her facial structures.)
"In pseudoesotropia, the eyes appear to be crossed but are actually straight. This common condition in infants and young children is generally due to the infant’s facial structures. The wide bridge of the nose and small folds of eyelid skin on the nasal side of the eye contribute to this appearance by covering the "white" of the eye. This especially becomes apparent when the infant looks to the right or the left. As the infant’s facial structures mature, this appearance of crossing will improve and often disappear."
Click here for the source for the above quotations
