Sydney's Dance Recital

Sydney's First Pair of Ballet Slippers.

Sydney finished off her first year of dance by participating in the annual production put on by her dance studio. Although it was kind of stressful getting ready for the big day...it turned out super cute. She sang and danced to this song (I think it might be from Little Mermaid II) "Shhhh, Please! Don't Wake the Whale" Here is a cute pose of Sydney in her costume and makeup. Yes, make-up...it requires lots of patience to try and put eyeliner and mascara on a three year old.

At the end of the dance everyone had to make an X, and Sydney was showing us her X!


I know it is kind of hard to see much in this picture...but Sydney is the last dancer on the right. She was the youngest (and shortest) girls in her class so she was on the end of the line-up. This was a picture from the dress-rehearsal day.

Dress rehearsal was hilarious. We made it to the school where she would be performing at and checked into the little girls dressing room (which was the band room, I guess). There were probably 50 other little girls and their mom's getting their hair, make-up, and costumes on. It was pretty crazy in the dressing room...you can only imagine. All the little girls were SUPER excited to get all dressed up. I tried so hard to get a few cute pictures of all the little girls in her class but I felt like a paparazzi chasing Sydney and the rest of them around the room. They kept jumping down the "steps" in the room and chasing each other all around. I'm really glad I didn't have to be a room mom on the day of the recital. The room moms' job was to keep all the girls in their assigned class in their costume (without letting them mess up their hair and make-up or tear those cute costumes!) and keep these excited little girls quiet and occupied for FOUR hours. Can you believe that?? I just held my breath when the lights when on for Sydney's dance, just hoping she had made it out onto the stage all in one piece! I guess it all worked out somehow.

Here are a few of the girls in Sydney's class.

Congratulations Sydney! You are our cute little ballerina!

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Our first week...

Well we survived the first week. I just need to remember that the first year goes by so fast. Sometimes it is hard to be very excited about the newborn stage...especially at 2:30 am. At least it is too hot to go much of anywhere during the day so I don't mind staying home as much. Everyone has been very helpful and we really appreciated all the food that our friends and family brought over.

We are definitely getting more sleep than we ever did with Sydney. So far Sophie wakes up about every three hours at night and is awake for about thirty minutes to an hour at a time (so that means 2 hours of sleep in a row)! Sydney usually slept for about a half hour and was awake about an hour at a time so that pretty much meant no sleeping for anyone. Sophie also takes naps during the day so I can squeeze in a nap if I need to.

Every time I look at Sophie, I feel like I am looking at a tiny copy of Sydney. They both have/had the same little expressions...like making O's with their mouth and just staring around all wide eyed. This is a picture of Sydney (above) when she was about a week old but and I think they look almost alike. Sophie might look like she has lighter skin, but it is probably a combination of better picture quality and the absence of jaundice (which Sydney had problems with when she was a newborn).

Sydney and Sophie are making funny faces for the camera.

Sydney is showing us how wide she can open her mouth.

Ok...now it is Sophie's turn!

We were really hoping that Sophie wouldn't take a pacifier. Neither of us enjoy getting up in the middle of the night to plug it back in. At one point, we used to put 5-7 binks all around Sydney's head at night, hoping that if it fell out she would be able to find at least one to plug back in. There were soooo many nights I remember hunting all over for those little binks. Sometimes they would fall underneath the crib and then we would have to crawl under there to get them. Sophie unfortunately seems to really like her bink and gets very upset if we try to take it away or just do without it. Usually after she has been fussing for 15 minutes in the middle of the night, it is just easier to give in and let her have it. Oh well, I guess if this is her worst habit, I can handle it. It's just the no sleeping thing that I have a problem with.

Here is another cute sleeping picture of Sophie. Sometimes she likes to be swadled but inevitably she somehow frees her arms and puts them up around her face.

I was getting ready to download pictures to the computer and Sydney insisted I take some pictures of her in her princess dress to put on our site. Like usual, she won't stand/sit still for the picture even though I probably took 10-15 pictures. At least this one has an almost normal smile! Besides playing dress up princesses, Sydney LOVES to cut and color. She will spend hours cutting out things and coloring them. Right now the house has lots of little scraps everywhere and I don't have a big enough fridge to put up every picture she has colored for us.

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Sophie has arrived!

Sophie Grace Poulsen was born May 29, 2007 at 8:09 am! She was 6 lbs. 8 oz. and 20 and a half inches long. So far most of the pictures of her she is very sleepy because we are too tired to take pictures in the middle of the night when she is wide awake! Sydney was so excited to meet her. Thank goodness this labor and delivery was much easier than Sydney. Actually we only stayed one day at the hospital because the hospital we delivered at doesn't keep the babies overnight in the nursery. Since Mark and I had to stay up all night with Sophie...we just figured it would be easier to go home and go through that with more space at our house.

Sydney just got back from dance class and is helping out by holding Sophie. We think Sophie looks just like Sydney did when she was a baby. Although, Sophie doesn't look like she had such a rough time...because she didn't take nearly as long to come out.

Sophie likes to be bundled all tight like a burrito! When we got home from the hospital Mark went to the store and found this blanket made specially for swadling. It has a little pocket to tuck the baby into and velcro on the outside. We are not as good as the nurses at the hospital at wrapping Sophie up.

Here she is at home, sleeping of course because it is daytime. We give her a bottle about every 3 hours and then she usually goes right back to sleep. We're going to have to work on getting her to stay awake more during the day. She is doing really well with eating and digesting everything. It is such a difference from Sydney. Sydney had so much trouble with eating and was always spitting up all over everything. It is kind of nice for us.

When we got home, Sydney was just playing with all her toys and I guess she drew this picture on her sketch pad. She ran to show me her picture of her and Sophie. I thought it was very cute! We tried to get Sophie to wake up a bit this afternoon by putting her in the swing and Sydney sat beside her and kept singing little songs to her. Sophie only peeped open her eyes and then went back to sleep.

One last cute picture of Sydney holding Sophie...the first time Sydney came to visit. Thank you to all the family that helped watch Sydney. It was very nice to have Mark at the hospital the entire stay. He helped out so much last night. I know Sydney had fun "sleeping over". Hopefully soon we'll get some new pictures where Sophie is a bit more awake.

This was Memorial Day weekend when we were all just trying to relax a little bit before the baby came. Sydney and her Daddy are playing X-Box. At least Sydney likes to pretend she is playing with one of the controllers.

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Sleepover!

We decided to have a fun sleepover for Sydney with her cousins Lexie and Tori last weekend. I think all three of the girls had lots of fun and I'll admit...even though we were exhausted Saturday night, Mark and I had fun too. Girls have LOTS of energy (especially when they all get together)!

Lexie and Tori came over on Friday afternoon and we played with all the toys and ran around the house playing tag and screaming! Then Mark decided to come home and join in the fun.

We packed all the girls into the car and stopped at Little Caesars for pizza and breadsticks and headed to the new splash park to play. There were only a few people at the park so the girls took lots of turns spraying each other with these water cannons. Tori kept squealing and running through the arches that sprayed lots of water. Sydney and Lexie stood underneath the buckets to try and get drenched but then the water kept pouring just right beside them...or else they would jump out of the way, just before the bucket spilled. They even managed to eat a little dinner despite how much fun they were having. We also played in the regular park and went on all the swings.


Afterwards, we dried everyone off and changed back into our clothes. At the same park they were showing the movie "Cars" on a big screen so we found a place on the grass and spread out our blanket. The girls had lots of fun chasing each other in the grass and jumping around until it got dark.


Then like any sleepover, they ate lots of Oreo's and fishie crackers while they watched their movie. Finally we loaded everyone back up in the car and went home to try and start the whole going to bed process.

You would think that after all this excitement and no naps the girls would go to sleep almost immediately. I guess that was only wishful thinking. The next morning we had to get up early so Sydney could go play in her last soccer game. She was so tired and a bit crabby from the night before. Plus it was really hot out...good thing it was the last game of the season. Then all the girls wanted to go back to the splash park one last time so we drove back over there and had some more fun (because they have more energy than Mark and I do, obviously). We made Sydney go to bed a little bit earlier on Saturday night and Mark and I crashed. Mark is such a good sport to spend his weekend with all of the girls. On Sunday we went to a birthday party for a little boy in our ward that Sydney is friends with. Actually she was the only girl there and it was fun to watch her play with all the boys. She had a blast playing light sabers and monster trucks with the other kids. I guess that was a good balance to all the girly stuff she did this weekend. Well I hope everyone enjoys their Memorial Day weekend...and maybe we'll have some exciting news soon.

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