Four Months Old!

Yesterday Aria and Cadence turned four months old! They have grown so much in the last month - just the last week even! To celebrate this big milestone, we took a trip out to Park City as a family :)

We also wanted to take Brittny on her first ski lift and ride down the Alpine Slide! I went up with Brittny while Kurt watched the babies and then Kurt went up while she and I fed them.

Brittny was really scared to go on the ski lift and was also pretty apprehensive about going down the slide since there are no straps securing you in. But she ended up having fun!

Kurt has gone down this slide several times, so while Brit and I went on the "slow track," he sped down on one of the fast lanes.

The babies loved their first trip to Park City! They were so good the entire time, and hardly ever fussed!

They've grown up so much in the last month! According to our last appointment at WIC, the girls are both over 13 lbs! They are getting more and more rolls on their legs and necks :) They both love playing with toys now! They grab onto things and try to put it in their mouths. We think that they might be in the early stages of teething.

Cute little Aria has started to roll over! She's done it about three times now and it usually happens when she is trying to retrieve her pacifier. She can stand pretty well with help, but she also is able to lift her head up while she stands, which is new!

 Our pretty Cadence is talking like crazy! She's learned to make lots of new, interesting sounds and she is always testing her voice. She plays with toys a little more than Aria and can entertain herself for a long time with a toy. She hasn't rolled over to her stomach yet, but she rolls up on to her side a lot and we think she'll roll over really soon.

Our little girls are so big now and are making so many strides in their development! One BIG setback though, is that since we've moved to Utah they've had trouble sleeping through the night. We don't feed them at all through the night but they are constantly whimpering for their pacifiers at least ten times each during their eleven hours at night. Kurt and I have had some tough nights lately with little to no sleep because of it. The pediatrician warned us that this might happen before we left Hawaii and said that it should just be a short phase. That's what we are hoping! Other than that, the girls are doing really well and we just love them more than ever!

Raising Girls.

When I was pregnant with Aria and Cadence, we received all sorts of comments and advice when it came to raising girls. The comments ranged from "you're gonna have so much fun" to "oh gosh, I'm so glad I only have sons."

We recently watched a story on the news that described why (in the long run) it is better to have girls than to have boys. The reasons for this included that girls are less likely to live at home after age 18. They are less likely to ask for financial help. They are more likely to take care of their parents in their old age, etc. The story made some interesting points, so I considered this based on my experience thus far.

I have never had any sons before, but here are some things that I can tell you about raising girls. (Take into account that my girls are only three months old)

PROS:
-They don't pee on you unexpectedly while you're changing their diaper.
-You don't have to worry about the pain of things like circumcision.
-You can dress them up in cute dresses, headbands, etc.

CONS:
-I'm not positive, but I feel that girls whine more. Even as babies. While Aria and Cadence don't cry a ton, they whine and whimper a lot.
-Because they are so easy to shop for, you are always stuck with a ton of clothes to get rid of and not a lot of money in your wallet.

I don't know which is better necessarily, but I do know that I absolutely love having girls. I'm sure that there will be SO many more things to add to these lists as they grow, and I am looking forward to finding out what those things are.

However, one thing that Kurt and I have talked about is that we hope to raise our girls to not live by the traditional stereotypes that are usually imposed. Kurt hopes to teach them how to code and learn computer languages so they can be vital in a budding technological world. We want them to love math and science... to play with Legos and Lincoln Logs while also playing with Barbies like I did. When we went to Chili's the other day, Cadence was mistaken for a boy simply because she was wearing green. I want them to be the type of girls that feel comfortable in green, in blue, and in pink or purple. I want them to feel that they can try anything... As a female wrestler myself, I don't want them to think that they can't do something simply because their gender traditionally doesn't participate in that certain activity. Ultimately, we want them to embrace themselves as girls, to love themselves and to know that they are daughters of God.