Sophie in January

Where's your mouth?

Where's your ear?

Where's your pretty hair?

Where are your eyes?

Where is your nose?

Sophie got a paint set for Christmas- she really gets into it. Her pictures are actually pretty good.



Fairly often Sophie will bring me the camera and smile- she loves having pictures taken and then looking at them.



She also loves to have her nails painted, she even pretended to them herself. I guess she is also pretending to put on eye makeup but I have no idea where she would have gotten that from, because I never wear any.

If you aren't happy, change it!

Last night I went to an Relief Society Meeting where we had Dr. Dave Adams come and talk to us about fighting stress, anxiety, and depression. I liked what he had to say and decided to share it on my blog in case someone out there who reads this wants to make a change.

Dr. Adams said that before he will prescribe meds for someone who feels like they have depression (or anytime someone talks to them about not feeling happy) he asks them to really work on these 6 things to see if they can make a difference. He said if you don't like the way your life is going or the way you are feeling than you can make the effort to change it.

1. Exercise: 30-40 mins a day of strenuous exercise (it should make you feel winded).
-he said that sometimes we will be on vacation somewhere like Hawaii and we see people on vacation out running and we say to ourselves that they must really love exercise, not everyone that exercises regularly loves it, many people do it consistently because they know that helps them feel better.

2. Church: studies show that active participation in any church or religion helps peoples mood.

3. Talk: don't socially isolate yourself, it helps to talk about things that are bothering you but it is even beneficial to talk about something as simple as the weather or as controversial as politics
- if you have trouble talking that is where Counselors come in, they are trained to draw people out of themselves

4. Keep your mind busy and your days productive: before you go to bed make a list of 5-10 things you want to accomplish the next day, even if it is supposed to be a relaxing day you can list things like read in a certain book or work on a certain hobby. Even if you only get a couple done you can recognize that you did get something done.

5. Mood follows your actions:
Common habits that contribute to depressed mood:
- staying up too late: too many people think they are night owls when they shouldn't be
- too much TV/video/texting/computer games: the more time you spend on these things the less you see your self and others as people not just things
- talking about others

Everyday you should be spending time in prayer, reading your scriptures, and serving others.

6. Mood follows your thoughts: try and keep a grateful heart, don't dwell on negative stuff, everyday can be good or bad depending on what you dwell on


A note about food: Dr. Adams said that his best advice concerning food and depression is to not overindulge. He said if you make brownies, telling yourself you will only have one, and then you do it helps your self esteem so much. If you overindulge you feel worse about yourself and it doesn't help you be healthy.

A note about light: Don't go home and sit in a dark room or a dark house, let the sun light in and enjoy the world around you.

If you don't like how you feel- change it, don't wait for something to make it better!

sorry no pics

I thought I needed to update but seeing as our laptop (where we put all our pics) died the other day I have no pics for now. I hopefully will get them back later. Josh has been working night and day to get it back up, so far it's not all working but it is enough that we could move all our files to an external hard drive- which we still need to buy. It seems like the time for things breaking for us, my cell phone won't let me into my messaging any more, I can't check or write texts or get into my voice mails. Bummer for me because I would way rather text than call but Josh has plans to fix it after he gets the computer dealt with.

Sophie and I went to Oregon over MLK weekend to surprise my sister. We had a good time going to her baby shower, getting pedicures, and playing lots of games. I feel like between going to zumba with a friend and playing my mom's ABBA dance game I exercised more in three days than I usually do in a week, but it was so good for me.

Sophie is potty training this week, yesterday didn't go super well but so far today there has been big improvement. I really can't believe how fast she is growing up. Her words have improved so much, she talks a lot now. She also has figured out how to move my step stool around the house to get what she wants. It's frustrating but also so cute.

Christmas

Christmas eve we had Josh's family over- we exchanged homemade gifts this year and I thought everyone did such a good job. His family is so creative.


Christmas morning the light reflected on our Nativity picture to give us a perfect reminder of the day.

We had such a good day. Sophie was slow at opening gifts but it's because she just enjoyed everything so much. She was so careful not to rip the paper of every gift. Her big gift was a play kitchen that she has played with every day since.
She got some finger puppets in her stocking and got a kick out of them.

She got this tutu from her cousin and aunt- she loves to dress up.

Sophie's dad was so thoughtful and gave Sophie batteries for Christmas so her music animals could all play again. She had run the batteries out of the bunny and duck a few times before we gave up replacing them but now she has her own batteries and is so happy to have them play music again for her. Along with the ones in the video she has two Christmas ones and often she will play them all at once and dance around to them.