The Rothlisbergers: Roth Randoms

Reagan
Since I do detailed monthly recaps on her, I'll stick to the biggest highlights of the 10 days since her 5-month post :)
- Finally starting to sleep until 6 am every day! Somehow getting past that 6 mark just makes me feel like it was a full night's sleep!
- Very interested in food! Her eyes get huge and she tracks any food or drink that comes into view. I've been giving her a little bit of water already and she loves to grab the bottle and do it herself!
- She's a very happy easy baby! I often feel bad because she gets woken up and drug around so much with our various activities, but she takes it well! She's quick to smile and just likes being around the family.

McKinley
- This girl loves her "Mommy School" and is doing really well! Our recent accomplishment was learning to write her name :)
- She started a little gymnastics class this month and loves it! It's not nearly as in-depth (or as expensive) as the one Madison did, but McKinley just loves having her own thing to do
- McKinley is generally a very happy girl, but she can get very upset very quickly if she doesn't get something she wants. She's super cute until you cross her! She's also funny when she gets in trouble - she actually runs to us and tries to hug us if we're getting on her for something. She's very sensitive to being in trouble.
- The biggest thing she usually gets in trouble for is being too loud. The poor girl is just naturally loud (Jordan says she gets that from me but I have no idea what he's talking about!) and is always inadvertently waking up Reagan. We've bee trying to work on toning down her speaking voice a bit
- She also picks up on things that Madison gets in trouble for and is quick to tell us that she didn't do whatever it is that Madison did.
- She stopped napping last Christmas but she's been pretty good about doing quiet times since Madison started school and if I run errands around the middle of the day or go visit Jordan for lunch she almost always falls asleep in the car and will stay asleep for a while when I carry her into bed.
- However, she doesn't go to bed very well at night. She often stays up well past her bedtime playing or reading in her room. We need to crack down more on this. One night we even went into our room at our normal time of 10 pm and found her sound asleep on our bed! We had no idea she had snuck in there!
- Despite staying up late, she's also usually the first one up in the morning and always comes into our room demanding breakfast - no hello, no good morning, just "I want breakfast." I'll admit this sometimes doesn't put me in the best mood to start the day :)
- She loves doing things with me, school, gymnastics, etc., but she still misses Madison terribly during the day. Anytime we get ready to leave to go somewhere she asks if we're going to pick up Madison and she always whines in the car while we're waiting for Madison that it's taking too long and she just wants to see her sister. She also insists that Madison not tell me anything about her day until McKinley can hear it too
- Some of her favorite things right now are Super Why, raspberries, Mickey Mouse Candyland and coloring. She also really likes playing with other people. Madison was always more of an independent player but McKinley always wants someone to play with her
- We're still working on her eye turn. Some days she does great and others not so much, usually when she's tired. We do vision therapy every day but some days she fights it. Most of the time she's pretty good though and she's definitely doing a lot better than she was initially.
- She started participating in a weekly play group with three other girls her age in our ward. The first day she went, I was explaining to her where she was going and who would be there. When I told her her friends Peyton and Clara would be there, she very matter-of-factly said, "Peyton will be shy to me and Clara will take things from me." It was just so cute! No judgment or anything, just a simple statement that she knew each girl and knew exactly what would happen. She's had a great time with this! I love seeing her be able to do her own things!
- McKinley story: She has a pretty beat up copy of the Book of Mormon with lots of bent pages that she uses for our scripture study and to take to church. One day, I went to the distribution center to get two copies of the Book of Mormon for two kids in my primary class who don't have scriptures. When McKinley saw what I was buying, she begged me for new "straight" scriptures! She was so sincere and excited that I had to do it! She was so cute!! She told me on the way home that she was so excited to have new scriptures and she knew Heavenly Father would be so happy to see her reading her new scriptures. She told everyone we saw for the rest of the day that she got new scriptures and has been so excited to use them every night. She also walked into nursery on Sunday and told her new nursery leader that she got new scriptures and pulled them out of her scripture bag to show everyone. This parenting thing is tough, and I know 90% percent of the time I'm totally messing it up, but every once in a while things like this happen that help me know I'm at least getting some of the important things right!

Madison
- Madison is loving school of course! She still loves PE and all the craft things they do the most
- She did get her first yellow card when Mrs. Barnes caught her doodling on the table. She was devastated of course but it was a good learning experience for her, both in terms of proper behavior and the basic principles of repentance.
- Her and Ansley are still best friends and enjoy playing together. They recently were both able to conquer the monkey bars, which was so exciting for Madison. When she started school a month ago, she couldn't even get to the second one and now she can go all the way across
- After they started doing some science work in school, Madison informed that she finally figured out what she wants to be when she grows up - a scientist
- As much as she loves school, time at home has actually become more difficult for her. She gets sad on the weekends when she can't go to school! She also has more of an attitude at home. McKinley waits all day for her to come home, but Madison doesn't want to play with her. I don't know if she thinks she's too big for her britches or sometimes she says she just wants to be alone, but whatever it is, it's kind of sad. They were always so close. They still are a lot of the time, but sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get Madison to play with her sister!
- However, playing with Reagan is another story. Madison is obsessed with Reagan! In fact, a lot of the time when she comes home, she ignores McKinley because she just goes straight for Reagan. I love that she feels that way about her baby sister, but I wish it was a little more even!
- When Madison and McKinley do play, they usually end up playing some variation of school. One of them is always Mrs. Barnes or the principal. One night McKinley even came to me upset because Madison was pretending to be the principal and had sent McKinley to the principal's office.
- She finally got to start karate! I still can't believe that's the activity she chose, but she loves it! I think it will help her a lot being more confident
- Madison story: One night a while ago I told the girls a story from my childhood when I was around 6 or 7 and didn't want to eat my mashed potatoes for dinner. Long story short, I ended up paying my little brother a dollar to eat them for me. They really like this story and ask me to tell it often. One night when Madison was struggling to finish her dinner, she disappeared from the table for a few minutes. When she came back, she whispered something to McKinley, who yelled no. Then Madison came over to me and held out a dollar. She was trying to pay me to eat her food!

The Rest of Us
- Well, Jordan has now been gainfully employed for over a month now! Which means we've actually been making money instead of bleeding it! This has been both a blessing and a curse. More money more problems! Obviously, we're grateful for the income but there seem to be so many people in line to take it from us that our goals are further away than we thought. Don't get me wrong, we're doing great and we've received many confirmations that things are going to be okay. But it turns out that a paycheck wasn't really the answer to all our problems that we thought it would be :)
- Overall, the job is going well, but the schedule is a killer. The mornings are nice but the evenings and Saturdays are tough. He works until 7 on Mondays, 6 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 4:30 on Saturdays. Mondays are just shot - he doesn't get home until 7:30, which is when the girls are going to bed; we moved FHE to Tuesdays. The rest of the week is still tough just because by the time he gets home at 6:30 and we have dinner, it's almost time for bed anyway. There's just not much family time. We were looking forward to family time on Thursdays and Sundays, but Thursdays are hard because Madison isn't home until 4. Jordan is also trying to spend time with her on those days so he takes her to school at 8:30, goes back at 11:30 to have lunch with her and then goes back at 3 to pick her up. Consequently, he's not home much and the day isn't much of a break for me. So all that leaves us with is Sundays. Except Jordan's new calling (see below) takes pretty much the whole afternoon so there's not much family time there either. Anyway, it's tough.
- We made an exciting adult purchase - a new mattress! We've had the same one for seven years since we got married and it was a super cheap one. It got to the point where Jordan woke up every morning with back pain. We actually bought one in June from an online retailer, and we really liked it - it was very comfortable! But it was also very hot. We kept it for a couple months but then randomly stumbled on one at Sam's Club that was the same foam but also had a "breathable" layer on top to keep you cool. And it was cheaper :) So we returned the other one and got the Sam's Club one and it's been great! So now between a cooling mattress, an air conditioner, a ceiling fan and another fan we have set up next to the bed blowing right on us, we've finally found a way to sleep comfortably in this wretched heat!
- We spoke in church at the end of July, making the third time in a year we've done so. I told Jordan we have to stop moving!
- We also got new callings. Jordan is now the financial clerk, which is right up his alley! He's loving it. I'm struggling with it a little bit. Like I mentioned above, Sundays were really our only family time once church got out at 1. But now he has to stay until at least 3 and sometimes as long as 5. Not ideal. And then I got called as a primary teacher of 6 year olds. They're cute and all, but between spending two hours with them and then all afternoon alone with my own kids, Sunday has just turned into another day in which I take care of kids all day by myself! Yikes.
- We had a fantastic date at the end of the month! Jordan's boss gave him four tickets to a Diamondbacks game! We thought about taking the girls, especially since there were fireworks afterward, but the seats were really close to the field (nine rows behind the DBacks dugout!) and we knew we'd have to worry about them getting hit and that they wouldn't be able to play as much. So we decided to use it as our date night and invited a couple from our ward that we've become friends with (although we were a teeny bit nervous about this since the husband is our bishop - is it weird to hang out with the bishop?! haha!). We had an awesome time! Reagan came with us and was on the Jumbotron and then Jordan's mom called and said she was on TV for 15 seconds! She's a cute baby! We actually didn't watch very much of the game since we were chatting so much! The fireworks were good, but I don't think anything will compare to the Redbirds. Then at the end, a Christian rock band called Tenth Avenue North performed a concert on the field (it was Faith and Family Night). I was looking forward to the concert because I like several songs this group sings, but it was kind of interesting to see how crazy into it these guys were as they were singing about God and Jesus. In some ways it was cool - they obviously were very sincere about what they were singing and really believed in their message. Maybe us Mormons are a little too uptight when it comes to things like that!
- One of our favorite things about living here is how close we are to the Gilbert temple. We see it and drive by it all the time - on the way to Madison's school, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, everywhere. I can even see it from the front of my grocery store! It's really cool to have it be so prominent. We started a little tradition of singing a couple lines of I Love To See The Temple whenever we drive by it, which has been fun! I think it's so good for my girls to have the temple as part of their everyday lives.
- We've played around over the years with different methods of family scripture study, mostly using the Illustrated Scripture books. In July we decided to pull out the big guns and read every night from the actual Book of Mormon. We use the schedule from the BofM 365 site and end up reading about 20-30 verses each night. This has been so good! Obviously, the girls don't usually understand everything that's going on, but we try to talk through it and point out significant stories or verses. We also talk about some of the unfamiliar words. But even though they don't understand all of it, I love that they're learning the language of the scriptures and becoming familiar with them. We all take turns reading a verse; Madison reads completely on her own and McKinley repeats what Jordan or I whisper to her. There have been some late nights where we only read a verse each instead of the whole passage just for the sake of time, but in two months, we've read 70 pages! Go us :)

This might be a little much, but I had to include this picture just so I would remember it. Definitely wedding video fodder for both girls. Madison started yelling from the bathroom and I walked in to find this. I know sisters are close, but ...

Supposed to be in bed but at the coloring table instead

Just because they're cute

First time in the Bumbo. She really loves sitting up

We had an FHE lesson about the importance of gender (we've been learning about the Proclamation) so Jordan planned a girly activity and painted the girls' nails!!

Gray hair ... I have no words

Dinner at Aunt Marilyn's ... just call him the kid whisperer

McKinley's first day of gymnastics

Dance party

Another FHE activity about our bodies. So of course we made full-size replicas!

McKinley built this one afternoon and said it was a road to Grandpa's and Disneyland

Cute girl! She loves this elephant toy

This was actually in July but I just got the picture. All the cousins hanging out at our house!

Loves those toes

This was Jenna and Lincoln's date night so we had Mayli, Ryker and Gage over!

The girls fell asleep on Madison's bed one night and this is how I found them, with Madison's feet on top of McKinley

One night as Jordan and I were relaxing in the living room we heard rustling in the kitchen and playroom and knew McKinley was up. The next morning I found these piles of books in the kitchen, the playroom and her room. She loves to read!