The boys are 2!

Yes, they've been 2 for a few weeks now, but I'm obviously not blogging very regularly. We celebrated on June 18th with a family party. Here are a couple pictures from their birthday party:

I ordered the big cookie from a lady here and she did a great job! I loved it - she even used the same colors in my "theme". I wanted to do an airplane birthday party, but had trouble finding an airplane cake. I tried to order an airplane cake from a lady that my sister knows, but she didn't do airplane cakes. Anyway, the big cookie was wonderful! And the boys could eat it by themselves and didn't make a huge mess.


In the past few weeks, I've noticed that E has become Mr. "I do it." He wants to do everything himself. E cracks me up all the time. He says the funniest things or imitates things. I love how he says "glasses" or "playset" because he has a little bit of a lisp.

I has become more of a mama's boy. I is also talking more. He is pointing out more things and saying what they are. E has been talking quite a bit, too, but I wasn't talking as much. I also loves to throw things. Anything. He especially loves to play catch. And swing. He spends a lot of time swinging outside.

N still has a very short attention span (unless she is playing on the xoom or watching TV). Not the best things for a 4 year old to do. She loves to read books. She also loves to help in the kitchen with baking. She also will play for short periods by herself in her room! In other news, N started waking up in the morning with a dry diaper, so she is now sleeping in her underwear. I know, so exciting!

Easter

Happy belated Easter! We had a fun Easter weekend with K's parents here visiting. We spent lots of time with them and with the cousins. So fun! Friday night we went to friends' house and made resurrection rolls. They were a great illustration of Jesus' resurrection! And they were really yummy and fun for the kids. They will be a new tradition for our family! We also dyed eggs and frosted cookies (the kids did mostly) with the cousins and Grandpa and Grandma on Saturday morning.

Dyeing eggs with Daddy at the cousins' house
Samuel getting in on the frosting of cookies

We went to church Saturday night for the Easter service. It was great! Lots of loud music! On Easter morning we did an Easter egg hunt at our house and had lunch at the cousins' house. We had another egg hunt that afternoon. The kids loved it!
E-man finding eggs

Emma striking a pose for the camera

I did one last round of the resurrection eggs with Emma yesterday and then packed up the plastic Easter eggs and decorations. May we be reminded all year of the joy of Easter and Jesus' resurrection!

(Big thanks to Aunt M for taking the pictures!)

Live blogging

I'm live blogging a cooking project with Emma. We got a fancy Xoom which is in need of a name. So I'm typing from the kitchen while waiting for the milk to "become" buttermilk. Now she is doing the sprinkles. And I'm sure I'm getting food on this thing. Pardon me, I need to open the sprinkles...there she's back at work. We're making filled cookies but I'm sure I did something wrong because there are supposed to be 30 cookies, but we will be lucky to get a dozen. I'm sure they will still be good, though - just large. Well, they smell good. Gotta go, Emma wants to play angry birds. :-)

Updated later: The cookies are yummy. They are chocolate cake cookies with vanilla frosting in the middle - like an oreo only better. They are very large and filling if you eat a whole one. I split one with Emma and she only finished 1/2 of her half. Next time we will use the right scoop (I later figured out that I grabbed the large scoop not the small cookie-sized one). You think I would notice that!

Update on the kids

Samuel has been scooting quite quickly and lots of different places lately. He loves to scoot to the kitchen and pick stuff up off the floor to eat. Yesterday I found a nasty hard piece of cheese in his mouth. He also loves to go to the laundry area and play with the shoes. Emma loved to play with shoes, too.

Michael is still quite content to sit and play or lay on his tummy and try to sleep. He loves to stand by the couch and will stand for a long time. He also loves to play peek-a-boo.

Both boys love, love, love to eat. Especially Samuel. He eats anything. Obviously. He eats off the kitchen floor. Michael is more picky, but still loves to eat.

Emma is in swimming lessons right now and is, well, improving. She wants to be held a lot by the teachers. And she gets very cold. But she's gone 3 times so far and has 2 left. She still gets excited to go. I think it's mostly because she gets to wear a swimming suit.

Emma also loves to go to the library and check out books. She picks the most random books and we read them over and over. Our (small) town library has a check out limit of 20 books. I think that's crazy. What happens when I have 3 kids that want to check out lots of books? Emma checked out 11 this last time.

Emma also loves to watch music videos on our tv and dance to them. K ordered a doo-hickey off Wo.ot that lets us connect to You-Tube. Her latest favorite? Shine by the Newsboys. While watching the Newsboys on You-Tube, I found this gem. I'll leave you with the Love, Liberty Disco. Love it!

I guess anything could happen now

So, did I tell you Emma is partly potty trained? She still wears a diaper at night and I've finally (yesterday) stopped putting a diaper on her at nap time. And guess what? She didn't go potty in her bed. And today - wonder of all wonders - she went #2 in the big potty!!! For the first time. Hopefully she'll keep going in the potty. She used to wait until she had a diaper on... This was a total surprise to me. She just went in to go potty and called out "I went poopy." (Sorry for all the potty terms.) I must admit I had to see for myself and help her wipe. And sure enough, there it was. I even took pictures. For her wedding. I'm totally kidding!!! Her grandpa wanted to see it. I'm not sure if that's what he meant, but that's what he's getting. Gross, huh!?! I will NOT post those pictures here. So now she gets to go out for ice cream (again - we did last night, too) with Daddy after supper. Fun!

In other big news, I fit back into some of my old shorts. I kind of fit in them at the end of last summer - if I sucked in my gut, I could get them buttoned. This is not to say that my gut is gone now...it's still jiggly, but it must be a little better. I only tried the biggest pair of shorts (they used to be saggy on me before pregnancy) so I'll keep it at that for today.

Oh, and I don't normally wear shorts, but I'm really warm today. If I was going somewhere where I knew someone, I wouldn't wear shorts. I'd go with capris instead. However, I did go to Fare.way in my shorts. It was me and the kids and the other cute older couples doing our grocery shopping. Those older ladies love the kids. And, fortunately, all three kids did really well shopping today.

One lady told me twice how blessed I am. "Yes," I said, smiling, "three times blessed."

Easter

Is it just me or is Easter sneaking up on anyone? I guess everything sneaks up on me lately.

We've been doing the resurrection eggs today. Emma loves to go through them and see what's inside each egg. I lost the little booklet that comes with the eggs somewhere when we moved. So we go through a different Easter story book. It's similar to the Read and Share Bible version - same pictures and story - only a little more detail. However, it doesn't have anything about the coins or the leather. So if someone has the resurrection eggs and the booklet, could you fill me in? I'm pretty sure I know what they're for - coins for Judas and leather for when the soldiers beat Jesus (? I think)....but I'm not really sure how to explain it to Emma.

I also love to do an Easter egg hunt with Emma (& the boys when they get older) usually before Easter with presents at the end. I bought a few little things for them. It's stuff I was going to get them anyway, but it's more fun when they're wrapped up!

I was talking to a friend last night and she mentioned that her 3 year old has a little bike with training wheels and she loves, loves it. Now I am on a mission to get one for Emma. I bet she'd love it, too. I plan to check craig.s.list, etc. Maybe I can find one on a garage sale this summer! And I need a helmet. Emma is accident prone. She trips and falls down randomly at least 3 times a day. Maybe that's the age she's at, because she spills her drink at least once a day, too.

I hope you're enjoying the nice weather! We are! I love to go outside! Only when it's not too hot, though...

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days where you're stuck at home and wishing to be somewhere else?! Yeah. It's one of those days. I was supposed to go to MOPS this morning, but Michael has a yucky sounding cough. And Emma has a runny nose. So we're home. Emma was supposed to have her very first Valentine's exchange. We made heart Valentines. I cut them out and she colored on them. Then we stuck smarties on them. Easy. Maybe I'll send them with her to the nursery on the 14th.

I just hope Samuel doesn't get anything. Sigh. On a happier note, it's Friday! Yay! And the Super Bowl is on Sunday. I like to watch football but I'm really honestly looking forward to the food. Hopefully everyone will be well and we can go to the party our Sunday school class is having.

Now Emma is sleeping - it's lunch time. She was up at 5:15 so we'll see if she takes an afternoon nap, too. And the boys are in bed. We'll see if they go to sleep. They both need to, but Michael just doesn't like to nap in his crib. Here's hoping they sleep!

I really don't have much to say...

We're all doing fine here. Michael has a bit of a cold, but it may have something to do with him getting teeth...? He has one on the bottom right but don't they usually come in twos?! I keep waiting for the second one to pop through. He is putting everything in his mouth. I mean everything.

I can't believe it's February already. January was super busy so it went by quickly! We had Christmas with my family, Emma's 3rd birthday and infant dedication at church. Those were 3 of the 5 weekends. The other two we spent here relaxing. Aunt M took the kids' pictures last weekend. I love her pictures! Emma was in rare form and took some silly pictures. We didn't get a very good picture of the 3 kids together (the best one involved Emma looking like she was choking the boys and the boys looking like they weren't enjoying it), but the individual ones and the ones of the boys together turned out really well.

We're looking forward to a more relaxing February. Our good friends from Nebraska are coming to visit in a few weeks and we are very excited to see them again. They have a daughter who's close to Emma's age and her and Emma love to play together. Their playing involves running around and screaming. I guess that's how 2 and 3 year old girls play? They also have a daughter who was born last October, so she's close to the boys' age. I'm sure the boys will tease, I mean, play with her when they all get older.

My sister & husband are coming this weekend. I'm excited to see them! They are expecting a little girl in May. I may have mentioned that. But it's so fun to see how much she's 'grown' each time we see them. So fun! And we get to go shopping. Hopefully. If she is up for it!

3 years

Happy 3rd Birthday to my sweet Emma who makes me laugh daily. One of her quotes this past week was (while playing with her new doctor kit) "Dr. Seuss will be in shortly." We had just been to the pediatrician's office, but that's not our pediatrician's name.

Emma, you are my purple and pink, talk all the time, do-it-myself, sweet, loving girl. You love, love, love to help with anything and everything. Which is great most of the time. Your latest favorite phrase is "I love it." About food, toys or whatever.

I love spending my days with you! Happy Birthday, Sweetie! I love you!

Mommy

Big girl bed among other things

The big girl bed has been a smashing success here. We've only had it up for 2 weeks, though. We started with just the mattress on the floor and she fell off that a couple of times. We've since added the boxspring under the mattress and she's only fallen off once. She does, however, kick the wall which is attached to our bedroom and it scares me awake.

So far Emma loves being in her big girl bed and at most has gotten out once before a nap or bedtime. After I bring her back to bed and tell her that she needs to stay in bed, she talks to herself and then falls asleep. It's so sweet to see her sleeping in a bed. She looks so grown up. The next step will be to add the frame and headboard and I'm guessing it will get done this weekend.

We've also been organizing and rearranging the basement. Okay, K's been doing the work and I've been supervising. Next we need to get stuff out of the boys' closet and organize/arrange their room. Right now, it is a big mess. But Emma does love playing in there with all the new stuff. We found another crib - yay! And my family had a party/shower for us last Sunday and we got a lot of great stuff! I think we're getting there, well, except for arranging the boys' room and buying massive amounts of diapers. Has anyone noticed that it's harder to find newborn diapers lately? Or maybe it's just me. That's probably it.

One more thing. I love to hear Emma sing along with the songs on the radio. She may not understand or know all the words, but she can sing a few of them (she makes up the rest of the words). Her latest favorites are Mighty to Save by Michael W. Smith and Never Let Go by Matt Redman. In fact, she randomly started singing them yesterday in the morning when I was not having a great day and it brightened up my day. You have to listen pretty hard to guess what song she's singing, but once you know what song it is, you can catch some of the words. And she'll sing along with Untitled Hymn by Chris Rice. Some of it is pretty repetitive, so she can catch on to those words. And of course she knows the Veggie Tales theme song. Maybe she'll be a good singer someday. Which would not be taking after her mommy. :)

She cracks me up

Last night after K got home from work, we (K, Emma and I) were just sitting around talking. Out of the blue, Emma asks, "Daddy, how was work?" I laughed out loud. It's such a grown up question and I'm not sure she knew what it means, but I ask K that all the time.

Or the time she told me "Mommy, I have a question." So I told her, go ahead and ask. And she said "Hi". Apparently she overheard that during some conversation but has no idea what a question is.

As for potty training, that doesn't crack me up. Well maybe a little. We've taken another break at least for a little while. Emma seems scared to go potty. I don't think it's the potty chair, it's the actual going potty. I have to hold her on the chair (like I mentioned last post) as she's crying while she does her duty. And of course #2 is out of the question. She just holds it until nap time when she can go in her diaper or pull-up. Speaking of pull-ups - what is the difference between a pull-up and a diaper? Emma seems to use them the same way and it doesn't bother her at all to go potty in the pull-up. Anyway, we'll get there sometime. She does love running around n*ked, though.

I'm so excited to get out the cute summer clothes. But I'm not quite ready for 88 degrees today. I'd rather have a few weeks of 60s first to let my body adjust!

Happy Birthday pictures

Between Christmas and her birthday, she is a pro at opening presents!

Happy Birthday, Emma!

A few days late (her birthday was Sunday, Jan. 11), but anyway:

Happy Birthday to our sweet Emma! You have been such a blessing to your dada & me! I love spending my days with you. I can't believe it's been 2 years. We love you lots!

*I will post pictures later, but I'm not sure how to hook up our camera to Ace to get the pictures off the camera and our printer (which has the card reader in it) is off and I can't turn it on. Yes, I checked to see if it was plugged in. But we have so many cords back there, I can't tell. Hooray for technology.*

Eeek a ladybug

Just was going to post a quick picture of Emma in her Halloween costume. Since it's 4 days after Halloween. I was going to do this a long time ago, but oops.


We got this very cute costume from one of K's co-workers so it was free! Woohoo! My kind of shopping.

We went to visit my family last weekend and we didn't actually do any trick-or-treating. We did go over to my college roommate's house on Halloween and met her little boy for the first time. He is a cutie. He's also 8 months old. Time flies.

And it is my grandma's birthday on Halloween so we celebrated with her. It was great to see my family again, but boy, those weekends go fast!

A couple of quick Emma stories

Okay, just a couple of quick stories about Emma. She is finally providing me with blogging material!

We were taking a walk around the block last week and one of the houses down the block is "decorated" with Halloween stuff. You know, like a mummy, witches, etc. Emma looked at it for a little while and then walked a little ways and then looked at it again for a little longer. Then she said "Garbage." I said, "Yup, garbage." She said "Bye-bye, garbage." And on we went...

Last Tuesday when I was giving her a bath, she was playing and I was bored, so I started singing "Jesus Loves Me" to her. I use singing very loosely here, but hopefully she could hear the tune. I sang it once and she said "again" and after a few more times through the song she was playing again so I sat there for a little while. Then she said "more Jesus." It was so cute. I hope she asks that for the rest of her life!

Tackle

Emma and her dad sometimes play tackle. Daddy counts to 3 and on 3 tackles her. She loves it. When he came home for lunch today she said "tackle" and started counting and running away. She even loves tackling us. It's so fun to hear her laugh. And this morning she decided to tackle her toy "box". Here is the proof:

Watch out, babies. You might be next!

Calling all parents...

We have a whining problem at our house. No, it's not me. She even knows when she's being whiny. I just don't know how to make it stop. Any brilliant ideas? She is going to be 2 in January. I suppose that might have something to do with it? Or maybe the fact that she usually gets her way around here. Yes, that's probably it. But seriously, how do you stop the whining? Should I ignore it? I usually have her ask me "nicely". In other words, saying please. I should also mention that for the most part, she's a lot of fun at this age. I love that she's talking quite a bit and I can usually understand her. She really is a good girl and I love her dearly!

Since I haven't posted a picture for a while, here is Emma feeding her "baby". Her babies, blankets and bottles are her favorite toys.

Bye, bye

Emma's new saying is "bye, bye _________" whatever she's going away from. Like wa-waw or dada or mama or whatever. Well, today she was with me in the bathroom and when I got up to flush she said "bye, bye pee you" to the toilet. Nice.

Oh the drama

It was a 3 cookie morning. To start out, I think Emma is bored with our house and her toys. She is getting whiny and follows me around everywhere. So I was trying to think of something fun and new we could do around the house. Couldn't come up with anything. We did have to run a couple of errands this morning, though.

We left the house around 10 and went to a used children's store since the only shoes that fit her right now are hot pink sandals. Which don't go with everything. And we are leaving for K's cousin's wedding tomorrow. And her dress for the wedding doesn't have any hot pink on it. I wanted to find some cheap white sandals to last the rest of the summer. No such luck, but I did find some white dress shoes that will work for now. Emma was very sad when I'd ask her if she was ready to go. They did have some pretty cool used toys, too. And strollers. She loves to push around strollers. Once we did leave she was fine with it.

After we left that store, I needed to stop at a health food store to get some wheat free stuff for Emma. This is where the real drama started. It seems like when we go to this particular health food store, Emma enjoys knocking stuff off the shelves or pulling things off the racks and running away.** Kind of like a little tornado went through. So I end up grabbing the food we need and trying to follow her and put stuff away. Only this time she was a sad tornado. I tried to bribe her silence with crackers, but they only partly worked. By the time we were ready to check out she was crying very, very loudly. And it was hard for me to hear the check out lady. In momentary lapse of crying, I had overheard the check out lady tell the kids of the lady who checked out before me how good they were. This lady had 4 kids and one on the way. And the kids were very good. I don't know how she does it.

Anyway, I talked to Emma about listening to mommy and not being loud in the store, blahblah. How much does an 18 month old understand? I know she understands when I say shut the door or something like that, but when I tell her she needs to listen when mommy says no, does she understand that? She was pretty quiet on the way home, of course, but was sad once we got home. The worst part about her sadness is that usually I have no idea why she's crying. I tried feeding her lunch, but she was just tired. She's sleeping now. May she wake up happy. Please, God.

I really did eat 3 peanut butter sandwich cookies. They were healthy cookies. At least I bought them at the health food store. So I'm sure I could probably eat more. We'll see how the afternoon goes.

Disclaimer: This is really nothing compared to what Fiddledeedee goes through when she is shopping with Jensen. It really sounds terrible, but the way she writes about it is so funny!

**K pointed out that if I put Emma in a shopping cart, this would not happen. However, there would be some wailing when I put her in which may or may not stop after a few minutes.

Kisses

Somebody help me. I have a severe problem with kissing Emma. I love to kiss her soft cheeks, her arms and her kinda chubby legs. I have to get them in now before she doesn't want them anymore. I'm saving up for the kiss-less years or as some would say the teenage years. Or even before, I don't know. She's not much of a snuggler, so luckily I can sneak a kiss in here and there while we're playing.

She was even born with kissable cheeks...