Our Spring Surprise!

Our first spring after we moved into our house, our friendly Polish neighbor told us not to mow by the retaining wall because tulips grew there. We thought he was crazy for thinking tulips would grow in the grass and half the time we can't understand what he's saying, so we were still surprised when tulips poked up out of the ground!

It's our second year with tulips and I still am so excited to see them every spring!! M, on the other hand, was not so sure about sitting amongst them just for Mommy's photo op!

Her Compassionate Side

M had some friends over on Wednesday afternoon. J got a little sad and tired near the end and M kept trying to comfort her. She'd crawl over and give her a hug and try to kiss her. It was very sweet but J wanted nothing of it!

I have pent-up blogging energy!

So here goes...
These were just too cute not to show!
It turned out cloudy today but she was ready, sunglasses and all!

She kept taking them off.
She's not sure what to do with them!

She's such a cutie!!!

Zippy!

When I was in Utah, my aunt Kristine told me to read this book. She loves to read and knows I love to read so I'm always eager for her recommendations. I loved this book! It's a memoir but for once it's not tragic! She's a normal girl from a normal family who's flawed and human but in general she had a happy childhood. My favorite part is that it's written in short vignettes so I could read a story to Will and he could enjoy it too because she's funny!!!! Read it!

My next conquest is 1776 for my ward bookclub! Wish me luck!

I Love Babies in Capris!

It's finally getting warm here!!! Grandma Jan gave us these capris for Easter and I was a little hesitant at first-they're so busy, but of course M makes anything look so cute! Now they're my favorite pants!

I bought her sandals last week. Hopefully she'll get the hang of them when she starts walking.

Are socks allowed with baby sandals? I wondered that as I put them on her-if I was breaking a fashion rule-or does that only apply to adults??

Hallelujah!!!!!

W changed his work hours! We've been hoping this would happen for months and it seemed like it never would! He had to start at the awful schedule of 10-7 and so he slept in, went to work, came home at 8pm, ate dinner and went to bed. He hardly ever got to see M and I felt like my husband was disappearing. I hated it but I tried to be a trooper about it. Yesterday he found out he can have whatever schedule he wants and even better, it can start today! So he was gone by 6:30 to catch the bus downtown and will be home at 5 today! Like a real husband!!! :) I love it and i'm sooooooooo excited! M wouldn't even let him change her diapers or feed her unless he was the only option. She just wasn't used to having him around anymore, so this is such a blessing! Hooray!!!!

The Alien Car

She's a shopper too!

We have been looking for a shopping cart for a while. We're such nerdy parents! We wanted to get something to "encourage" walking, but didn't want one of those walkers that look like alien cars (I'll post a pic, seriously, they look like alien cars) so we thought a shopping cart would be great because she can walk with it and use it for a long time for pretend play. I finally found one after several months of looking!

My Little Laundress!

M has these two rags, you see. She knicked them from my laundry basket one day (don't worry, they're clean!) and has been taking care of them ever since. She loves to fold them and refold them and then take them and cough into them like a hankie and then wash herself with them and then fold them again! It's the cutest thing to watch! She even has a folding "station!" Our wicker chair is just the right height to hit her cute little round tummy and so she clears some of the pillows out of the way and starts folding. She's even pushed Daddy out of the chair a few times so she can get to "work"!

Denver!

Since we had to ditch the Denver part of our trip in March, we decided we really wanted to make it to Will's cousin Mae's wedding over Memorial Day. So we're going to Denver in May! I'm so excited for Meggie to finally meet her cousin Beverly Sue and the rest of her Daddy's family! So we get to join in the festivities! We are going to fly in early Friday morning (flights to Denver were amazingly cheap!-but we compare everything to Arkansas!) and leave Tuesday evening. We're excited-I think we'll find some fun things to do while we're there. The wedding of course, but maybe they have a real zoo with more exciting animals than Minnesota's prairie dogs! :)

Pink Pants

So I bought a pair of pink capris on clearance last week. I don't buy daring clothes. When I do, they sit and rot in my closet until I finally give them away, guilt-ridden that I never wore them enough to make them worth it. I need new capris this year, my status quo is reaching eight years of ownership and barely holding together by a few strings, so it's time. So I found a cute pair on clearance and was quite pleased and felt very daring, so I bought pink pants! I probably look like a great big strawberry in them (hence no picture) but I don't care! And I love them. I have worn them pretty much every day that I've been home this week...please don't be grossed out, I am good at laundry! I have a surprising number of things that go with them as I'm also the co-founding member (along with my Mom) of the "I have too many white shirts club". I feel like a kid who won't give up his batman pajamas to wear something else. And so I'll probably need new capris again next year once I've worn these out wearing them all summer!

shhhh! baby sleeping!

I have gotten nothing done today! That's not true, I made my first trip of the week to Target (yes, we go more than once a week, I love Target!) and I have started some laundry and I've gotten through a big chunk of the book I'm reading, but my kitchen is a mess. I tried to start doing dishes and it woke the baby up. I cringed!

I swore I wouldn't be one of those moms and now I'm eating my words. My coworker calls it eating crow. Not sure why. I used to roll my eyes when I'd see a house with a sign asking them to not ring the doorbell. I thought it was ridiculous to make the whole house quiet for the baby to sleep. And when M was younger, it was easy to be proud that i wasn't doing that! M has always been a good napper. She used to nap four times a day when she was a baby! Four, one hour naps! I loved it! And I thought I was training her to ignore the sounds of the house. I vacuumed while she slept, talked on the phone, cleaned, everything and she always slept through it. But somewhere along the line, we fell off the bandwagon. I started cherishing her naptime as it slowly has slipped away into less naps and sometimes shorter naps. and now we're here! I keep the house silent while she sleeps, we hid in the basement on Saturday because Dad's deeper voice is even more disturbing to her for some reason, and now I'm frustrated that her nap got cut short by my emptying the silverware holder in the dishwasher. Argh!

I'm singin' a song!

We have decided that M has a striking similarity to... Elf.


Our favorite part of that movie is when he's singing to his Dad. . It's just a totally random song that makes us laugh. Well, we have our own Elf! M is singing all the time right now! She just starts humming and jabbering away to randomn tunes that usually have no rhyme or reason and it's totally cute! She will be sitting with her toys or crawling around singing to herself. It's the cutest thing. We have yet to record it on video but we'll get there!

We're walking, we're walking, and we're stopping!

I decided I wouldn't freak out about her not walking yet. I know she'll walk when she's ready.
But she's fourteen months and I can tell she's ready just not ready, you know? :)
We spent Monday "driving" chairs around the kitchen. She thought it was hilarious! We're getting there!
And she's getting really good at standing. When she's ready, she'll take off!

Wild Thang!

Meggie has crazy hair!

...we think that's why her babysitter finally took pity and did her hair yesterday!

In my defense, I do her hair almost every day...but on my work days, Daddy gets her up and dresses her and sometimes we end up with interesting combinations! :)

(he said he was going for the layered look here...he's such a good dad!)

Easter!

We had a nice Easter dinner yesterday with Will's family! M actually participated in the egg hunt this year but she thought they were more fun to shake than to look for! After dinner, she started standing by herself! She was so proud of herself that she'd sit down and clap and yell, yeah!!!! Enjoy!

The April Cluster

My family specializes in birthday clusters. Wednesday was my Mom's birthday and today is my oldest brother's birthday! Happy Birthday!!!

I was going to write something special about my Mom on her birthday but I was a slacker and didn't do it. So here we go, two days late and I'm not sure she even reads my blog, but here we go anyway!

My Mom is amazing! I know everyone thinks that about their Mom and it's probably true but my Mom is amazing to me! My Mom is always smiling. In fact, when she's NOT smiling you know something is REALLY wrong! Her smiles are infectious and everyone loves her because she is so happy and smiley. When I was a kid, I loved how she hummed all the time. It made me a hummer when I was little and if I'd stop in the middle, she'd ask if I was going to resolve my song. I'm not sure I ever made the connection until now that that meant she was listening.

A few years ago, I told my little sister how lucky she was that Mom made sure that she was at camp every year that she was. Selfishly, I was envious until I realized that Mom had done pretty much the same thing for me. I don't think I recognized that when she was the craft lady at camp or a workshop speaker that she was probably motivated to volunteer because she wanted to be with me. My fourth year, right before we were moving, she was even the stake camp director. I knew that one was for me because we all thought she was crazy since we moved the next month.

Mom will do just about anything for her kids. She dropped everything every time I got sick. I didn't realize how much she ached for me until I was scared for Megan when I was pregnant. I asked her if it always hurt this bad when you're scared for your children and she welcomed me to motherhood. She spent a week with me when I had Megan and that was one of the most precious times to me. Will was back at work and Mom would putz around my house cleaning or even painting!! and she and I would just talk all day. I loved that. I have loved growing up and discovering a new relationship with my Mom, one that gets even better. I love my Mom.

...stay tuned for the next birthday, this one was late, so the next one will be too! :)

The Best 14 Months of My Life

Today is baby M's14 month birthday. While this isn't a HUGE milestone, she's been feeling like crap for three days so I thought I'd wax sentimental on some of the things that make her special. Her baby calendar had a category of "what makes you special". So here you go, one for each month.

1. You have always had crazy hair, from your current, shaggy do with half curly hair all the way back to the original hair that just wouldn't lay down no matter how hard I tried. You had the mohawk down to a science!

2. tantrums: yes, they're already here. When she's not getting her way or our attention, my baby growls, yes growls!!! We've discovered that she comes by it honestly and we are a family of frustrated growlers and so we're promoting "talking nice".

3. Her current favorite game: "see food". She likes to stick her tongue out and compare tongues mid bite. I know I so should NOT be encouraging this but it's so cute!

4. You let us know what you need with your signs. Today when I was ignoring her sign for "please", she reached out and started signing "please" on my chest to get my attention. We were signing for reese's pieces so needless to say, she got one. :)

5. My baby loves amoxicillin. She screams over tylenol but sucks up the orange cream amoxicillin like it's candy. It makes ear infections much more pleasant!

6. Dah! Everything that has four legs or is animate is a dog in her world-people, babies, bugs, horses, cows, you name it. She's just much more excited to label it when it's a REAL dog!

7. She loves music. I know that's not uncommon, but she gets the rare opportunity of attending primary and nursery early while I do music time. A few weeks ago, we were singing "hello, hello" to the visitors and she stuck her hand out and directed, correctly right along with me!

8. She's a good traveler. She was content driving all over northern Utah last week just sitting in her carseat with her toys, singing to herself. And she still slept through the night!!!

9. She's my good sleeper. When we got home from our trip, she sighed with relief when I put her in HER bed with HER blanket. It was like she was saying, thank you for bringing me home! (Yes, I know I'm doomed with my next children!)

10. She's a watcher. She doesn't walk, yet. She studied and watched crawling and then one night did it with no false starts. She's figuring out walking, and when she's ready, she'll do it. It's how she learns.

11. She has a victory dance! When she's hungry and gets food, she shimmies!!!! It's the cutest ever! She will now "dance" on cue and when she hears music. We'll be in a store and I'll have tuned out hte music but she'll all of a sudden start dancing if it's a familiar tune or soemthing she likes.

12. She cocks her eyebrows like her mommy. nuff said!

13. She puckers up! She went through the open mouth kiss phase and we loved it but now she's perfected the art of puckering her lips and it's even cuter!

14. She's my biggest fan. When she's sick, it can get old, but let's face it, I love that she wants to cuddle with me when she's tired or sick and that she lights up when I enter the room.

Now, since you read all that, you'll be rewarded with pictures of my sweet little one! Happy Birthday!

Learning Moment

I like to be early to airports and movies and anything where the beginning is important! My husband has learned this about me and is quite patient with it. He understands now that I would rather sit for hours in an airport terminal than freak out that we're going to miss our plane while waiting in the security line. On Friday, the day we flew home, we had a slow start and therefore a cranky start. I was not a happy woman, M was cranky and we were all very tired after a long week of "vacationing". In the midst of nagging Will about brushing his teeth, he stopped and said, "good morning. I love you. Let's be positive". It really made me stop. I was being so negative and cranky for no real reason and I was so grateful that instead of fighting with me about who was crankier, he had tried to be the positive one. That's why I love my husband.