Raising the most beautiful girls in the world…
Archive for April, 2009
Update.
Apr 30th
Geez, seems time is flying by. I can’t believe the summer is here in a couple weeks. Ava will finish her first year of preschool this month. And, Olivia will be done with her two-day a week school. I think Ava is ready for some time off, although since I am starting back to work next week, I am not quite as ready. I am still sorting out how I am going to work from home with my brood of little ones. I have realized that to be effective at working from home you HAVE to have a set time to get work done (with a babysitter or some planned childcare). Otherwise the day flies by and you are left at 7 pm with a stack of things to get done and no brain matter or energy left to do it. I’m still figuring out what we are going to do this summer (which is my busiest season). We’ll finagle something.
Mia is doing great! She slept almost 6 hrs straight last night (I’m knocking on wood as I type) and I am hoping that we can continue that trend. Ahhhhh, what a difference 5 straight hrs of sleep makes. She is getting bigger everyday. I’m going to set up a time lapse in her crib as an experiment. I’m pretty sure it would be like one of those nature videos with the weeds growing out of the forest floor…
Olivia is getting so big lately. Maybe it is a having a small baby, but she is just growing so fast. Her speech is taking off and everyday it is something new. Her little personality is shining through too! Such a fun little girl, and very sweet. She loves to give hugs and kisses… in between climbing and jumping off things. If you notice, she has a GIANT bruise across her face from falling and slamming into the wall. I am waiting for social services to show up at our house because she is constantly climbing and jumping and falling off things. The other day she was sitting on the edge of the couch and then intentionally leaning over until she fell off. Then she would laugh hysterically, climb up, and do it again…and again. And yes, I did have a moment where I thought that as the parent in charge I should probably stop her. But then I thought she would just find something else to fall off of and at least there was carpet underneath her, and it was entertaining her. Seemed like a win-win. 
I mentioned Ava is finishing up school this month. It has been a great year for her. Most of her friends are coming back next year, so I know that she will be glad to see them. She is still digging her new cat. I have to admit that he is a pretty cool guy. He loves Ava (and tolerates her dragging him around as evidenced below). When she is at school he pretty much does his own thing. He likes some lovin’ at night, otherwise he is pretty mellow and likes to hang outside and hunt for lizards or bugs or whatever. Typical man.
Dave and I are doing really great. We comment almost everyday how lucky we feel. We are loving our house, our kids, our jobs… there is just not much to complain about. We need to find a way to get out more often by ourselves. Lately, our “date” night has just been take-out on the couch with a movie. But hey, we’ll take what we can get.
Rain, rain, go away.
Apr 29th
The rain has finally left us…after days of dumping crazy amounts of moisture here. After too many days inside playing pretend “cat family” (playing house where all the characters are cats complete with constant meowing), the girls got outside to play and burn off some of that energy. I can still hear the meowing in my head…
Zoo day.
Apr 27th
We managed a visit to the zoo recently. The weather was great and we had fun, cotton candy was a bigger hit than the animals on this visit!
Save the boobies!
Apr 16th
My friend Cameron is doing Avon’s Walk for Breast Cancer, a great cause to help raise money for breast cancer research. You can read more about her training here. And you can read her touching post of last year’s walk here. If you are inclined…head over to her Avon page and help save the boobies. Because really, where would any of us be without boobies? God knows our house loves ‘em.
8 weeks.
Apr 16th
She is just starting to smile (haven’t been able to capture it on camera yet) and she also is starting to “talk” to us. Love those little baby noises. It is nice to have her interact with us more and come out of the newborn baby fog. Both Ava and Olivia are great big sisters. They both love to pop back in her binkie whenever it falls out. Ava fell asleep on the ride home from the aquarium with her hand holding in M’s binkie.
Easter.
Apr 16th
We had a fun Easter weekend. Dave and the girls had Friday off and we went to the aquarium which was fun! On Saturday we went out to eat with my parents and sisters. Ava fell asleep on the way home, so we put off dying eggs until Easter morning. The girls also had Monday off and we had a nice relaxed day to round out the long weekend.
6 weeks (for real, ya'll)
Apr 5th
I am blaming it on exhaustion. Plain and simple. Too tired to count. Please let it be that and not that my brain has completely melted into an amorphous blob that can no longer keep track of the single digit weeks that Baby M has been alive in this world. So, for real ya’ll, M is now 6 weeks old now, and will be until this Thursday. She spends a lot of her time as photographed…asleep on my shoulder or my arm. Why is that babies have radar for when you lay them down? They can be mouth-hanging-open sound asleep and yet the second you lay them in a crib or swing or something other than a living breathing person…their eyes pop open.
18 months old (No April fools here).
Apr 1st
18 months deserves its own celebration really. There is such a difference between one year and two, that the half-way point is also deserved of notice. Olivia has really blossomed in the last couple months. This is one of my favorite ages. Their personalities really shine through and the language and developmental explosion is amazing. It seems everyday they are doing and saying something new. Olivia is suddenly talking up a storm, or I should say…she is suddenly talking up a storm in intelligible language. Before, we just had no clue what she was saying! In the past month, she is suddenly speaking in short sentences and with much clearer pronunciation. I don’t know if it is the age or the ear tubes that have allowed her to hear much better. Her personality is really shining through too. She is such a fun balance of gregariousness, mischief, sweetness, and independence. She is still content to do her own thing, but she also never shies away from people or the spotlight. She like to play with other kids and just jumps right into whatever is going on. When that ends, she just moves on to the next thing. No big deal. She loves to play “out-si” and read stories. She also loves playing any type of ball game (future softball player?). She is starting to count and knows the letters A and O (good ones to learn in our family). She has started to develop temper tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants. I try to ignore these and move away, although sometimes she follows suit. Recently, she was throwing a real whammy and I just started cracking up in the middle of it. All of a sudden she stopped, looked at me, and cracked up too! What a stinker. We have started implementing time outs for bad behavior, and after the first one (where we made her apologize and say “sorry”) she now just immediately jumps to “sorr-we” whenever we scold her. When she thinks she is really in for it, she smiles and hugs you and nestles into your chest as your are carrying her to time out saying “Sorr-we Mom-mie”. She knows what’s up! This one is going to be difficult.
Sunday outing.
Apr 1st
We had a little Sunday outing at a friend’s house who hosted a “Spring Fling” party complete with easter egg hunt for the kids and baby ducklings. Olivia was more interested in climbing the playhouse than egg hunting (go figure), but Ava enjoyed scooping up as many as she could.