some favorite things

reading - holding bugs - playing with Mila

playing with friends - dressing up - wearing hats

holding Mila - catching toys before they fall - organizing

climbing - fencing - hanging out with Mom

pretending (to take pictures) - hugging Dad - catching Mom (at the end of the slide)

favorite faces: april 2010: mila

favorite faces: april 2010: kapria

i'm dressed!

Kapria gets herself dressed every day. I love seeing the outfits she puts together. Some days you might think she isn't dressed, since her outfit is actually pajamas. But mind you, those are never the pajamas she wore to bed. They are her "I'm dressed!" outfit.

Some days she even dances in them:

four years old!

Chels and Rob had an appointment that fell on Syanne's birthday. They're having a birthday party for her this weekend, but we wanted to be sure and celebrate when we were babysitting her, too. She hung out with Nic and the boys all day, then they came up in the afternoon to play at our house, have dinner, and enjoy some birthday treats. The kids loved singing to her and sharing cupcakes. Even Tave joined in on the singing.

Happy 4th Birthday, Syanne!

oh sugar sugar

 I must tell Kapria she makes me laugh a lot, because the other night she said to me, "Mom, you make me laugh." On a daily basis she'll randomly say, "I love you so much." And then there are times she'll just run up and give us huge hugs and squeezes.

I love this newfound sweetness. She didn't used to care much for cuddling, but in the past month she has started cuddling all the time. She climbs in our laps to read stories or snuggle.

And the best is her routine of "Hug. Squeeze. Kiss."

We all get it.

Every one. Every day. Every night. 

It makes us smile every time.

So here's a big

Hug. Squeeze. Kiss.

for you. 

my mila bean

suit up

Kapria tried on a few different swimsuits to prepare for some summer fun.

Which do you like best?
Can you guess which one is her favorite?

sunny sunday

let me take your picture

Since our last camera broke when Kapria dropped it, we decided she can't hold our new camera. This has been hard. She begs to take pictures. One day we were shopping at Target and found disposable cameras in the dollar bin. Perfect!

Now she carries her camera everywhere she goes and takes pictures of everything. She calls it her "pretend camera." But one of these days I'm going to have to get her some kind of real one, because I want to see the pictures she's always taking. It makes her so happy.

She says, "Let me take your picture. Say cheese!"

talk to me

Mila said her first word this month. Travis was campaigning hard for it, but she would not be swayed.

"momomomom"

She says it a lot, especially when she wants me to hold her.
Sometimes she shouts it.

"MOM!"

Especially when she wants my attention.
A lot of times she says it and smiles. Or kisses me.

Oh I love Mila.

And being her Mom.

spring is coming, spring is here

We keep getting splashes of snow, which come just after the weather has been sunny and warm and oh-so-lovely. It melts quickly, leaving everything green and fresh. Kapria has started walking me to the car every morning when I leave for work, and she was pretty excited to put on her boots for this walk. Maybe it will be the last snow of the year? And sadly and happily, our last snow while living here.

The same day our snow flurry came, so did the first flower in our yard. We had to say hello to the this brave little daffodil. Oh we love spring!

the lion died

We had a family home evening lesson about the resurrection right around Easter. Kapria was fascinated, and ever since then we've had a lot of conversations about Jesus and dying and "coming alive again."

One nigh last week, after she snuggled into bed and I sang her two nightly songs, she started talking about the subject again. As we sat in the dark talking, she held my hand.

"The lion died, Mom," she said. 
"Yes, the lion died," I said. "It's spirit went to Heaven, and it's body stayed on earth."
"The lion died," she repeated. "Can we go visit it at the booseum?"
"Sure, we can visit it. How 'bout we go on Saturday?"
"Okay," she said.
Then we gave goodnight kisses, and she fell asleep.

But when Saturday came, I completely forgot about our plans until we were driving to a friend's house.
"Are we going to the booseum?" Kapria asked.
"Aaah! I totally forgot!" I said. "We can't go now, but we'll go Monday. For Family Home Evening. Is that okay?"
"Sure," she said.

Monday came, and Kapria wanted to see the lion who died. She reminded me, and even though we had a late dinner and the girls were tired and the time was late enough for them to go to bed at that moment, we went.

Kapria seemed to forget about the lion, though, and wanted to see the hippo and the alligator and the elephant instead. She remembered exactly where they were from her last visit.

We also growled at some leapards and hooted at some owls and roared at some bears. All in all, a great night at the booseum.

you make me happy

I tell the girls that every day. I think that is the most surprising and wonderful part of having kids - how happy they can make you. I never thought seeing a two year old pedal her bike as fast as her legs can go could make me so happy. Or watching a nine month old shove cereal in her mouth like it's going out of style could make me feel so warm inside. But it does. They do.

sunshine, blue skies, happy.

how should we celebrate?

Tonight I was talking with Trav about what we should do to celebrate his birthday. We were sitting at the table eating dinner. The girls were eating yogurt while they made faces at each other and laughed.

"Do you want to have a party? Go out with everyone?" I asked.
"No. I don't want to do anything," he said.
(He says this every year. But I can't accept that. I love birthdays.)
"Okay, do you want to do just a family thing? I can invite my family."
"Really, I don't want to do anything," he repeated.
"How 'bout we go to dinner?" I said.
He thought a minute.
"That would be good. Just us. I'd like that," he said.
"Perfect!" I said. "Is it just the two of us, or do you want to celebrate with the girls?"

Trav was quiet for a minute, then suddenly a little voice piped up:
"With the girls!" Kapria shouted.

Then we all started laughing. With the girls it is.

bunny month

Sometimes I think it would be fun to have a bunny for a pet. I especially think this during the month of April, when it seems there are a lot of cute bunny commercials and bunny pictures and they all look so appealing and desirable. I think, "we could get one of those. wouldn't Kapria be so surprised and have so much fun when a bunny came hopping out of her Easter basket?"

Then I realize that while the picture in my head is such a cute scene to behold, the real scene, the scene of crazy mama cleaing up pet hair and pet poo and pet food, is not such a cute one. And that is where that thought process ends.

But we still enjoy the fun things that come during this month of bunnies, including headbands and funny teeth and surprise packages from Nonny Kare.

And who needs a fluffy, hopping bunny when you've got teeth like these, anyway?

@ the park

Another family night at the park. We love this great weather!
04.16.2010

happy bath

Mila used to hate taking baths. But now that she can sit up and play on her own, she likes them a lot more. This is her first bath where she was smiling and laughing and splashing instead of crying and screaming. Until this point, she only liked showers.

Now she cries to get IN the bath.

counting teeth

I had a dentist appointment this morning, and they wanted me to bring Kapria for a "get to know the dentist" visit. I talked it up for a few days, and she was so excited to go with me.

She had a great time! They had a basket of toys that she played with, then she sat on my lap for part of my cleaning and watched the hygenist. When the dentist came ("Dr. Dave") she stayed on my lap and let him count her teeth. Nineteen of them! She has one molar that's half-way through, and one more top molar to grow in, then she'll be done growing teeth for a few years.

We do have to watch the frenum (frenulum) inside her upper lip. Hers is a little low, so it's causing a gap between her front teeth. If it doesn't go away by the time she's five or six, she'll need to have it clipped. I read about my friend's daughter having that procedure done about a month ago, and since then I noticed Kapria had the same problem. It's not a big deal either way, but of course we'd rather avoid any type of mouth procedures. We'll see in a couple years...



You can see she found the bracelet stash. And that upper right picture looks like I'm restraining her, but really, she just laid down and I held her to keep her from falling off my lap. She did great!

Oh, and no cavities for me. Happy Day!

happy eight months, mila!

Mila's personality is starting to show more and more. I love the process of getting to know each of our kids. During her eighth month (March 11 to April 11), Mila had some big milestones.

Mila:

• Moved from sleeping in her bassinet to sleeping in the playpen. The transition went great (still sleeping in our room).
• Still wakes up for a bottle in the middle of the night. Sometimes twice.
• Flew in an airplane for the first time.
• Away from Dad for the first time over night (she was so happy to see him when we got home.)
• Eats only "real" food - no more mushy baby food for her. She'll just spit it out. She wants what everyone else is eating and will close her lips tightly and refuse to eat until you give her what she wants. (The only problem is: no teeth.)
• Feeds herself. She's really good at picking up finger foods, but still drops a lot of her food. Toward the end of her meals she wants us to feed her so she can eat faster.
• Sits up all the time now. But still likes to lay down and roll around.
• Loves baths now. Still loves the shower, but likes sitting in the tub and splashing, too.
• Said her first word: mama/mom.
• Celebrated her first St. Patty's Day and first Easter.
• Met Aunt Meg.
• Caught her first bad cold. Was sick for nearly two weeks with a runny nose, fever, cough. That's when she started waking up twice in the middle of the night.  
• Wants to be carried everywhere. She loves being held and would rather be carried around with us than sit and play with toys on her own (this is the opposite of Kapria, who always needed -and still needs - play time all by herself).
• Loves being with people.
• Likes her uncles again! She has been scared of men for the past few months and would cry if any man besides Dad talked to her or held her, Shawn and Jeff included. But she likes her uncles now. Yay! (She can keep being scared of other men. That's probably a good thing for now. ha ha.)
• Hates being left alone in a room. Will cry like she's been badly hurt. I've run into a room in a panic when I heard her start to cry, thinking she hit her head or something horrible happened by the sound of her, and she's there sitting in the room perfectly unharmed, just upset at being left alone. As soon as you come in and talk to her, she's happy again.
• Smiles all the time.

done: 2010 project 2

At the same time I was working on the office magnet board, I was working on this one for our kitchen. It took a lot longer because I'm so picky about paper and how things look together. I couldn't decide on the colors. Currently the kitchen has some red (the color we picked when we got married, so we have red towels and a red carpet). But really, I want our kitchen to maybe be some other color. I finally decided since we have a lot of black in the kitchen that black & white would be best. I found this awesome paper at Roberts, and with a little inspiration from Jess's house, I knew what I wanted this to look like.

Trav helped me again on finishing this one up. Then I made the magnets:

I also found these perfectly matching items that I could not pass up:

So now the kitchen will stay black and white. I'm hoping to get some new dish towels and a rug to match. We'll see if it can happen after I do the budget.

done: 2010 project 1

I spent several evenings this week working on some projects. As soon as the girls were in bed, Trav and I would head out to the studio. He would paint and I would work on this:



It's a magnet board for our home office. I have two more projects to finish for the wall before you get to see it all hung together. I'm pretty excited for what it will look like.

I bought a used copy of one of my favorite books and tore the pages out. At first I felt like I was ruining something precious. But the more pages I tore, the more fun I had. Tearing something apart is really therapeutic. I can see why kids like doing it.

First, I put gesso on the whole board. Then I cut out passages I liked from the book. Next I glued the pages down using mod podge. I was taking a really long time to finish one night, because I'm so particular about what goes where. So Trav started helping me. He finished the top while I cut strips for the inner border. I had decided I wanted text on the inside line. I'm really glad I added that - I love how it looks like the page goes around the corner. (I had to cut them seperately because the pages of this book weren't wide enough to go around the edge.)



Once the board was done, I mod-podged over the whole thing to seal it. Then I made the magnets. I liked the look of the chapter starts, so I created the large magnets using those. Then I created small magnets using character names.



I love how it turned out. And just wait 'til you see it on the wall with the other projects - hopefully in a week I'll have it all done.

So, have you figured out which book I used yet?

easter at home

When we got home from our family dinner, Kapria searched for her and Mila's Easter basket. She was so excited to find it (behind the rocking chair), and then pulled everything out and shared with Mila. They got some books, including a felt board book that tells the stories of Jesus. They also got the dvd Reflections of Christ. We talked with the girls about our Savior and how he died and was resurrected. We talked about how much he loves us and that we can live forever because of him.

Talking with our kids about the Savior was such a good reminder that his plan really is simple and perfect. He loves us. He will help us. He made a way for us to live with him again.

It's true, and I know it.
I'm so grateful it is. I'm so grateful I do.

easter with family

We headed down to Nicole's house to celebrate Easter with the family. Meg was in town and got to meet the four kids she hadn't met before, and I think Rob and Abby were new family for her to meet, too. We had so much fun being together. I'm getting sad already thinking of the holidays we won't get to be together. But we're enjoying the time we do have.

The Big Group

Megara

Hunting for Eggs

More Family Fun