Fun with Cousins

Last Saturday, Madison and I took a trip to Ashland with Grandma DeeDee.  It was an early morning start, but a good “date.”  We went to watch her cousins Chloe and Sophie play in their basketball leagues at a church.  Although Madison didn’t really know what was exactly going on, she cheered along with Grandma and me enthusiastically most of the time, and spun around on the bench with Megan the other part of the time.  At halftime of both games, there was a puppet show.  I don’t think Madison has ever seen one before.  She was captivated by it.  It took me back to my college years on a puppet ministry team.  It was a different experience being on the other side of the curtain with a child though; it made it even more worth my time serving as a puppeteer because of her excitement.  After the games (in which the girls both played well), we went to their house for about an hour of fun.  It was good to watch Madison develop a relationship with Megan.

Today, we had Landen come over and play with us.  He and Madison play really well together, rarely arguing about anything.  They tore around the house most of the morning.  He was a Prince for her last time they were together, but this time (because of boy dress up clothes here) he dove right in as a princess.  In order to honor my brother, I will not post the one picture I took of his little boy in a dress.  I am pretty sure all the pictures I have of dressing my brothers up in all kinds of things have biased them against the picture portion of dress up. 

They had other fun as well, even Ellie got in on some of it.  They set up a tea party.  Landen served me some delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows.

They colored together.

    

    

They made “Aggression Cookies for Children”  A recipe of butter, oatmeal, flour, baking powder, and brown sugar that kids mix together with their hands, roll in balls, and then bake.  Both of them had a lot of fun getting messy …. and eating the product afterwards.

   

It was a good morning.  In a lot of ways, having an extra kid that plays so well with Madison makes my morning a lot easier because I don’t have to be the three year old playmate.  It was a good morning for it since Madison was continually waking Jeremy and I up from 1:15-3:45am!!  It was all types of requests, crying, and pounding, that at some point, morphed into her turning on her room light and wanting to play.  It was awful!  I feel horrible for Jeremy who is battling a cold and had to go to work.  At least I could snag a 15 minute nap today while they slept.  Ugh… let’s hope for a better night!

Girls’ Stats

In mid-January, I took Madison and Ellie for their 3 year and 1 year check-ups.  I neglected to blog about it, which for many of you it doesn’t really matter, but if I look at this as a record keeping tool as well, then, I should probably stay up to date.  So, I tacked the info onto the previous posts.  For Madison, click here.  For Ellie, click here.

On Wednesday, the girls went to Grandma and PaPa Yoh’s house to play.  They go there a lot – sometimes because I am subbing and sometimes just because it is fun!  Madison gets to play with all kinds of things there.  This week it was a tall doll and a tall flower:

Ellie enjoys her toys as well.  Sometimes she gets into Madison’s tea parties (just like at home), and other times, she finds her own things to enjoy.  Here are some snapshots from this week.

  

Snow

We ran out to do some errands today and on our drive back it started to snow – almost white out conditions with all the blowing that was going on.  I took the girls out to stand in the snow when we got out of the car because the snowflakes were so big and beautiful.  This prompted Madison to want to play in the snow.  I debated… it does take, after all, as much time to put all the gear on to go play in the snow as she actually wants to stay and play in the snow.  (The one exception being when we went sledding.)  I decided to go ahead and do it; we all really needed a break from house things.  (On a side note, while I love winter and snow.  I do not love it as much now that I am a parent…. it goes from being an excuse to cozy up under covers reading a good book or watching a movie to playing with the same toys, in the same house, with the same people, and almost the same conversations day in and day out….  Just sayin’)  These are our snow pictures.

   

    

One Year Old

Although this is going on two weeks late, I love this little lady no less.  We postponed her birthday party for one week because one set of grandparents would be out of town for a wedding; you can’t have grandparents missing!  (Plus, she doesn’t really know the difference at age 1.)  On her birthday, we sang happy birthday, and we gave her a whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookie for dessert.  We just didn’t want to ruin the first time cake experience.  Here she is enjoying her cookie…

    

My parents hosted this party.  It was a good space to have people.  Mainly, my family was there.  Jeremy’s family, with the exception of his parents, are at a disadvantage because they live states away; so, sadly, they miss out on a number of events.  It was good to have everyone together again.  We had shredded chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, apples with dip (outrageously good – thanks, Jen!), rotel cheese dip with chips, and veggie tray.  I thought it was a pretty tasty spread.  Ellie seemed a bit overwhelmed by all the bodies around her.  When I left to go into the kitchen for about 2 minutes, she realized I was gone and let loose!  From that point on, she pretty much was pinned to my lap – no one wants to listen to a screaming baby… even when it is her party!  (Although this picture is from the cake portion of the night, it defines the night in many ways…)

Mom and I decorated two cakes – chocolate with chocolate frosting and confetti with white frosting.  Ellie wasn’t too sure what she thought of this new food when her little fingers dug into the frosting during picture time.  After I managed to get her to taste it, she seemed more enthusiastic.

   

Presents, presents, presents.  The thing about presents and little kids is they all love them.  It must be incredibly hard to watch someone else open presents when all you want to do is rip open the present – kinda like a mini torture chamber, I imagine. It started out like this….
 
Progressed to this….

By the end, the cousins could hardly contain themselves and were pretty much crowded around as close as that many bodies can get for the entire time.  It was both claustrophobic and cute at the same time.  (Somehow it felt different than these pictures portray!)
   
Ellie got hooded towels, bibs, socks, pet shop toys, elefun ball poppr, musical insturments, stuffed toys, and outfits.  It was a fun time. 
   
   
Finally, the birthday girl was done, and others enjoyed themselves for the few moments before heading home.  This is one of my favorite pictures of the night of Madison and Megan – the dancing princesses.

Ellie is amazing.  I looked at her tonight and said so Jeremy, “Isn’t she so cute?  I can’t stand it!”  And she is.  I know she is super touchy about letting others close, and although most of the time this really irritates me.  Every once and awhile, I realize how blessed I am by all those extra snuggles and pleading eyes.  She is (most likely) our last one, and I think it makes it all a little more memorable.  She is a cuddler.  She wants to talk so badly – she is pretty much never quiet… just doesn’t have a large vocabulary yet.  I am waiting for those first steps to come along and hoping they come soon.  She is not a lightweight, but it makes her all the better to snuggle and kiss.  I love this one just as much as I did the first.  Blessings, Ellie, in the next year as you grow, develop, and discover new things.

Update...
Here are her 12 month stats:

Weight:  23lbs 2 oz at 9 months... 24lbs 9 oz at 12 months (1lbs 7oz weight gain) … 90%

Length:  28in at 9 months... 30-1/4in at 12 months (2-1/4in growth) …95%

Head:  19in at 9 months... 19-1/4in at 12 months (1/4 in smarter)…99%

Here Comes the Bride

Beacuase I am a role with blogging these last few days, and because this is too good to pass up… Madison has been getting married.  Yep, getting married.  I think this may have started when I let her watch the end of one of those Hallmark movies where the girl gets married in a fluffy dress.  Madison started wanting to get married.  She puts on her most beautiful dress, and then wants her hair done, and then wants “Here Comes the Bride” to blast on the computer.   Oh yeah, she also wants the mirror so she can see herself walk down the aisle.

       

This started yesterday.  Jeremy had been out of town, and unknowingly surprised me (us?) with a boquet of flowers – which the bride quite loved.  He then got the chance to walk his girl down the aisle. 

   

On top of this, she has had some babies.  Yep, babies.  I try to reinforce that the babies should come after the wedding – we’ll see if that sticks.  She said she needed help getting them out and I asked where they came out (yeah, I was just curious what she really knew).  And she showed me the exact spot (on her) where my babies came out – of the c-section incision.  Well, she’s kinda right :)  Oh, kids are amazing.

Ellie update

Ellie’s brithday is quickly approaching, but I wanted to highlight some things that I haven’t posted; so here goes:

1.  Ellie is walking… kinda.  I never know when to declare that my kid is walking – Is it when they hold your hands and move along?  Cause she has been doing that for what seems like forever.  Is is when they can push something and walk?  Cause it has been a least a couple weeks for that one.  Is it when they start to cruise along furniture?  Cause that has been going on for about a week and a half.  Or is it when they take those steps all by themselves without the aide of anything or anyone?  Cause that hasn’t happened… and that’s when I feel like I should really declare: Ellie is walking!

    

2.  Ellie is drawing.  Yep, she has been watching her older sister like a hawk.  She sees her writing notes, coloring pictures, painting, and working at her desk.  And that is exactly what Ellie wants to be doing too!  So, often I find her at the desk, and sometimes I find her working on the floor (like today).  I sometimes forget to watch her and then … well, she eats the crayon…

     

     

3.  Ellie is stacking blocks.  It is really cool to watch.  She has had great fine motor skills, particularly the pincer grasp when picking up food.  She can pull apart the velcro veggies and put the little fisher price people in their vehicles at my parents house too.  But she is growing her block stacking skills.  You can see her really working.  She is yelling a bit at the blocks in the one picture because they were trying to tip over on her!

     

She is an absolute hoot right now… and oh, so cuddly!  If you ever get the opportunity to cuddle with her consider it a gift because she has a select handful of people that she will allow that honor – and somehow at Madison’s birthday party, my brother Luke was invited into that circle of honored ones.  It is neat when she opens herself up to others (still waiting for this to happen at the church nursery…little booger!).  Happy Growing, Ellie!

Happy 3rd Birthday!

Our little girl turned 3!  How does time pass by so quickly!  She said all she wanted was her cousins and chocolate cake at her birthday party.  That was easy to grant.  She also got some aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandmas, and grandpas.  I think she was pretty pleased.  We had a small table set up for the little kids.  The adults spread out between the table and the living room.  I am pretty sure that we have never had that many people in our house!  It was so much fun. 

     

After the meal, she was surprised with a PRINCESS CAKE!  Somehow she is really into princesses and Barbies right now.  It is somewhat of a mystery how she finds out about these things as we have no Disney princess movies in our house. 

   

Finally, it was time to open some gifts.  She received many nice things from those who came.  My personal favorite – a cheerleader doll (I will admit to listening to the cheers she does so I can do them myself!).  Notice the outfit change here between princess dresses…. she just stripped down right in the middle of the party she was so excited!

   

A few other party pictures – Madison and her cousin, Megan (5 months apart); Ellie helping during the gift time; Madison with her “cousin” (Jeremy’s cousin… don’t know what that makes those two), Erin:

   

Madison is a beautiful girl who has filled our lives with much joy.  She has talked our ears off since she uttered her first word – and even before then.  She loves to draw, doodle, and color – lately we have seen some circles emerge in her drawings.  She can dance and sing like no other, offering plenty of entertainment the whole day through.  She is tender hearted thanking us for so many things – including picking her name out when she was born.  She will spontaneously say, “Mommy, I love you!”  To which I reply, “No, I love you!”  And this little game continues and feels so good!  She hugs and loves on us and on Ellie, and usually tries to help her do things, too.  She dreams big and works hard at different things.  She can now get dressed all by herself (a little help is still needed with those pesky socks)…. and she does so multiple times a day.  (And I thought we had somehow bypassed this wardrobe changing phase!)  She attends Sunday school and loves learning about Jesus; although sitting through the whole worship service is not so easy.  Last night she started playing “wedding,” which honestly, freaks me out just a little bit – I am pretty sure I am not ready to send her off yet :)  We look forward to seeing what this next year will bring.  I cannot imagine how she will change and what new things she will be learning by the time she is four. 

Update...
3 Year Old Stats...
Weight: 27.4lbs at 2 years.... 31lbs 4oz at 3 years (75%)
Height: 33in at 2 years... 37in at 3 years (52%) - 4 INCHES!!!!