Fairy Month

For Christmas the girls got a big book of fairy things to make and do from my mom. I spent January gathering materials and putting together a big box of supplies so that February could be fairy month. We made all kinds of cute crafts, and we spent hours ignoring the chores and spending time together. Here are some pictures of some caterpillars the girls made.

Richmond

February 5th-7th

We drove with Grandma to visit Natie and Kenzie for the weekend. We got to see their new house and visit the best children's museum I've ever seen. If I was Kenzie I would buy a membership and take my kids there everyday. You would never have to buy any toys and your house would stay clean. Alli and Madison had so much fun with Natie and Kenzie. Here are some pictures from the trip.

How Quickly We Forget

It has been too long since I've had a baby. I forgot how much I love them. So here is my top ten list of things I love about babies.

TOP TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BABIES

10-When you pick them up their legs are still scrunched up by their tummy and their bum sticks out. How adorable

9-They have literal rolls on their wrists and on their thighs

8-I can put headband bows on them

7-They love you and smile when you walk by

6-They are so small that you can do anything while holding them

5-It's like having your own doll to dress up several times a day

4-They give these open mouth slobbery kisses anywhere on your face

3-They think their own hands and feet are the best toys

2-They let you hold them and cuddle them for as long as you need, and that makes everything bad in your own life feel better

1-No matter how immobile your baby is, if you are both on the same bed they will wiggle and scoot until they are pressed up against you. How do they know you are there?

*I love you, Taya! I'm so glad you came to be my baby! You may never know how badly I wanted you.

Jesse's Birthday

January 31, 2009

Now that we have kids it seems that our birthdays are all about them. When I was in high school I babysat for a couple who said that they didn't have much of a night life after they had kids. I remember thinking, "what did you expect?" And so it is with birthdays. For Jesse's birthday I planned to go to "Kid Day" at Longwood Gardens. It was lots of fun because our kids were entertained. The zoo brought a couple of small animals over, there was a craft table, and there was a concert with a child oriented repertoire. After our time there Alli did her best impression of a "fall into the Gap ad."

After we put our kids in bed that night my parents came over for dinner and a movie. Dinner was delicious, but the movie nearly made us throw it all up. It was "Fireproof," one of the most low budget films I've ever seen. The acting was worse than an elementary school play. If any of you saw the mormon version of beauty and the beast, this rivaled that movie. My mom was planning to buy it as a gift for Jesse, but was unable to find it at the store. We are glad her $20 can be put to better use.

Jesse made the mistake of asking my dad where he was when he turned 28. My dad's answer put him to shame. Apparently my dad was one of those over-achievers. Maybe when we turn 60 we'll be where my parents were when they were 30. Here's hoping...

The Beginning of our Blog

This blogging thing would be so much easier if I had internet access at my house, or a computer... Nonetheless, even if it is sporadic, I've decided it is a great way to keep a family history. So I'm going to backtrack a little and do some posting covering January and February. I'm doing this now because I'm having a rare quiet moment at my mom's house (thus in the presence of a computer, and the internet), Alli and Madison have gone with my mom to the grocery store (ever seen a grandma who asks to take small children on errands with her?), and Taya is her usual self (perfectly agreeable). So here begins our family story 2009.

January 1st 2009

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Taya. On New Year's Eve we decided that Alli and Madison didn't really care about what was going on, so we put them to bed as usual. Jesse and I got takeout and ate it in bed watching a movie with Taya hanging out between us. We started taking her picture because we are a little obsessed with our children, and this is what we got.

She is such an angel

January 9th, 2009

Today we spent the day at Moonbounce, so Alli and Madison could release their limitless energy. I just sat and held Taya while they climbed and slid and maneuvered the play structures. It was a good day followed by a crazy night. In the middle of the night I woke up to a horrible smell. I went out into the kitchen and found that our boiler had erupted and there was black ash everywhere. We figured the poison was not good for our kids, so we quickly packed them up and took them to my parent's house to sleep. Our landlord came and had the boiler fixed, but still our whole house was covered in ash. Every toy, article of clothing, dish, piece of furniture, etc... had to be scrubbed. It even got inside our fridge, and inside our cabinets. Can anybody say HVAC? After spending at least 50 hours cleaning and scrubbing I called the landlord and told him this was ridiculous. He knocked $200 off the rent. Can anybody say cheapskate?

The worst part about this was that Taya had not been focusing on objects or following anything with her eyes. We were unsure whether or not she could see. We had Taya and Jesse tested for carbon monoxide poisoning, and found that they both had been affected by the boiler which had been leaking for some time before the explosion. I was just sick to think that Taya's home had been the cause of her problems. If she was born with a problem, then fine, but I did not want it to be a product of her environment. We took her to a pediatric opthamologist who said that theoretically carbon monoxide poisoning would affect vision first, however, her optic nerves looked good, and he thought she was just developmentally delayed. That afternoon she focused on us for the first time. Our pediatrician was also considering the possibility of autism, even though it would be way to early to diagnose. So we took Taya to a neurologist who checked her thoroughly and said she was fine. Now (3 months later) she is absolutely perfect, and was apparently just not interested in following the general trend in baby development. The boiler problem was a mess that took most of January to clean up.

Mothers are strange kinds of humans

After Alli's birthday dinner last Monday, the rest of the week was spent preparing for her party with her friends last Friday. My friend has an embroidery machine, and I thought it would be a great idea to embroider purses for all the little girls attending. So I spent five hours on Wednesday cutting out the fabric and embroidering names on it. Side note: Taya was not removed from her car seat this whole time, and never even cried. She is seriously the world's best baby, and contrary to the way she looks, the girl never eats. Then I spent another three hours on Thursday trying to get my sewing machine to work to sew them together, and another three hours on Friday watching my mom sew them together on her machine. Through this all I thought to myself: mothers are insane! Why would anyone spend this much time making silk dress up purses for five year olds? And yet I was happy to do it, and I'm sure I will continue to do crazy things for my girls because I love them.

The party was a blast. Everyone came dressed up (of course). We decorated jewlery boxes that I had painted previously. We had parfaits. We danced to the Tinkerbell soundtrack. We tried to play musical chairs, but there were too many tears, so we refrained from removing the chairs, and the girls each just sat down when the music stopped. It worked much better when nobody was "out". And of course the girls loved the silk purses with their names on them. I haven't put the pictures on the computer yet, so they'll come later.

My friend embroidered Alli a little apron that said, "Happily Ever Alli". It is so perfect for her. After the party she asked if we could make a countdown chart for next year's birthday. I said NO. It's time to wind down from the birthday scene.

Fancy Alli Turns Five

Monday, February 23rd was Alli's fifth birthday. I have never seen anyone so excited about a birthday before. On February 1st we had to make a countdown calendar on which she could mark the days off one by one until the 23rd. She made plans for her birthday at the beginning of the month, and then she would go over them with me everyday. On Sunday her primary teacher asked her what she was going to do for her birthday, and she launched into a five minute long exciting list of everything she was going to do. So here are the photos of Monday's celebration.

There is a children's book titled "Fancy Nancy" which is a favorite at our house. You should read it, and then Alli's fancy party will make more sense. Anyway, we all dressed up and went to dinner at Friendly's. We wore boas and hats and held our pinkies up and called each other "darling". Alli said when we walked in everyone thought we were movie stars. I only wish Aunt Kristi had been here to do the girl's hair. Alli loved every minute of it. She is a very fancy girl at heart.

"Yesterday I was four. Today I am five. Next year I'll be twenty." -Alli

My Grandma really is fancy Nancy.

Even baby Taya got dressed up for the party.

I have the fanciest little family ever.

After our fancy dinner party we came back to Grandma's house for presents and chocolate cake. It took Alli about fifty blows to get her five candles out. We were really glad we did not purchase trick candles. Our baby is five. Wasn't she just born yesterday?