3/28/11

Daily Fun

Jericho's personality is really developing. If you are around her you will notice she loves to play with her tongue and she loves to wave. Despite having mastered the wave over 2 months ago she is still thrilled to pieces with this trick. She is also well known for her BIG smiles that are very easy to come by. Up until a few days ago you would find Jericho doing the arm crawl/inch worm to get from toy to toy and at 8 months she already knows that THE toy to have is Nilla. Anytime Nilla was dropped she would make a bee line for her, occasionally getting there before Nilla was swiped and treating Nilla to a baby slobber facial. Jericho is territorial and sensitive. She hugs her toys close when she sees toddlers getting close to her space and if said toddler tries to take the toy away she does not let it go unnoticed. She seems to be holding her ground as the little sister pretty well and even occasionally stops to take some advise from the big sister.

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Jericho seems to enjoy mowing the lawn in the backpack carrier just like Blythe.

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Blythe is still the mother hen around here, always checking up on me. Most of the things she asks me about are things I have told her or things I have checked with her about like "did Jericho eat well? on both sides?," or "mommy was she poopie?" me: "yes" Blythe: "did you make sure and wipe her bobbom?" But then she will throw something out that makes you stop and think where did she get that. I had just finished filling up the car when Blythe checks "did you put the top back on?" me: "yes" Blythe: "did you close the cover?" Then I think 'seriously?' where do you get this stuff?

The other day I had walked away from my laundry hanging exercise and came back to this...seriously no instruction, not prompting...I could get used to this!

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She hung the clothes on the hangers and then onto the stroller

When Blythe isn't busy mothering me she is mothering BAB and Nilla, and occasionally she is just a bed headed 2.5 year old!

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On Saturday we had 11 college kids come over for The Big Event to detail clean our house. Our house is now spit shined from top to bottom, fresh compost is in the garden, and the summer garden is planted. Blythe watched the kids scrub the house and entertained them with her mothering while Jericho entertained everyone with her big smiles and waves. It was nap time for Jericho and her room was still being cleaned so nap time on the lawn was the next best thing.

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3/24/11

Spring Break 2011

I had been talking about the beach and reading books about the beach for a good week before we left so when Blythe finally heard "lets get the car packed and head to the beach," she got excited and jumped the gun on some of the preparations.

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We spend Spring Break 2011 in Port Aransas, Texas with the Wilkes family. Whenever there is a long car ride on the horizon we pack up a bag of 'tricks' and hope for the best. We had a great 4 hour car trip to the Ferry, and the kids enjoyed getting out for 5 minutes on the Ferry a lot more than having to get loaded back into car seats, thank goodness it was only about 10 minutes until we reached the condo.

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Blythe loved everything about the sand. She loved running in it, building in it, getting buried, burying others, flying kites, throwing the Frisbee, and searching for sea shells, but she wanted nothing to do with the sand that had any sign of being touched by the ocean water.

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Jericho LOVED the sand, especially eating it. At first I tried to be relaxed about letting her 'sample' the sand, figuring as soon as she got the grittyness in her mouth she would be done sampling, but NO she wanted to eat the sand by the fist fulls. If you were holding her so she couldn't eat the sand she tried to dive out of your arms to get to the sand. She is not yet crawling on all 4's, but she has pretty much mastered scooting so we had to lay blankets out and keep re-directing her to the center. The ocean waves crashing must have been a sweet lullaby for Jericho because she spent a lot of time napping at the beach.

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Jericho discovered ginger snaps..

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You know the scene in the movie where there are nice oiled down fit people running on the beach with big smiles on their faces and you think THAT would be a fantastic place to run, think again. My first run was on the beach in my old running shoes, because who wants sand in their new running shoes, and the result was 5 blisters between my toes and on the outsides of my feet [i guess they know what they are talking about when they say THROW AWAY your shoes after you run a marathon]. My conclusion was shoes just weren't mean to be wore when running on the beach so my second run I went barefoot thinking how great the sand would feel on my feet and how nice it will be to dip into the shallow part of the ocean to splash up some water to cool off. The results from this run weren't much better..several blisters on the bottoms of my feet from gripping the sand. My conclusion after 2 runs was to leave the beach runs to move sets in Hollywood.

Other than those two not so great runs I spend the majority of the time with my girls in the sand and it was heaven. You know I am a summer time girl, loving the warm summer breeze, the hot sun, the smell of sunscreened slippery babies, and throwing in sandcastle making was icing on the top!

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We concluded our Spring Break in Houston with a wedding, the Houston Rodeo, and a Brad Paisley concert.

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Many thanks to the Wilkes for a fantastic Spring Break trip and we will have to go back soon because Blythe keeps asking us when we can go back to the condo!

3/11/11

Persistent

To say Blythe is persistent is an understatement, but I am too tired to search for the perfect word. Not only is she persistent, but she is independent and wont have it any other way. Until today she was o.k. with the fact that she needed help going tee tee in the grass and accepted that squatting was not usually a skill one has at the age two-and-a-half, but today that all went out the window. We were at the park with the Romansky's and Mike was able to go tee tee in the grass all by himself so Blythe decided that she needed to figure it out. Of course she decides to do this right as I was sitting down to nurse Jericho, luckily we were the only ones at the park, and I was curious how she planned to make all of this happen. At first she tried to do it like Mike does, but quickly realizes she was missing some hardware, then she tries to squat and decides that isn't going to work either because she is going to get tee tee on her clothes, so what does smart girl do? She takes off her panties and skirt and squats, very successful I might add, and proudly turns toward me and says "see mom I tee tee in the grass ALL by myself." I was CRACKING.UP.THE. ENTIRE. TIME. To see her little mind going around in circles and trying to decide exactly how she could accomplish this goal she had, and how the heck did she have the forethought of where the tee tee would land? Honestly, I thought we would be going home with wet undies and skirt, momma never thought she would realize squatting on her own would get her clothes wet.... Clearly I need to up my expectations. Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE my new job? Oh the places we will go and the adventures we will have.

3/9/11

Ash Wednesday

We all know it is a rare sight to see me in make-up, but this morning I was inspired by my beautiful Blythe. She semi-recently acquired a stool which basically means that she can reach things quicker than she used to. Before she had to figure out what she could stack together to form a stool so she could get to where she had her mind set on going, now she just collects the stool and can reach almost anything or at least be at the height of all the counters to climb on in 2 seconds flat. She has also learned how to operate the child proofing so she is pretty much a 'free roaming toddler,' which I guess is all the rave these days, right? I mean if we desire to have free roaming chickens surely free roaming Toddlers are on the top of the list. o.k. I am wondering here, no pun intended, but this free roaming love of mine found the lips this morning and so we decided it was going to be a dressy picnic date with our friends and ash Wednesday service. I'm not big on make-up and have even shuttered at the sight of little ones wearing make-up, but I have to admit that it was fun to watch Blythe enjoy "painting" her face.

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We had a great picnic at St. Mary's and I of course seized the opportunity to wear the new shoes I scored.

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I love this picture because it really captures who Blythe is. She is such a Mother Hen, removing Ian and Mike's jacket for them as soon as they arrive and un-packing their lunches for them.

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There is a lot of anticipation during the 40 days of lent; meat-less Fridays and all the yummy fish dishes that should be in our diets more often than lent, making it to more stations of the cross than the previous year, fasting, realizing how cleansing to the soul it is to give something up or add something in, reaching the end of the 40 days and celebrating Easter, but it all starts with the anticipation of the ash cross. Will you get the thumb print, the slight recognition of a cross, the HUGE I wish my forehead was bigger cross, the horizontal or vertical line, or will you get that rare perfectly even, stencilesk cross and silently think to yourself; yes, I chose the right line this year!).

Our girls love to play in the bed and I love watching them love on each other!

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No more pictures mom, this is a sister only thing

Confession: I'm 26 and I took a knitting class. Not just a knitting class, but a sock knitting class. It was a 3 week class and now I have one sock, so I guess at least one of my feet will be warm for tonight's cold front.

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BUT I also ran a 5K this weekend so don't worry I am not turning into an old lady just yet, I guess I just like to try my hand at everything...who knows what I will get into next.

WHAT am I doing up so late, its about to stroke midnight and I am pretty sure I will turn into a pumpkin!