Thursday, April 4, 2013

Ava's Favorite Things


A friend of mine recently posted an interview with her little girl. It was fun & sweet, so I thought I'd interview Ava, too! She loved it. We did this a while ago and she has actually asked me to interview her several times since then. :) I wrote her answers exactly as she said them to me, so these are her responses word for word. 

Favorite Color: 
Pink! Pink! Pinkpink! And orange, too.

Favorite Toy: 
A Volcano Toy! I need a real one made out of rocks. And Daisy Dog.
(She is really interested in volcanoes right now -- which you'll see in some of her following responses. She has a volcano she made out of clay, but apparently she wants the real thing!)

Favorite Fruit: 
Apples

Favorite Show:
Rudolph and Wall-E

Favorite Thing to Eat for Lunch: 
Noodles

Favorite Outfit: 
Dresses. That Ladybug Dress. Playing dress-up is fun. I wear an outfit that’s a dress!
(She would choose to wear a dress or skirt every day if she could.)

Favorite Game: 
Memory and Candy Land

Favorite Snack:
A sandwich.

Favorite Animal:
A Shark! I like to look at them in the ocean. I like friendly sharks. I had a dream like that! There was a princess shark that was really, really nice.
(Haha! This response surprised me a bit! We've been watching some ocean documentaries on Netflix lately. Also, she often tells us about her "dreams" like that. I love her little imagination.)

Favorite Song:
Rudolph
(She sang it about a zillion times throughout the Christmas season.)

Favorite Book: 
The Best Book of Volcanoes

Favorite Friend: 
Drew and Sam and Henry and Violet. Drew is a nice boy.

Favorite Cereal:
Honey Nut Chex 

Favorite thing to do outside:
Make a sand castle.

Favorite Drink:
Lemonade

Favorite Holiday: 
Christmas! And Valenstime, too. And Birthday Parties!

Favorite Thing to Sleep with: 
Pink Blankie

Favorite Breakfast:
Volcanoes. Caldera Volcanoes. I mean, bananas.
(Bahahahaha!! I have no idea. Apparently she was distracted . . . )

Favorite Place to Eat:
Noodles!
(Loves the pesto cavatappi.)

What do you want to be when you grow up?: 
A Volcanologist. Sometimes they sing about volcanoes. And they study volcanoes and use tools. AND they could sing about volcanoes.

What does Daddy do?:
Sing. Umm . . . I don’t know. What does he do? 

Who Loves you the most?:
Uh, YOU do!

Where would you like to go on a trip?:
GRANDMA’S!!! On a train! I would play with toys at Grandma’s. 

What is your favorite thing to do?
My favorite thing to do is brushing my teeth and snuggling pink blankie and taking silly pictures!

And with that, I'll leave you with a sampling said "silly pictures" -- she's a Photo Booth fan! She asks to do this almost every day. She just sits there laughing hysterically at her silliness! :) 















Sillies!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Sam at 2


You may have heard that my sweet baby boy is two now. 
He used to be this big:


And then was this big at 1:


And now is just getting way too grown up! 


Memories of Sam at Two:

Talking up a storm -- At this point, you’d probably have to be around Sam a lot to understand all of his speech, but he’s really taking off in the vocabulary department. Really, the last month has been his biggest vocab growth spurt so far in his young life.  We seem to be moving on from grunting & pointing toward actual consistent word use! Hooray! My favorites: “Vah-vah” for Ava and “Luj you” for Love you. Aww . . . 

Determined, inventive, busy -- Sam is one of those kids that gets into everything and wants to know how it all works. He’s definitely disassembled a few things in his day.  He's curious and truly is a problem-solver. Rather than pointing helplessly at an object that is out of reach, he devises a scheme to reach his prize; scaling furniture and walls along the way. As you can imagine, this comes with its own unique set of parenting challenges. (ha!)

Sweet -- He’s got more than his fair share of rambunctious boyishness, but he does have a softer side. He loves to grab a cup of milk and a blanket and come snuggle up with one of us on the couch. And, he’s more than willing to give momma a nice, drooly night-night kiss. I love my boy!






















Favorite Things
Foods
“To-to” (toast) or frosted mini wheats for breakfast 
Fruit of all kinds.
Veggies of most kinds.
Milk -- he’s an addict.
String Cheese!

Toys
Mr. Bear is always at the top of the list.
His Bike!
Trains, cars, trucks -- sound effects included. 
My favorite are the little chugging choo-choo sounds he makes. Adorable :)


To Do
Play and wrestle with Daddy
Eat snow -- while Ava may busily run around and play in the snow, Sam would rather find a nice spot to sit and chow down.
Read stories before bed.
Copy Ava in their play.
Go on bike rides.
Play Drums! Learning to rock out.

Other Little Things
--  His teeth are coming in very slowly. Maybe it's not too unusual, but the kid still only has about 9 teeth or so. Where are they?? And, every time one does start to come in, it takes weeks or even months to fully show itself. I guess my only comparison is Ava, who had a full set by about 12-15 months. Sam has his first dentist appt in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see what they say! 

--  He has just a bit of curl to his hair when it gets long enough to show. :)

--  One of his biggest "naughty" issues? Power cords. Outlets. Computer cords. Electronics in general! He is still learning this lesson the hard way. They plug in! They unplug! It's just so amazing! No matter how much I wish we could, not all power cords can be hidden behind furniture.

--  Sam’s Papa (my dad) wears hats sometimes, and somehow, Sam has exclusively identified hats with Papa. So, if we’re out & about and someone else in the wide world happens to be wearing a hat, he points to it and says, “Papa! Papa! Hat! Hat!” It seems to be rather disconcerting for him, as I think he may believe that all these people are walking around in stolen hats. 

--  This boy looks like his daddy! And so does his sister, for that matter . . . I think baby #3 will look like me. I've decided.





Life Right Now

We are getting ready for baby brother to arrive! Less than three months to go. I still find it odd thinking that Sam won't be my baby anymore. Weird! Soon he'll be stuck as a middle child . . . but I was a middle child & thought it was pretty cool, so no worries!

With the new addition coming soon, Sam is transitioning into his big boy bed. We considered getting a second crib for awhile, but that just seemed silly, so he's movin' on up! Surprisingly, he's doing pretty well with the change (at least better than I thought he would be). We've had a few times when he's gotten out of bed, but he's learning what's expected and figuring it out. Good job, little buddy! 

The only downside . . . now he can get out of bed as soon as his little eyes open in the morning. Which means we're awakened by a bright and cheerful little dude about an hour earlier than we were in our previous routine. Sam's the only early riser in this house! The rest of us prefer to laze about all morning. Ha.

-----------------

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my little two year-old! 

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas? Or . . . We Survived.


Merry Christmas! I'm sitting down at the end of a long day and felt like documenting it. Mostly for my own sake, but you can hear about it too if you'd like. A little pathetic, a little funny . . . maybe mostly pathetic. Pathetically funny. But we survived. And, I think the kids still had a fairly fun day!

4:30 AM -- Adam wakes up. The norovirus has struck. Ava and I had it over the weekend, so it was just a matter of time . . . if you live around here, you know about this plague, and you know that this means that at 4:30 AM I was aware that I was on my own this Christmas. Adam was done for at least the next 24 hours. Although, at the time, he said something funny like, "I feel a lot better! Maybe that was just it!" Ha.

5:00ish or so -- We head downstairs. Adam gets sick about 27 more times and watches a weird space movie I don't understand, so I fall back to sleep in an amazingly uncomfortable position on the couch.

Later, I wake up with my neck stuck at a 45 degree angle, Adam drifts in and out of consciousness, and then the kids wake up and have suddenly developed a green goopy cold. The plot thickens -- goopily and oozily.


Present time! Really, I truly was trying to keep my spirits up, and was doing pretty well. We had a fun time opening presents -- I think even Adam was okay for a little bit as he groaned and sighed pathetically on the couch. Maybe not that okay.


Notice Sam's nose? I bet you're glad I pointed that out.


Ava got a Cinderella dress from Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Lee, and then wore it all day long! :) There's something so almost cheesy and yet so fun and sweet about little girls and Disney princess dresses. She loved it.

Tough guy. They also gave Sam a Strider bike. While he did have fun with his other gifts, this was by far his favorite. He would play with something else for a bit and then suddenly stop and say, "Bii-ii!" (bike -- a two syllable word), as if he realized -- why am I doing this when I could be riding my BIKE! He rode it up and down the hallway about 287 times today. :)


More awesome presents from Grandma and Grandpa Lockwood! Sam's gift theme ended up being things that go! Trucks, trains, cars -- he made a lot of really great vrooming noises today.

After all the fun of gifts and playtime, it was time for lunch. Because Ava and I were so sick this weekend, I did absolutely no Christmas baking or goodie-making. Maybe it's not a big deal, but it did seem a little sad. We also didn't go out and get groceries for a Christmas meal until yesterday, and even then, we kept it very simple. Adam was planning on doing the cooking since I hadn't been feeling well.  But then he was sick and there was no point in anyone making any sort of big meal. Anyway . . . all this to say . . . I fed my children hot dogs, pretzels, and canned pineapple for Christmas lunch. Pitiful. And then I cried a little. Really, I did. Pitiful.

After lunch and a little more playtime, it was time for nap time! Sam went to bed, but I let Ava stay up so that we could play with all of her "big girl" presents. It was so very fun and lifted my spirits right up again. 

She got the sweetest stamp set from G&G Lockwood AND an Ed Emberly Thumbprint Drawing Book. Did you have those books when you were a kid? They are just brilliant. Cute and fun and just delightful for young kids. Emberly also has some great regular drawing books -- we'll be getting one eventually.

Simply make a thumb or finger print and then make it into something. Animals, people, all sorts of fun! Here, she made a spider, a bunny, and a princess with long curly hair. The books are fun because they give really simple step-by-step instructions for each little figure. She was so excited to be able to figure all of these out on her own. She made tons of little prints, and eventually wanted to use my prints because she figured out that they would be bigger and a little easier to draw in. :)


After that, little Cinderella wanted to play her new games from Gma Debbie & Gpa Lee. Hi-Ho Cherrio and Pretty Pretty Princess. Doesn't she just look too grown up with those clip-on earrings on? I love my Ava girl.

Next? Disaster. Sam started waking up from his nap, but I had just made a cup of my new tea and wanted to sit and enjoy it for a few minutes. It was a gift from Adam -- an old favorite I hadn't been able to find anywhere for years that Adam ordered for me!

Sooo . . . I let Sam hang out and talk to himself in his crib for about 5-10 minutes. When I put him down for his nap, he was still in his pajamas. It was just one of those days where getting him dressed wasn't important, you know? 

Anyway -- Sam and footie jammies. It's complicated. Sam must be in footie jammies at night. AND those footie jammies must be safety-pinned through the zipper at the top. Can you guess why? Oddly, during the day, when he is napping in his clothes, we don't have this problem, even though it should technically be just as easy to strip out of those clothes as it is to unzip a zipper. 

So here's what happened.

Sam wakes up. Realizes he's still in footie jammies. Immediately checks the zipper. "Mwahahaha!! NO saftey pin!" Removes footie jammies. Removes poopy diaper.

I enjoy my 10 minutes of tea. Silly.

When I opened the door to his room, I could smell the disaster before I saw it. And there was my stark naked boy, looking guilty, and there was his poo-slimed crib. Crib slats, crib rails, crib sheet, and his poor beloved Mr. Bear . . . ick.

It gets worse.

I carried him at arm's length to the bathroom and started the shower to rinse him off before giving him a bath. In my rush, I grabbed my own shampoo to start washing the poo off his hands. I got them all lathered up, and then he rubbed both soapy hands into his eyes.

Baby torture. 

He stood there screaming, "Eye!! Eye!! Eye!! Eeeeye!!", while I tried desperately to pour water over his face to wash out the soap. He hates having water on his face. He coughed and spluttered and looked at me with soapy, terror-filled eyes. The screams intensified. "Eye!! Eye!! Nooooo!!!"

Eventually, it washed out. And he might need therapy.

After all that fun, I got to go work on the poo-encased crib.    yippee . . . 


The rest of the day is kind of a blur now. They played some more. I made a dinner equally as dismal as our lunch. Adam slept a little, hung out a little, groaned a bit, slept some more, and is sleeping still. 

Merry Christmas! 

It is almost funny now, isn't it? :)


P.S. Here's the one small and somewhat uninteresting video I took today. But still cute because kids are always cute, right?




Monday, September 3, 2012

18 Months

Happy Labor Day! But, more importantly, Happy 18th Monthday to Sammy Sam! 

We drove up to Nana & Papa's house for the day to hang out. As you can see, Sam and Mr. Bear are still the best of buds.

 The kiddies got to swim in the pool today! It was very exciting. 



It was a fun day for the kids. A nice, relaxing day, & a bit rainy, too! It was so nice to have a slightly cooler day. We are very ready for fall. Or maybe we should just skip to winter . . . Anyway, let's talk a little more about my favorite little dude. 

Last year on Sept. 3rd, Sam was just trying out real food for the first time!

And now he's turned into this handsome little guy. It really does seem crazy how fast they grow up. Sniff . . . 

Samuel William at 18 Months
Defining Words:
Curious
Noisy
Mischievous
Drooly
Cute
Expressive

Favorite Things: 
Mr. Bear
Dogs
Kitties
Bananas
Rocks
Milk
Electronics

Likes to: 
Climb atop high things and grunt victoriously
Copy Ava
Steal Ava's Blankie (Poor Boo!)
Dance like a crazy foo'
Play Hide and Seek
Hug Daddy 15 times every day before he can leave for lessons :)
Figure out how things work
Explore

Says:
"Mama"
"Dada"
"Dog"
"Uh-oh"

Looks:
Cute while sleeping . . .
See? CUTE.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Speedboat

Ava and Sam actually played together doing this for a long time -- maybe almost an hour! I didn't put our stroller away the other day and it turned into all kinds of fun. First, Sam climbed on it, then Ava thought it looked like the coolest thing ever, so she joined him. And then it became . . . a boat! 

They would get in and rock it -- riding the waves! (It's a three-wheeled jogger, so it was very tippy going back and forth on that front wheel.) Then they would jump out and get in the "water" to swim. I love when they find a shared activity that they can have fun doing together. I don't think Sam totally gets what's going on, but he was laughing and having tons of fun doing what Ava was doing. Cuties!


I thought the goggles were a nice touch. :) Drooly boy! He's working on three more teeth. And he just drools for fun sometimes, I think . . . haha.

But you have to look out!! Gator infested waters! Yikes.

Ava got Sam's alligators and put them there. But, actually, she said they're nice alligators, so I guess we're safe. :)



P.S. Sarah, Chris, & Adelyn -- Sam says thank you for his new gator. He thinks it's funny that it squeaks!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

{Share the Love: Adoption Fundraiser}

Hi Friends!
Just wanted to let you all know that the {Share the Love: Adoption Fundraiser} is going on now! All day yesterday, Liz Messer  at I'd Rather Be Elspeth, posted all of the different packages that you can enter to win. Each package has its own post, so if you go to her site you can see detailed info on all of them! The super cape I made is in the Boy Package, and the art smock is in the Girl Package. There are many other packages, too! Here's a little look at all of them, but really, you must go over to her site and see them. The fundraiser will last until August 26th.

Click on the text below each photo to go directly to her site and see detailed info & photos of everything included in each package!









There are so many amazing things to choose from! Please join with me in supporting the Messer family. You can enter to win any of the above packages for just $5 per entry. You can make multiple entries for the same package or spread out your entries if you wish. For example, if you really wanted to win the cute Girl Package, you could enter once for $5, five times for $25, etc. Basically, you can enter as many times as you want to for any or all of the packages!


A little more about the Messers, if you haven't heard their story
Their daughter, Micah, was born in 2009 at 29 weeks by emergency c-section. Very shocked new parents, Joe and Liz, had a hard road watching her struggle through her early weeks in the NICU, but God protected her in those early days. Now she has grown into this beautiful, healthy girl!
Because of where the c-section was performed, doctors were unsure about whether Joe and Liz would be able to have many children, so they already knew at that time that they wanted to adopt someday. A little over a year ago, they lost their tiny baby son, Liam James, in Liz's second pregnancy due to uterine rupture. 
I can't help but sit here and cry as I write this -- such suffering in the life of my dear friend is hard to bear. But, I am so thankful for them and their heart for adoption. It is such a blessing to that they will soon be able to provide a home for a little baby in desperate need of loving parents like Liz and Joe -- and a sweet big sister like Micah!

I would love for you to go over to Liz's blog and check out the fundraiser. Any amount of help will go a long way toward their goal. Pray for them, too, as they continue to heal from the loss of little Liam, and as they look hopefully ahead to their adoption!