Bedtime Smartie

Cheeks is a funny duck. I couldn't be more proud of my daughter tonight. The last part of our bedtime routine is singing three songs. The kids WANT to hear the songs but they would rather play with the toys in their closet than cuddle these days so I feel like I'm singing to the room, which doesn't go over so super well. If I'm going to sing, dang it, I want to feel like my audience is listening. So I made a new rule that if they want their songs, at least one of them HAS to be sitting on my lap. Boy Howdy used to be the resident lap sitter, but he has since passed the torch to Cheeks who, reluctantly, took up the post on my lap; but not without relinquishing her desire for the toys. Once she found out that getting up stops the songs, she quickly learned to keep at least one part of her body touching me while fishing for objects. I honestly couldn't be more proud of my daughter. It was totally entertaining, completely endearing and so very fun watching her figure it all out. How I love watching my babies grow.

Happy Birthday Cheeks!

My baby girlie is now a twosie. When asked, she will still claim, "I a baby," but she really isn't any more. She's talking so much, always jumping and so very silly. The Sunday before her birthday we celebrated with my sister Melissa's family as they were already coming over for lunch. Thankfully this poor little girl still doesn't know that other 2-year olds have extravagant parties because she was pretty excited to just have cake, ice cream and presents. 

Side note on her birthday cake. I figured she didn't care, so I made a black forest cake (because that's what I wanted) and did it up like I saw on pinterest. It was all going so beautifully until I added the whipped cream (which I added pink tinting to to make it more girlie but just ended up looking kind of horrific) which proceeded to melt and drip all over the cake. It was fairly grotesque and Boy Howdy went to the refrigerator at least every 5 or 10 minutes to comment on the state of the cake and try to get a finger-full until I pried him away. It looked pretty awful but it still tasted wonderful. Or I should say, it tasted wonderful on Sunday, by Tuesday; when I fed her leftover birthday cake for breakfast, it was slightly less so. 

Moving on . . . She was all smiles and excitement for her party until we sang happy birthday to her. That may have elicited some hiding under the table in fear? embarrassment? surprise? Not quite sure but she wasn't so enthused after that. She looked kind of dazed and uninterested when opening her presents. Thankfully Boy Howdy and Cousin A were there to lend a hand. Although I'm pretty sure they would have lent a hand no matter what.

A couple of days later on her actual birthday Melissa's family and the kids and I went to the Gilbert House a few minutes away from us. Not quite as cool as the children's museum in Philadelphia but definitely capable of holding it's own. Added bonus is that it is 5 MINUTES from our house!!! Cheeks loved it so much that we lost track of her at lunch and a very frantic mother finally found her (5 minutes later with the whole museum staff looking for as well) off by herself not aware that her family is NOWHERE TO BE SEEN!!!

Oh my dear sweetheart! How I love this little girl. She is so smiley and happy the vast majority of every day. She can for sure let you know when she is unhappy, but for the most part she is my little butterfly flitting from thing to thing. She almost always has scraggly, waif-like hair despite all my attempts and has a dirty face from morn until eve'n but that smile and those blue eyes win me over every time. She is independent, silly, busy, bubbly, mischievous, girlie, and she loves to pull leaves off anything growing. She is so odd and she is so mine forever and ever. Happy Birthday to my little one.

Construction

So . . . they are building four new houses (really more like apartment-sized houses) right beside ours. It is a bummer on so many levels but the upside is that we get to watch the construction process from the comfort of our own home. That is actually pretty exciting for us all but for Boy Howdy most especially. He knows the names to all the different trucks and gets SOOO excited when they come to work on the site. This particular day they were filling something with cement so for our afternoon snack we made frozen banana puree and brought it upstairs to eat and watch the "show." 

 

 I may have felt like a cool mom for thinking of this.

Vacation Beds

Matthew had a business trip in Vancouver, BC so I convinced him to drive and drop the kids and I off at my friend Leslie's house in Seattle on his way. The drive may have been less than ideal. The 3 hour drive quickly turned in to 5 almost 6 hours due to Sunday traffic and multiple car wrecks impeding flow. I'm guessing that the traffic didn't help Cheeks' tummy because she threw up twice. I also input the wrong address in our GPS and ended up at a residence most definitely not belonging to my friend. I'm pretty certain Matthew will not be making the drive next year and will most assuredly opt to fly, but at least he made it this time and we got to spend time with my darling friend.

Our children, minus some weird dinosaur issues, played well together which left Leslie and I with a lot of time to talk. I love Leslie. I love that we may not see or talk to each other for months or years and yet it is always so very easy to be with her. I'm sure I was a little hoarse at the end of our stay.
One of the things I love most is that we are the same age and our children are roughly the same ages. As a woman who didn't get pregnant until my 30's this is a rarity indeed. Not that any of those things is a necessity in a friend, but it's nice to have at least one other person in the same boat.

The first night the kids had no intention of going to bed. They insisted they were not tired and did EVERYTHING except sleep in their room. They came out NUMEROUS times until finally they claimed they wanted to sleep in my bed. Out of desperation I said yes and put them in my bed with the promise I would be in to cuddle shortly. One more set of tears from Cheeks claiming Boy Howdy was pushing her away followed and I put Cheeks on one side of the bed and Boy Howdy on the other again promising I would be in soon. I didn't hear from them after that. When I did make it in to go to bed I found them cuddled up with each other; Cheeks with eye liner and under eye concealer on her face (I guess she found my makeup). What cute little faces. I got some pictures and then transferred them to their own beds so I could sleep sans children. It didn't much matter because 6 hours later they were back for some for realsies cuddle time with mama.

The rest of the stay was fairly uneventful and completely delightful made even more lovely with a very easy, non-throwup drive home.

Costco Picnic

The babes were disappointed to not eat IN Costco (there wasn't enough space), but thankfully having a picnic in the back of our car was a happy alternative.  It was a lovely day for a car picnic and the hot dogs were condiment free or it might not have been quite so happy. For some reason, even though we had a pretty good morning doing fun things, this was my favorite part of my day. No place to be, no forced sharing. Just two happy babes and one content mama hanging out in the parking lot enjoying a lovely day and good hot dogs.

It's Official, We've Arrived

Oh no, we haven't arrived because we have a fancy house, paid off student loans or really any other super noteworthy milestone. We have officially arrived because we can BOTH park our cars in our garage!! I know, I know, this is not remotely impressive to really anyone else other than me. But for years, living in apartments with various parking arrangements, I always KNEW that I will have arrived when I have a garage to park in. We had a garage in our last house, but it was only big enough for one car and that car was not mine (too small). So for this girl and her garage dreams, having a two car garage and a separate storage space, was the most. So while these pictures don't interest anyone else, they make me extraordinarily happy!

 

 

Oh, and a picture of Boy Howdy since he wanted to know what I was doing and insisted since I was taking a picture of the cars that I should take a picture of him as well.



New Saturday Evening Tradition

We have a new Saturday tradition after bath time.  This little girl gets a super quick mani/pedi. She gets so excited for her nail polish it's hard not to indulge her, especially after a week of playing with rocks and cars and dirt. I love this little girl who loves this very girly new tradition of ours.