Photos From a Fun Birthday Weekend

Here are pictures of the girls playing dress up with their cousin, Sophia:





Here are pictures of Elyana opening her presents and blowing out the 3 candles on her Dora cake:




Here are pictures of everyone at Soldier's Field Pool:

Kids Do Say Such Precious Things

Elyana's 3rd birthday party went well. I will have to post those pictures tomorrow after a bit of editing. I did want to jot down a few things the girls said this weekend before I forgot.

Mikayla is still very interested in the human body (I'm crossing my fingers on a future doctor?). She wanted to know the proper names of the teeth she's lost so far. I showed her a chart of the teeth and told her she has lost her incisors. She started to laugh and said, "What a silly name for teeth, of course they're your insiders. They're inside your mouth!"

After picking up the girls from their rooms at church tonight, they were comparing pictures they colored. Kayla shows Ellie that she's colored a church. Ellie points to her scribbly drawing where she's colored so hard with a marker that there was a hole in the paper. "I made a finger hole, Kayla." She pokes her finger through the paper and laughs really loud. Sometimes Ellie tells me that she learned about Jesus. I wondered what her lesson was tonight and inquired if she learned more about Jesus. "No, I learned about coloring and about toys," she says really serious.

Soon to Be Three

If you have a toddler, you are familiar with, "No! Want to do it by self!" After dinner, Ellie started to talk about her birthday party this weekend and trying to hold up three fingers said, "I'm gonna be three all by self!" Too precious!

Stretch Marks

It's been two days in a row now with Mikayla asking me what those funny marks on me are. So, finally, as best as I could, I explained to her how you get stretch marks. In her drama queen way, she ran out of the room, arms flailing, shouting, "I don't want to grow up and look funny. I don't ever want to grow up." I'm thinking that maybe I should purchase a skimpy bikini and go on a road show to middle schools/high schools to show the after affects pregnancy has on a body. Maybe they'll run out of the room screaming too.

More from the Mouth of a Babe (Mikayla)

On Father's Day I gave Nate a very heart warming card. He read it out loud and Mikayla said, "I think that's for someone else."

Father's Day Weekend

Mikayla and I started off this morning by going to our neighbor's annual garage sale. We go each year and usually get some nice name-brand clothes for the next school year (her daughter is a year ahead of Mikayla). We arrived and Mikayla immediately noticed a table of Polly Pocket items (dolls, clothes, cars, swimming pool, beds, etc.) Mikayla spends hours playing with Polly Pockets. The tag on a bag of the items said, $10. Mikayla brought $5 she has been saving up and I gave her a $5. She went to pay and our neighbor said, "Oh, I hope you don't mind, the price was for the whole table of Polly Pocket stuff. Mikayla's eyes were so huge as our neighbor shoves the contents of the entire table into one of those huge storage bags. What a lucky girl!

Elyana said something very precious today. She was trying to climb the stairs two steps at a time. "It's so hard being little, isn't it Ellie?" I sympathized. She stops, turns around, pokes me in the shoulder with her little finger and replies, "It's so hard being big, isn't it." Little sass! She probably has a point though. Can't believe she'll be 3 next weekend!

I also can't believe I now have 3 more weeks until my triathlon. I'm feeling very frustrated though as I am dealing with some sciatic pain. I need to be training harder and longer right now, but am afraid to push myself at all. Yikes.

Tomorrow is Father's Day. We're not doing much, just making a nice breakfast, opening the girls "gifts," and giving him some time to himself to putz in the garage, and later catching a matinee. One lady at the farmer's market today was telling her little girl, "Let's buy daddy some farm fresh eggs and bacon for a father's day breakfast." Hope you like your box mix pancakes honey... Another lady I met today was bragging about how she sent her husband on a weekend trip to Vegas. Well Nate, if you turn on the fan in the garage and close your eyes, you can pretend it's a tropic breeze on a deserted island. Actually Nate, thanks for being such an incredible daddy and husband. We love and appreciate you more than words (or a Vegas vacation) can ever express.

Blessings

I'm not sure why I'm such a trooper today other than I stayed up late to get 2 things crossed off of my "things I want to accomplish this summer" list. So, after getting 3 kids suited up in rain gear, I pushed the garage door button. Little balls started flying at us. "The storm is here," I shouted. I thought it was the hail that was forcasted. Not so, just a garage door that is now stuck halfway up and little ball bearings all over the floor. First, I am lucky that the van was parked in the driveway. (A friend was adding stuff to my donation pile for a scheduled pick up next week.) Mikayla was the first to point this fact out, "The van could be stuck in there for days, mom." We piled in the van and went to the girls summer music class. I was waiting in the hallway flipping through the phone book. One of the other moms asked what I was looking for and explained that her husband is a builder. She called him up and asked who he recommended. He gave me a number and told me to tell the guy hello. That couldn't have gone any easier!

So we arrive back home and my optimistic daughter says, "Mom, don't ya think it's time we got a new house, this one is obviously falling apart. What if it breaks all into pieces on us?!" Nice.

Precious Moments

I've had some time keeping Precious Moments precious to me in this house. Nate use to tease me saying he would sell them on ebay. Ha Ha! (I must confess, that's because I used to say I'd sell his comic book collection on ebay!) Several years ago, the cabinet fell that my whole collection was. I came home to Nate standing there with the pieces in a bucket. I managed to super glue ALL of them back together. If you stand at a distance you won't notice a few holes or cracks showing.

Tonight, Mikayla noticed them for the first time and asked, "Why do you collect those white people." My favorite is called, "Tell it to Jesus." Pointing at my favorite, her next question was, "Why would you collect a crying one?!" Let me give you a tip, don't ever try to explain the concept of Precious Moments to a 5 year old (or a 33 year old man), they won't get it.

Dreaming of Tantrums

I forgot to add something on my post earlier. Ellie has been wanting only me to put them to bed lately. Every night we've gone through, "Nooo, mama put me to bed." A few hours after we put the kids to bed last night Ellie cried out in her sleep, "Nooo, mama put me to bed!" and then we didn't hear anything else. Yes, she is definitely a strong willed child to dream of having a tantrum!

Enjoying Summer

Yikes, 4 weeks left to train for this triathlon. I did a little more tonight than last week, 11 mile bike and 1.5 mile run. I think I'll just abuse some caffeine that day or something : )

Yesterday the girls played in the sprinkler for the first time this summer. Elyana preferred to use her Dora umbrella while Kayla was drenched. Playing outside took Mikayla's mind off of her second tooth that was hanging by a thread all day. It was so gross because when she talked, the thing would wobble around and sometimes would be sitting in the gum line backwards. We tried everything to get it to come out, including an idea we got from Heidi. (Playing tug of war with your teeth. Ellie was happy to play this game!)

I am once again having more sympathy for my parents. Where to start! There's the constant, "look at my tooth, feel how wiggly it is...." There's the "Ah, is it bleeding?" Then there is the actual trying to remember to play tooth fairy. I came up with if I put the money on my own pillow, I'll remember to go put it under hers. We were excited to use the tooth pillow that Karin made. She made it just in time too.


This photo is from Karin's blog (http://madebyk.blogspot.com/)

Kids Always Say Cute Things

They both said something precious Wednesday. It was Kayla's first day out of school and she said, "Well, it's my first day of summer, don't you have a sign for our yard or something?"

Also, Elyana has noticed her freckles. She keeps pointing to different freckles and saying, "I need a bandaid for my frickles." Very cute.

School's Out

Here are my happy girls today!


Well, today was Kayla's last day of school. We were both sad, but for different reasons. She was going to miss her teacher, I was trying to accept she is now a first grader! I noticed my last entry was Memorial Day Weekend. Mikayla brought home her writing journal today and I was reading some entries. This one cracked me up, "I didn't do anything for Memorial day because I do not know what it is." Cute. She said something to Nate last week that was priceless also, "Daddy, I want to go to Heaven. I want to know what 4 + 4 is and God knows everything."

This is night 2 of the girls sharing a room and sleeping in their new beds. The beds can be converted into bunkbeds later (when Ellie can develop a sense of fear of jumping off things!). So far so good. 5-10 minutes of giggles after I leave the room and then unusual silence. I'm still expecting more goofing off, arguements, poking each other, etc. Here's a picture of their new beds.

I've also been busy doing some minor house improvements I've put off for a long time. I hung curtains in our bedroom. Already converted Ellie's room into a guest room. Also, I've been painting little by little the grape theme around the kitchen. I'm trying to find a few new light fixtures, but can't find "the" one. So, in addition to finishing an article for Rochester Women Magazine, training for the July 12th Triathlon, cleaning houses, and doing daycare...I've been super busy. Our summer calendar is very packed. I swore I wouldn't let that happen and I keep adding more. I guess we are blessed to have a city that offers so much for children and we are blessed to be able to budget it all!