Finally!

Its warm enough to play outside!
Mattie LOVES being outside.
Taylor's been working hard to clean up the backyard, and its looking great.

Principal Pride

Both the girls have been honored this past month for special achievements that they have done in school. Each month Teachers pick students that have done things that deserve recognition or for things that they are excelling at.

Its Called Principal pride, and parents are invited to come to a little ceremony where each child gets recognized and given a certificate. A Letter comes home announcing their special day about a week before.

I thought it was great that Megan was chosen a few weeks ago, as it happened to be at a time that Megan was working very hard on being "the nicest girl in class".. She was so proud of her letter and even slept with it that night. Taylor and I felt really bad because we were both scheduled for work and couldn't get the day off. Grandma and Papa came through though and took lots of pictures for us.I was sad that I missed her little face. I wanted to see her expression so bad..

Megan's Achievement was for "getting her work done in class, and working hard on reading".

Yesterday was Ali's turn. Taylor and I were both able to attend. Grandma ,Papa, and even Mike came to see her too. She was so grown up. She'd picked her outfit out the night before and looked fabulous!

Ali's achievement was "Amazing Author Award! Works hard in writing, very creative!"

They're both doing so well, I'm so proud of them.

My little Fashionista

IMG_1787a
Originally uploaded by me and mine

I called Taylor from work this morning to see how the morning was going. He came into the bathroom to find Megan wearing a completely new ensemble from what he had helped her dress in 5 minutes earlier.
"You can't wear that!" he exclaimed.
"why?" she asked,
"because if you bend over ,everyone will see your bum!" We were both laughing as he tried describing to me what she had on. I made him take a picture of her.

"Can I wear it if I have pants?" she asked?
and he agreed.
She is so funny this trendy girl of mine!

saturday night in kaysville

Alex with Sammy
Originally uploaded by me and mine

Last night we went to Kaysville to hang out with Megan and her three. My Megan was in heaven playing with Mia because Mia is a total Girlie girl, and together they successfully went through every dress up in the house. They played happily and without even one squablet for 3 hours! Megan’s been working on "taking turns" when it comes to deciding what to play with her friends (something we've been working on when the Cason's are at our house) and I think she did a pretty spectacular job because I happened to over hear Mia asking to play wedding after they played Princess, and Megan said "okay, then it will be my turn to decide again" I had to stifle a laugh when Mia came down the stairs in her 'wedding attire' it was complete with veil, and very adorable! I loved watching their girly play. It really looked like fun. It was fun seeing Mattie and Sam playing together, although they really didn’t play together, just kind of side by side, in the same room. It was still fun to see them interact occasionally and to see how "solid" Mattie is (aka chubba wubba bubba) compared to Sammy who is still a skinny little guy. I told him he's got three months to put on a few inches to catch up with Matt. Mattie being the little co-dependant thing that he is played fine as long as I was no more than two feet from him. Megan had to leave to work and I offered to hang out with her crew until her husband got home about 45 minutes later. Both Mattie and Sam were exhausted and cranky so I was trying to manage them both when Ali offered to step in. Since Mattie was not going to have anyone but his mamma holding him, I quickly demonstrated to Ali how to rock Sam while patting his bum, and shushing quietly to calm him down. My skinny little 8 year old picked him up, laid him in her arms and proceeded to rock, pat, and shush that 24 pound little guy to a happy little slumber. I was so impressed and told her so over and over again. She said something then that made me so proud to be her mother, she said "well, I learned from a very special person" I said "oh yeah?" and she replied " you Mom!" It felt fantastic. She was so proud of herself too, she kept saying " I just feel so grown up mom" and "I can't believe I can do this!” She sat on the couch with him asleep in her arms for a good twenty minutes. I propped up her skinny little arms and neck so they wouldn’t give out on her, but she wasn’t about to move that baby.. She’d worked too hard to risk waking him up! When Ryan came in, you could see how proud she was sitting there on the couch holding his little boy and I made a point to let him know how much she'd helped me out with him..

It was a great night. We got home in time to watch Goosebumps, which has become a tradition for the girls every Saturday night. It started at their Dad's house, and I'm not sure I will continue it, because (and Ali won't admit this) they were both freaked out, and spent the night in our bedroom!

From this little chubby cheek thing........

Ali blessing
Originally uploaded by me and mine

To This.......

Originally uploaded by me and mine

My boy crazy 8 year old!
We have Speech therapy tonight. Its going really well. She can actually feel the back of her teeth when she bites down, that's amazing!
Tonight she gets to "Learn how to eat" what ever that means...
I'm very curious to find out...
Update: Okay, so the "eating" part was pretty interesting. She has to chew in steps, and watch herself swallow in a mirror while she's eating. Its all very specific. Ali was not excited about the fact that she'll be sticking her tongue out at the dinner table to make sure her food is in a ball. (basically using her tongue muscles to form her food together) then she has to bite down, open her lips and swallow while watching so that her tongue stays in. She also gets to take steps in swallowing water, and this sounds weird but she has to "practice swallowing her saliva" 5-10 times after eating or drinking anything.. apparently that is when the teeth shifting happens most often , during saliva swallowing... who knew?

Thanks Mom for all your help during Speech.. I really appreciate you.

Mathew is killing me with his cuteness

I mean seriously, how cute can one 17 month old be?
His latest obsession is flipping through board books over and over and over again.
The other night we spent a good part of an hour doing this. He calls them “cooks” and hands them to you then stands there expectantly, or climbs in your lap while you open it up to the pages inside. He points and comments about the pictures on each page. His two favorites are a great big heavy Animal board book, and Brown Bear Brown Bear. I love getting him to make the animal sounds as I point to the animals. My personal favorite is the horse because he shakes his whole face to make the sound. He thinks he’s pretty funny too, and looks at my like I’m crazy when I do the rooster call. I’m trying to teach him his colors using Brown Bear. So far he’s got green and blue. After about 45 minutes of looking through books I tried to distract him by walking upstairs. I was waiting in the kitchen for him to come up and I had to laugh because there he was climbing up the stairs bringing with him the great big animal book. He was working so hard to get it up there pushing it ahead of him before each step. Its about 1/3 his size! Of course we read for another 15 minutes before I put him to bed. I couldn’t let him go through all that effort for nothing.
The other thing he’s been doing regularly is dancing. It’s the cutest little shimmy I’ve ever seen. The girls always had the little hip shake going on, but Mattie does a whole body shimmy back and forth. The girls and I were cleaning their room the other night and Mattie was helping by being DJ. He put High school musical in the CD player and as soon as it started he did his little shimmy. He’s so serious about it too. He’d push pause and totally stop straight faced then start it up and start shaking again. The girls and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t clean and he loved the attention, even if he didn’t’ get why we were laughing so hard.
I put on Wiggles for him the other night and he was mesmerized. I don’t know if that was so smart on my part.. I DID suffer through years of the Wiggles with Megan, and I think I might have set myself up for a few more years of them. Oh well, Watching him watch them takes me back to those days when Meg would watch in awe and shake her little booty.. Seriously, Who needs TV when you can watch a toddler?

More Parenting lessons.... belated

My Megan is a deep sleeper. Always has been. Sleeping soundly is a wonderful thing, UNLESS your brain is so busy sleeping, it forgets to communicate with your bladder in the middle of the night. That, unfortunately is a problem we’ve dealt with since she was first potty trained at 2 ½ . We thought she’d grow out of it as she got older, but here we are and at 5 and she still wets the bed.
It’s never been a big deal at our house. We’ve kept her in pull-ups at night, and beside the occasional complaints of “wedgies” or “I’m a big girl” protests , it’s been fine.
Ex had a very hard time accepting that it wasn’t her fault and often punished, or made her feel bad about it. He insisted that I 'do' something about it a few years ago ,(because you know, I have complete control over her body). After spending weeks waking her up in the middle of the night to use the potty, with no improvement, I took her to the Dr. Her Dr assured us that eventually she'll grow out of it,and if by the age of six, she’s still having a problem then we’ll begin the whole Alarm system routine. So for years now we’ve given Meg her choice of pull-ups, encouraged her to ‘go’ before bed, and celebrated dry nights if just lightly so as not to put a big stress on it all.
Ali being older, and having never had a problem with wetting the bed, has in the past taken to harassing Megan like her Dad. She would repeat things that her He (Ex) would say, like that she was too old and shouldn’t be doing that, or that she is still a “baby” said mockingly which of course to Megan is the biggest insult a 3-4 year old could receive. I sat down with Ali long ago and explained to her the inability Megan has to control it, and pointed out how the hurtful insensitive things she said to Megan could really hurt her ego. Without deflating her Dad, I had to explain to her that her dad was in fact not correct in his approach. And that maybe he just doesnt understand. She agreed that she didnt want to hurt her sister and for the most part stays quiet but occasionally I do catch jab here and there, (which quickly gets her a pointed look from Mom).
So I guess my point to all of this is that we’ve really tried to help her not feel bad about her problem. I don’t want her growing up with issues or insecurities. But then a week or so ago, I reminded her to go put her pull up on. She began to cry, and for the first time ever she said what I had been dreading she’d say about it for years.
“But Mom, What if someone finds out and makes fun of me?” It was that last point. “What if someone makes fun of me” It finally occurred to her that this could happen, that her problem was in fact not normal and it scared me a little. . I assured her no one would find out, and that it was not her fault that she slept soundly. She seemed reasured but still cried a bit about it. All I could think about was how I could protect her from that ever happening. How can mommy fix it?
Yet another moment that I wish they’d written in a book for me.
By the next night she’d forgotten about it, and happily slipped into her new “boxer style” brand. I breathed a sigh of relief but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to fix that communication between her brain and her bladder before any of her peers ever find out..

Parenting 101

I had one of those “Ahhh, what do I say?” parenting moments last night.
I’d sent the girls up their rooms to get ready for bed, finished up a few things and went upstairs to tuck them in. There sat Ali in her bed looking awfully forlorn. I questioned her and she explained to me with tears in her eyes that she did not get the Big part that she was hoping for in Drama.
Our school started drama program last year and it was a big success. They put on a fun play at the end of the year and This year they offered the program again. I don’t think they realized just how popular it was going to be because there are over 100 students there every Tuesday morning ready to perform.
Ali had auditioned last week hoping for the part of “Cat” in there final play and from the sound of it, had assumed she’d won the part. (I mean after all, her crush was going to be the ‘Dog’, and together they’d be the stars of the show). She’d practiced and practiced and knew every word. It WAS her part!
However when the Drama teacher announced parts yesterday Ali was not only Not the ‘Cat’, but her humiliating title? “Narrator”!
She is devastated. I spent twenty minutes telling her things that I’d hoped would make her think more positively about her part. I told her that the Narrator was an extremely important part of the play and the play couldn’t possibly go on without the narrator, (which is when she informed me that she was Not the only narrator, but ‘Narrator 12’)
I told her how they’d chosen her because they were so impressed by her voice and memorizing skills, and that maybe they gave the part of “cat” to someone who needed to improve on their acting abilities because you know its “drama CLASS”.. I tried and tried but I Had NO idea what I was supposed to say. She was heartbroken that she hadn’t gotten the part. She was embarrassed because she had assumed she had, she felt like she wasn’t good enough, and she felt like they’d given her a “stupid” part for ‘kids that weren’t good actors’ because you know, “Narrators” don’t even get SEEN! .. The worst part? Her crush DID get the part of ‘Dog’.
In the end I told her she could feel bad that she didn’t get the part she’d hoped for, but that she needed to move on and to be positive and give her best to the part that she did have. Through tears she agreed, but I still felt powerless in making her feel any better.
Its only going to get harder from here…. I wish there was a book that gave parents exact phrases to use when situations like this happen!

Something we can all agree on.

Radio Disney

I give it a TEN!

Our day that is.
What a fun day we've had today. I can't even remember the last time that Taylor and I had a weekend off together. Taylor was scheduled for his last orientation shift at the Hospital today but was taken off because He's got to get his license renewed. I am so glad because today has been so good for all of us.
We all slept in until 8 this morning, which is a total luxury to both of us. Then after some french toast we all sat down to decide what we wanted to do for the day. We had lots of suggestions from the choir, but in the end, Jungle Jim's won out.

The girls Love Jungle Jim's, and I usually save it for a reward for something they've worked for, but today was a perfect excuse, if only because we were all together for once.

(sorry about the pictures, we used Ali's digital camera)

Mattie Liked the roller coaster alright, until it stopped and started going backwards.. that totally freaked him out and he wanted nothing to do with it again.

(please excuse my Ultra cheesy grin)

The Girls However LOVE the roller coaster and rode it many times

Megan was So cute 'Ms Independent'. she chose a seat all by herself away from the other kids and with her arms in the air She giggled and screamed enjoying every minute of the ride.

Daddy tried another ride with Mattie, but he still wasn't impressed. (and after Taylor squeezed himself into that thing! sheesh)

Ski ball.....

My all time favorite too.

And Check out how cute Meg's outfit is in the background..

Look how big he is!!!

And Finally something a little more his style!!

I have to also note, that Megan used one of her last tokens to treat Mattie to this ride...

She's been so sweet lately.

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We've spent the evening here at home eating Banana splits, and watching movies.

Taylor's been a busy bee working on the paper mache valentine boxes for Ali and I.

(I'll share those when they're done)
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Okay, so on another note.

My Poor Honey Taylor had a bit of an Accident at work last night (UPS).

He was apparently trying to un wedge a package from the conveyor belt and nearly knocked himself out with a pole.

Look at his poor nose! Its twice its regular size!

Hope you all had a good Saturday too.

She works hard for her money.

Sneaking in a little computer time at work.........
I’ve been here all week, including Sunday. Today Taylor and I actually had the day off together …. that was Until I received a phone call at 8 this morning, calling me in to work. At least I’m getting overtime today. This week has been one of the busiest I’ve had in a while. I’ve taken on a few big projects here and its been a bit more than I anticipated. Its taken me 3 hours to write this, not because its a long witty post, but because I have to actually work in between sentences. Darn those pesky Dr's!
The hospital is in the midst of its “respiratory season” (also known here in the hospital as RSV season) therefore filling every bed in the hospital, and double bunking many of the units. The unit I work on is a Neuro Trauma unit, so we’re used to kids that are broken from a trauma or kids with Neuro (Brain) abnormalities like seizures and shunts. But the past few weeks we have been swarmed with babies that are full of snot (and I mean that quite literally). The fun part is that We've all got colds at home too. Mattie had a few hairy nights, and we took him into the Dr Tuesday morning before I came into work. The girls got away with a light cough, and Taylor and I were hit with a full blown body aching nastiness that required round the clock Tylenol.
Today seems to be slowing down here at work and I think were all about done with the worst of our Viruses which is a good thing. I’m ready for a break. Three whole days off are in my immediate future. Now all I need is a little Sunshine.

Sensory play

Yep, that's what I'm Calling it anyway.

Romantic?

Ali walked in from school yesterday with a twitterpated look in her eyes. I gave her my usual welcome home hug and kiss, and she immediately took my hand, leading me to the couch as if we were in for a very important discussion. We sat down and I looked at her encouragingly. Ali Giddily; “Guess what Porter said today mom” (Pausing while Megan came in the room, Because she was NOT going to have this kind of grown up discussion with a 5 year old in the room! And then Meg left). I leaned in to hear the news as she proceeded to describe to me the entire affair.
He’d followed her into school as she walked Megan to her classroom (an entirely different route than most 3rd graders take). He’d made silly comments about being “big kid, third graders”, and “ liking her hat” and Then… Then he said something VERY Notable. Breathlessly Ali repeated word for word their conversation.
“ He said {“Ali, I like you… And Rachel”} It was a little less romantic that he said Rachel too, but he said he liked me!” Then she giggled and squirmed excitedly.
I had to stifle my laugh. Did she actually just say Romantic? My 8 year old?
She was completely and utterly serious though, so I congratulated her then worried a little bit more that my baby girl is getting older by the minute and boy crazy too!
She’s going to make him a special poem for Valentines Day. She also informed me that they chase each other at recess (a group of girls and boys) and who ever catches each other has to ‘get married’ Porter has captured her of course, and in all her 8-year-old maturity that is the best thing next to watching Goosebumps on Saturday night!

On another note, Mattie has Finally learned to crawl down the stairs backwards. YEAH! I’ve been trying to get him to do it for a few months now, but all he would do is laugh at me like I was being silly and turn back around. Then he’d stand at the top of the stairs and grunt or say “peas” while pointing down. So yesterday I demonstrated it for him a number of times, and he did it too. After a few practice runs he was up and down all by himself for the rest of the day. (minus one minor mishap when he forgot about that last stair. Thank goodness for soft carpet)
I moved all of his toys from the living room to the family room downstairs. It will be nice to have an actual grown up room now.
Mattie will hopefully be more independent now that he can go down to the playroom with the rest of the kids.
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More Mattie Milestones……… For my own records.
"wus-AT?" said quickly with enthusiasm= What’s that? Usually before looking out the window for a guck aka Truck.
He is saying "yuh-you"=I love you, all the time now. and "bye bye"
putting "more" and "peas"(please) together more often. Two word combo's starting up...
“Hair”, (he still loves rubbing his hair especially with food) “head”, “fee” (feet) “um” (tummy)
cootee=cookie (thanks to Daddy!)
drink is still kind of mix between 'gunk and gek' no matter how hard we try for "cup, or Drink" but at least we understand what it means. and if we don't he just signs the 'more' sign, points at his cup and says "peas"
He is blowing kisses with the real smacked lips sound, which is enough to melt your heart and soul into a million pieces. Especially when its followed by a “yuh you”
He thinks its really funny to head butt, or hit so we're trying really hard not to give ANY kind of reaction to either one. (he learned the head butting part from Oli-Oli)
He loves to throw his own diaper or any other trash for that matter away all by himself. And to help sweep. (which usually consists of everyone else in the room running for their lives or risk getting smacked by the metal broom handle)
He likes music... his dancing consists of bobbing his head dramatically. (sometimes throwing a leg maneuver in here and there)
Loves to give 5 and to play patty cake
likes to climb up the couch to look out the window or torture Weston. ( I just worry about his getting down off the couch)
Likes to rock in his toddler size rocking chair. sits and does it very deliberately
Can spin himself on his sit and spin. pretty talented if you ask me.
Loves to ‘kick’ at things, or push things with his foot. (esp Weston)