Happy Birthday Norah Dee!

 I have to admit, this birthday was a tough one for me. There is something so fleeting and unbelievably precious about the innocence of a 2-year-old daughter. I was kind of hoping that Norah might just stay our little one forever. But alas, May 1st came and went and now she is 3. I'm praying this isn't the year that she stops asking for a "yoyurk carfe" for breakfast, or else my heart might break.

Norah Dee, it is an honor to have you as a daughter. Your personality is like a jar of jumping jelly beans. Everything delights you, everything makes you laugh, everything is the best news you've ever heard in your life. Except when it's not. And then oh boy, do you ever know how to pout. You bounce through your days eager for the next activity and always up for anything your big brother tells you to do. Because of him, you've learned how to be pretty tough. You request peanut butter and jelly every single day for lunch even though you never eat more than 2 bites and then lose interest. You are persistent and silly and great at making other people feel special. You love with your whole heart and its pretty easy to be melted by your cuteness...even when you're really really mad.
Happy 3 years sweet girl!

Fun in the Kitchen

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012 (yes, I'm a nerd) was to work on being more relaxed and easy-going. Now you may be saying to yourself, "hey, wouldn't an easy-going person NOT make New Year's Resolutions based on the fact that resolving to do something is, in principle, kind of uptight?" And to you I say, "baby steps, my friend, baby steps"

Anyways, here we are in mid-October and I'm questioning the amount of progress I've made toward my goal. So today, with John working at the office all day and my only plans being to remain in my pajamas for as many hours as possible, I decided it was time to get cool, and be that mess-loving, easy-going mom my kids never knew they were missing out on.

I saw this idea on Pinterest a while back to create a fun, kid's cooking/baking experience for little ones who love to be involved in the kitchen. And mine do. Whenever I try to sneak away in the afternoon to start whipping up dinner, it's never more than 10 minutes before I have two little helpers sitting Indian-style on the counter arguing about whose turn it is to dump ingredients and whose turn it is to stir. And while its fun bonding for us all, my mild germaphobia along with a tendency to get overwhelmed by a huge mess, make it a continual growing and stretching experience for me personally.

So for this project, you basically take a muffin tin and fill each cup with all different textures and types of food/spices from your pantry. I used dried rice, marshmallows, spices, pasta, sprinkles, sugar, beans, cinnamon sticks, etc etc. You get the idea, just use whatever you want. Then give each kid a bowl with some flour in it. Spread out measuring cups, spoons, spatulas, whisks, a few spices for shaking and water for mixing, and let the chefs go to town creating whatever their little hearts desire. This blog-which I would link you to if I could only find it again!- suggested putting all supplies in one of those under-the-bed long storage bins to help contain the mess. And I would say this is a must! Thankfully I had one of these bins hanging around still from my college dorm days.

The kids LOVED this, and once they realized it wasn't actually an all-you-can-eat buffet of "these taste spicy mommy," they got pretty serious about their cooking. They played and played until they had used up all the ingredients and created big soupy, delicious looking concoctions of goop. I convinced them both to taste their yummy creations, to which they both ate heaping spoonfuls, and then quickly spit out in disgust. But I enjoyed a good laugh. It was only once they came up with the brilliant idea to move each other's "soups" back and forth into different containers by scooping it up with their hands that not-so-easy-going mommy came back and we had to call it a day. But it was a great, tactile learning activity for a rainy morning and one that I'm sure they will be begging to do again in the future. And I feel one step closer to being that easy-breezy girl who laughs in the face of that big, giant mess.

Sibling Love

These kiddos are pretty crazy about their new baby brother. Makes our hearts melt to see how sweet they are with him. Gavin doesn't get much personal space around here but he doesn't seem to mind all the head rubbing, hovering, and sticky fingers so far.

The Pool is Open

I love long weekends, especially when they involve relaxing and swimming at my parent's house. We spent the whole day there today for our first swim of the summer and it was so nice. We even got to enjoy a last minute visit from my sister Kim and her family, which made for some very happy cousins splashing around together. Happy Memorial weekend!

Our silly Norah, decked out in her brother's baseball hat, too-big goggles full of water, licking up all the salt water while she swims, and fearlessly jumping off the diving board before any of the older kids would give it a try. 

Great Grandma Dee, always ready to play and splash with her kiddos, and baby Harry

The boys, Charlie, Jack, and Eli armed and dangerous with their water guns

Big Girl Bed

 Norah is a crib-baby no more! I was kind of dreading her transition into a big bed because she can be pretty strong-willed and I thought she would give us more of a challenge than Eli did. But we've had 3 good nights so far and she hasn't gotten out of bed once. It actually works in our favor that she is a tiny peanut in a giant queen bed because she's a bit afraid to get down without some assistance. Eli was pretty pumped about the big move as you can tell from his expressions below. I bet it wont be long before these kids are begging us to let them sleep in here together.
And now I hope to get a few last minute changes accomplished in the nursery before baby #3 comes to fill up the empty space. Only 3 more weeks to go!

Happy 2nd Birthday Norah!

Hard to believe that our sweet baby girl is 2 now. 

Miss Norah, you just melt your daddy and I's hearts with your silly personality and on-the-ready giggles. You definitely have a bit of sass and strong-willfulness to go along with it, but we understand that you get that from both of us and so we can't really fault you too much for it. You have a big vocabulary and amaze us by what you understand and can explain to us already. And you have a big brother who loves you so much, even though he may express it by torturing you most of the time. We can't wait to see how nurturing you are going to be as a big sister. Thanks for helping us to get a jump-start on our days by being our early morning alarm clock and for always keeping us laughing. We love you.

And hunt #2...

No, we haven't forgotten about Jesus in this house, although it is challenging to keep young children more focused on the Resurrection than the chocolate candy inside their plastic eggs. So we try to mix in plenty of Bible lessons (when they aren't running laps around the kitchen from a sugar-overload) along with the American Easter traditions and are praying that the seeds of the cross, God's forgiveness, and His overwhelming love for them are being planted somewhere deep inside their little hearts.

Today was round 2 of egg hunting for us. And as John was giving Eli strategy tips over breakfast in regards to the best way to pick up an egg mid-run without wasting time coming to a full stop, I played the worship music a little louder to help counteract the competitive look gleaming in his eyes. John unfortunately had to work and couldn't join us for the fun, but the kids and I were treated to a full morning with Grandma Jan and Papa Bob of egg hunting, a trip to Costco, and lunch. There's nothing better than still being able to feel like a kid when you're with your parents....even though there are two little people tugging on you and calling you "mommy."

Waiting in the crowd for the hunt to begin

Watching the sky as a helicopter made passes through the fields dropping hundreds of Easter eggs to the delighted shrieks of the kids

 Hard to see them here but there were tons of eggs being thrown out

Papa Bob and Eli. This picture just melts my heart because our kids have such amazing Grandparents.

Norah stayed pretty focused on collecting the broken, empty eggs that the other kids left behind

This boy is a pro at this game

My sweet kiddos

Movin' On Up

We are officially out of guest bedrooms in our house, and it fills my heart knowing that in a few months all of the rooms will be occupied by our 3 sleeping babies. I never liked having a cold guest room with the vents closed and dust settling on the unused furniture. With 10 short weeks until the arrival of #3, I decided to get started on converting the spare room into Norah's big-girl space. She's not quite ready to be out of her crib just yet, but we're hoping to have her fully settled in a bed before baby comes. My lovely mother-in-law, who is a speed-painter, offered to come and help me paint and ended up doing most of the work while I tried to keep the kids out of her way. I was inspired for the walls by a Lowe's magazine article showing how to create your own tree-art canvas with painter's tape and spray paint. The original idea was just to make a 12" X 12" art piece for above the bed, but then that seemed a little boring and I decided to magnify the concept onto an entire wall. I was pretty apprehensive as I was pulling off the painter's tape at the end, but the tree wall turned out great and I love the way it ties into her tree bedding. I was working with a very limited budget for this room so I did a lot of re-purposing and repainting of items we already had around the house. I painted the lamp and nightstand, wrapped the shade with ribbon, updated the hardware on the dressers, dug out the yellow curtains from our cedar chest and spray painted the bird cage that I bought on clearance. The books ledges were an Ikea bargain and the wreath above the bed cost a total of $5 including the "N" and the flower, which was an old pair of Norah's pants I cut up. My biggest splurge was on the bedding, which I found at the Pottery Barn Outlet and was still a great price.

Norah likes to jump on her big bed and read books in there but that's about as far as we've gotten for now. And for now, having her contained in a 4-walled crib makes this pregnant mama's life a heck of a lot easier!

Snow!!

Is there anything better as a kid?

Eli has been anticipating this moment for weeks. Norah, not so much. But she also found the snow delightful-although we discovered that she is absolutely terrified of riding on the sled, or sitting on the sled, or walking next to the sled, or even having the sled within her line of vision...

*I assure you that I was also out here freezing my fingers off for this winter family bonding experience. However, I looked more miserable than delighted in my Kodak moment so you'll have to just take my word for it.*

Trick-Or-Treat 2011

Another successful year of trick-or-treating is behind us and we should have collected enough candy to get us through until next October. This year we had two mobile children running down the sidewalks, one of them being an overly-excitable 3 year-old who definitely had the hang of this whole- getting candy from strangers holiday- down pat. And I'm pretty sure our son could have a bright future in sales should he decide to go that route. He was persistent, banging on doors while repeatedly ringing the doorbell, bringing even those folks trying to hide in their dark houses sheepishly to the door to offer him some morsel of goodwill. He scored an unopened roll of Ritz crackers from an Indian woman who offered them to him as "cookies" because she felt bad that he had caught her empty-handed. He fearlessly negotiated, boldly asking for 2 pieces of candy when 1 was offered and 3 when 2 were offered.  He asked to trade candy he didn't care for and requested detailed descriptions from strangers of candy he had never seen before. He let himself in to someones house to pet a dog and then charmed the owner into a bonus pack of bubbles in addition to his candy. He made it his mission to "care" for his sister by always stating that he needed some extra candy for "Norah over there" and people chuckled as they threw a few extra pieces in. He pointed out a fake spider stuck to our neighbor's front door, asked if he could have it, and then shrieked with delight when she told him to go ahead and take it. Yes, he will do well in sales someday, I have no doubt about it. John and I were just laughing watching him race from house to house like his pants were on fire. It was just too much. And yes, we did have many little chats with him along the way about being polite and grateful and not asking for more candy or to trade candy, but his head was spinning way too fast to hear any of that boring parental advice. And he did bring home quite a loot for us to pilfer through tonight while he's sleeping so I guess we'll work on those little behavior glitches tomorrow...