Amaia turns 3!

My sweet and silly little girl turned 3 years old this week - cue the tears!  Amaia Ruth is absolutely one of the best things that has ever happened to me and it was so much fun to celebrate her this week.      She thoroughly enjoyed all the birthday celebrations this year and it just made me happy to see her so excited and loved and happy.  It was a really special few days for me too.

This was the first year that I didn't really plan a themed party for her and she enjoyed herself the most - go figure :)  My sister and her husband were in town and stayed with us for a few nights over her birthday.  So we went out to dinner with family, had cake and presents, sang to her, spent time with family and kind of did it all over again the next day.  

A few things I want to remember:

She was SO proud of herself for blowing her candles out all by herself.  She kept telling me : "mama, I did a really great job blowing my candles out!"

She is definitely a dessert lover like her mama.  When asked what she wanted for her birthday she pretty much always said "cake".

At 3 years old she LOVES to dance and sing.  The most common thing we hear throughout the day is "Dance with me!"  I got her a dancing ribbon as birthday present this year.

She loves the alphabet too and it really starting to figure out how to sound out words.  She is constantly asking us what different words start with and doesn't usually need help to figure out the answer.

She is in the 90-percentiles for both height and weight!

Me & the birthday girl

At Tumea & Sons for a birthday dinner (Photo cred to Aunt Ashley)

 The birthday girl and her balloons

 Amaia, Jessica & Haddon

Blowing out her candles for the second time

Amaia's 3 year interview

ONE

ONE.  Our Haddon is 1!  I can hardly believe it.  This year has gone by so quickly.  On one hand I am always a bit excited to be exiting the baby phase as it can be a bit on the stressful and tiring end of the spectrum :)  However, Haddon has been one of the absolute sweetest babies I have ever met and I can tell by his more recent demeanor that our cuddling days are numbered, so I am bit sad.  Hopefully he will still have cuddling moments with me, even as he grows older.

At ONE year Haddon is so sweet and happy, a great sleeper and really starting to interact and truly play more.  He loves dumping things out, banging things together, bouncing to music, books, playing peek a boo, being tickled and watching his big sister.  We have a long way to go on his mobility, but he is so good at manipulating things with his hands and Adam is having visions of him being a star Hawkeye basketball player in the future. :)

He weights 18 lbs and is 29.8 inches long and loves to eat.  In fact, he has still never rejected a single thing I have given him to eat which amazes me. He is also starting to sign "more" to me when I am not feeding him fast enough.  The amount to which he eats amazes me as well….maybe it's a boy thing?! We tried out whole milk yesterday and he was a big fan! Though the cup is a big change for him that is taking some getting used to.

He is a great sleeper as well.  He sleeps from about 8:30 at night until 8:30 in the morning.  His morning nap is starting to get shorter (he only needs a half hour to an hour now) and sleeps from 2-5 in the afternoon along with his sister.   He has one bottom tooth and two on top that are just starting to poke through.

Basically, he brings me immense amounts of joy and is all the best things for our family all rolled up into one sweet guy.

Happy birthday Haddon!!  Mommy loves you SO much!

Fall Catch Up

Ahh!!  I can't believe it has been so long since I posted last.  It makes me sad because I love looking back on the past years and scrolling through such sweet memories.  So this is going to be a bit of catch up of random instagram pictures quite possibly for my enjoyment only :)

Amaia and I have several outfits that match unintentionally.  I guess you can tell who picks out both of our outfits :)  However, I did buy these shirts for us to intentionally match.  Someday I hope Amaia has a sister to match with, but until then this is pretty fun too.

I call Amaia my "love bug", she has lady bug sheets on her bed and loves all things ladybug, so it was only fitting that she was a little ladybug for halloween this year.  We loved night eyes.  I can't wait to do it every year.

 Amaia is an excellent big sister and mommy in training.  She "reads" to Haddon, brings him toys, feeds him, gives lots of hugs and kisses and likes to tell him "no" as well.

We hosted our first holiday at our house for Thanksgiving this year.  Amaia and Haddon were at the head of the table, naturally :)

It is starting to get cold out, but our zoo attendance has still been going strong.  

We play at home a lot too especially now that it is getting cold now.  I just love Haddon's face in this picture. It shows off his fun personality very well :)

Cuddling on a cold night.  Haddon has no choice but to cuddle with me as he is not mobile yet and Amaia is actually starting to want to cuddle with me!!!

Amaia is starting to be able to really help out in some kitchen activities and it is pretty fun to have a cute helper in the kitchen.  She tends to lick the bowl a lot, but I can't saw that I always have the best self-control in that area either :)

All bundled up to go out in the cold and we match again :)

Pre-school Light: Creation Day 1

I decided to a light version of pre-school with Amaia this year.  She knows almost all of her letter/colors/shapes already and soaks up so much from everyday life, but learning is always a good thing and I happen to love structure, so a plan was hatched!

I perused some curriculums and other ideas that I found online and ultimately mish-mashed some of the ideas I found along with ideas of my own.  SO, our first unit is going to be the days of creation.  Each day of creation is the theme of our week.  This week was day 1: light and darkness.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said 'Let there be light' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God seperated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." Genesis 1:1-5

Throughout the week we read the beginning of the creation story out of her Jesus Storybook Bible (which I love so much!!),  read the same verses out of my bible and learned a little song.

We made a light box as a way to demonstrate what the Earth was like before God created light. We painted the inside of a shoe box black.  As a side note I have to say I was so impressed with her painting skills.  I had her do this half-dressed and outside because I was pretty certain she would get paint everywhere, but she did an awesome job listening to my instructions and painting only in the box.  So proud of her! I then cut two holes in the box: one for her to look into and one for me to shine a light into.  I had her look into the hole and describe what she saw: "black" "darkness".  Then I turned the light on and explained that God created light.

I made a little "sun" out of a paper plate and clothespins to practice matching lower and uppercase letters.  You can't see if very well here, but the lowercase letters are written on the plate and the capital letters are written on the clothespins.  The coordination of opening up the clothespins and putting them on the plate was actually a bit of a challenge for her, so we will be continuing to work on this one.

She also had a lot of fun playing with the flashlight and turning a lot of lights on and off throughout the week.  Overall it was a really fun week and I think we both totally enjoyed our first week of "school"...if I can even call it that :)

AND Haddon did some learning of his own this week!  I gave him some cheerios to see how he would do with them and I was so impressed with how quick and determined he was to pick them up.  I had to assist in actually getting them in his mouth, but he definitely has that pincher grasp down.  Also, I love his sweet baby cheeks!

Haddon: 8 Months!

8 Months OLD!  Ugh, 8 months truly does sound so old to me.   Haddon continues to be the absolute best! He makes me want to have a bunch more babies just like him. Ha :)  He is so sweet and smiley and lovable.

This month we have been working on eating a wider variety of foods and he is now eating oatmeal, applesauce, carrots, sweet potatoes, avocado, peas, peaches, green beans and mixed veggies.  He actually eats anything I give him.  I do have some suspicions that applesauce is not favorite due to the sour face he makes, but he still eats it with no problems.  Haddon really only protests if I am not feeding him fast enough :)

We are still on a (mostly) 4 hour schedule with 3 solid food feedings a day.  Haddon usually wakes up around 7am at which time I feed him and he goes back to sleep until 9 when we have breakfast, lunch at 12:30 or so, dinner at 5 and another feeding at 8 before bed.  He naps from about 11-1230 and 2-5 in the afternoon.  He sometimes wakes up early from that afternoon nap, but most days he is totally cool with hanging out in his crib until 5, which totally amazes me!  He has also figured out how to push the button on the music player in his crib to turn it on, so I am pretty sure that helps :)

We have also been working on Haddon's sitting skills this month.  He still falls over (and smiles about it I might add) quite frequently but he is getting much better.  I have been working hard with him on this still because I am anxiously awaiting the day that he can sit up in the grocery cart!  I have a feeling it's going to be a life changer for the both of us!

I have strong suspicions that Haddon is going to have a very laid back personality.  It just amazes me how much things do not seem to bother him. It shocks me that he does not seem to mind when he falls over or his big sissy "hugs" him or occasionally lays on top of him.  I am so excited for him to grow into his sweet personality and participate in more and more adventures with Amaia and I.

Amaia, Daddy & the Zoo: A Love Story

I have mentioned here before that Amaia is totally head over heels in love with zoo this summer.  She craves it and asks me if we can go all the time!  Conveniently, Adam also loves going to the zoo.  I don't think he is quite as crazy about it as Amaia, but he loves her and he loves his lemurs so it's a win, win situation.  Personally, I cannot say that I love the zoo, but I certainly don't mind it and I certainly do like doing things that my family loves.  Thus, we have spent many Sunday mornings at the zoo this summer.

Amaia is at the point now that she walks around as if she owns the place.  She knows our usual route and what animals are coming up next.  Her favorites have changed over the course of the summer, but I believe we have firmly settled on sea lions now.  She could stay down there all day and watch them.

She also loves "driving the car"

And climbing the in the "tunnel"

And generally acting like all the animals throughout the zoo :)  

Okoboji!

Last week my parents graciously took us on a mini-vacation to Lake Okoboji.  Sleeping with two kiddos in a hotel room is always....interesting :)  But all in all it was a truly wonderful trip!  

First off, I would just like to say that every time we visit a smaller town in Iowa I am always so impressed!  We stayed in Spencer because all the places in Okoboji were booked and it was such a lovely town!  They had an awesome fro-yo shop, awesome coffee shop and a nice shopping street and that is really all you need right?! That is all I need to have a wonderful vacation.

On our first day we rented a boat and Amaia had the time of her life.  She had already been asking me to ride on a boat a couple of weeks before our trip...little did she know it was already in the plans!  As you can see here, she had the time of her life.  She even got to "drive" the boat for a little bit, with daddy very close by of course.

Our boat ride was a lot of fun but it was a chilly day.  Haddon was my lil' trooper.  He barely protested one bit about the chill in the air or in the life jacket that was quite snug around his cheeks.  He is such a wonderful guy.

Here is at the beginning of our trip.

And here he is towards the end of the trip...starting to get a bit annoyed perhaps?? :)

The weather was so much nicer on our second day.  It was perfect out! Amaia greatly enjoyed the sand and water and destroying the sand castles her grandparents were trying to teach her to build :)

She is such a beauty.

The other thing that we did a lot of on our trip was eat!  Ha. Going out to eat has the potential to be a bit stressful with the kiddos, but that were both superb restaurant-goers.  Amaia learned the ropes and began immediately asked the waiter "I need chocolate milk please" first thing :)

It was a wonderful first trip with my family of 4!  It just reinforced my sentiment that these three and simply the greatest!