Family of FIVE!

Amaia and Haddon are pleased to announce that they have a brand new baby sister or brother of the way!!  Actually, Haddon has no idea what is going on at this point, but the rest of us are very excited!  Amaia is hoping for a sister, mostly based on her love of Frozen I think and she thinks we should name her future sister "Block", which is definitely not happening :)

I am 13 weeks along now and my official due date is January 13th! I have been feeling VERY tired and somewhat sick for a couple of months now, but I can tell that I am starting to have a lot more good days than bad days.  Oh how I love the second trimester!

We were able to have an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago to date the pregnancy and just make sure everything was going well.  Amaia and Haddon came with and it really seemed to click with Amaia after that what was going on.  She asks all the time now if she can see the pictures of the baby and when we get to find out if the baby is a boy or girl.  I love ultrasounds anyways, but I loved even more how it made her understand so much more what is going on with her mommy.

We are so excited to have another little baby in our family and I'm also so excited to give these two precious kiddos another sibling to play with and be crazy with for the rest of their lives!

4th of July Festivities

We had a great 4th of July this year! The weather was practically perfect and Amaia is starting to get old enough to really appreciate the fun of it all.

We started our day off at a parade and it was CRAZY with so many people, but we were able to find a spot and Amaia enjoyed herself, so it made it worth the craziness :)  She didn't have to try hard at all to come away with quite the stash of candy, which she will be sharing with mommy and daddy. 

Haddon didn't care too much about the parade yet, but he sure looked cute!

We then went out to a nice lunch and ice cream with grandma and grandpa and then went home for a full family nap - always included in a good day!

Then we went out to a party that our church was hosting and ate lots of watermelon - among other things.

Lucky for us my parents now live very close to where the fireworks are shot off from - so convenient.  We hung out in the backyard and I let Amaia stay up waaaaaaaay past her bedtime to watch the fireworks for the first time.  I am normally very protective of my kids sleep schedules, but she is getting to the age where it isn't as hard for her to stay up.  I think she thought they were going to be scary before the fireworks started, but she ended up loving it.  I wish I could of taken a picture of the awe on her face in the first few minutes.

So thankful that we live in the best country on Earth!

Spring 2014

Spring is finally here!!!!!   

We finally get to get outside and it has been glorious.  Just a little picture update.

Walking around the neighborhood.

At Easter Lake park with my mini-me.

I put Amaia in the baby swing and quickly realized she is too big :((((  

So we are working on swinging like a big girl.

My happy Haddon.

Siblings.  I know they will have moments of conflict, but they are so sweet together right now.  They are really starting to enjoy playing with each other.  Amaia loves to lay on the floor and let Haddon climb over her.  They love to play ball together or rough house a little bit.  They are the sweetest.  They make me want to give them another sibling :)

Spring has also meant garage sale season!!  Amaia has found a new found love for puzzles (and princesses) and likes going to garage sales with me now so we can find new ones.  She really surprised me with how well she does with them.  

The only picture I took on a rainy mother's day, but it was a good one.  Looking at the lovely lilac arboretum.

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!