Sunday Afternoons... so nice!

I am sitting here by myself watching Sesame Street! ;o) Lol. Daniel was watching it but decided he wanted to go help his daddy in the garage instead so he is in the garage with Scott and the remote is across the room, so I guess I'll just watch this while I share an update on our life! :o) Lydia is taking a nap which is a very good thing... hoping she'll take a long one because poor girl is exhausted after taking only a short little nap on Daddy this morning at church and that's about it all day! :o( We are having some friends over for dinner tonight. I'm so glad that our house is fairly clean after a busy Saturday organizing and cleaning yesterday!

This week has been really good! We have been feeling great and since things were finally getting back to normal after Christmas and New Years, I decided that I'd finally start back into Daniel's activities this last week! We started with the letter A and after quite a bit of looking around on various blogs and on Pinterest, I found some fun things to do with him three days this week! There were so many GREAT ideas... I finally had to make myself stop looking at ideas because poor Daniel would NEVER get finished with the letter A if I kept going! :o) He colored a lot of pages with the letter A on it and a page of pictures of things that start with an A. He also painted and made an apple out of a paper plate, and colored lots of apples different colors... His favorite activity of the week was definitely an Ant Puzzle that we did matching the front and back parts of various ants together by looking at their color and shapes that were on each part. He did awesome and did it over and over again! He is so funny because the things I think he'd enjoy the most like painting ends up not being his favorite, although he does enjoy that, too. Daniel is definitely a lot like me... he doesn't like getting all that messy most of the time. He got paint on his hands when he was using a cotton ball to paint his paper plate red and freaked out until I cleaned off his hands! (He used only a paint brush after that. Lol.) Anyway, we had lots of fun and I'm excited to do the letter B activities this next week! Oh, and just so you know... he is 20 months so definitely does not totally understand what starts with the letter A and all that, but basically I'm using the alphabet to help me figure out activities to do with him to help with his gross and fine motor skills and at the same time we are working in colors and his ABC's. He will occasionally point to the letter A and say "A", but doesn't always seem to know it. Oh, well. :o) It will definitely be nice once he seems to grasp the letters better!

Friday was such an awesome day! My sister, Amanda, came over so we could work on some things for my sister, Lelia's baby shower! That was a lot of fun and we are getting super excited for her shower in a few weeks! :o) Amanda ended up staying most of the day and after we had lunch and got all of our things done that we needed to, she ended up organizing my entire craft table and that area of our dining room for me! She's pretty much awesome! :o) We had bought totes for Daniel's activity supplies quite awhile ago but I hadn't gotten the chance to organize everything and put it all away, so it's so nice having everything in a place where I can see what we have collected for his activities! And, it's so nice to be able to use my table again for working on projects! RIght now I'm finally working on our 2012 Calendar! I finished the first half of it yesterday and it's so nice to be getting it finished finally... hopefully before January is over! :o) Friday afternoon a friend from church came over and brought us dinner, which was so amazing! She had called earlier in the week asking if she could bring us a meal! I thought I had heard wrong I was so surprised, but she said that she knew what it's like to have kids so close in age and knew that some days are just extra hard, so she wanted to bless us with a meal! It was so sweet of them, and the meal was DELICIOUS! :o) She made a sausage, spinach, and artichoke soup and homemade rolls and a strawberry/feta salad and homemade cookies for dessert! Yumm! After our awesome dinner we finished the wonderful day watching Finding Nemo as a family! It was Daniel's first time to see it and he thought it was awesome!

Yesterday was a great day, too! Scott worked on his truck with his brother, Bryan, most of the day while I vacuumed, cleaned both bathrooms, organized the house, and worked on my calendar. It was SO great getting that much accomplished - I LOVE a clean home! We dropped off the kids with Scott's parents around 4 and Scott and I headed out for our date night! Scott decided it was time for him to teach me how to drive a standard since his new truck is a manual so we spent awhile driving around a parking lot until I didn't kill the truck each time and then I took it out on the open country roads and drove and drove. It was a lot of fun, actually, and it was definitely the easiest vehicle I've ever learned on! :o) I'm still scared to drive it in traffic because that's when I get too nervous and mess up big time instead of focus on what I'm doing, so we'll see... After driving around we went to Red Robin for dinner and then Cold Stones for dessert! Then we went over to Hobby Lobby (one of our favorite places to go walk around together during date nights) and bought some cute hair bows and headbands for Lydia! We ran by Best Buy after that to look at stereos for a few minutes and then headed back to pick up the kids and go home!

Tomorrow Scott and I are starting Weight Watchers officially! I've been wanting to do something like this for awhile, and since they have a free sign-up right now until March we decided now is as good a time as any, so we are signed up and ready to begin keeping track of points tomorrow! We are just doing the online way of keeping track instead of having another thing to go to each week... I'm so glad Scott is doing it with me so that we can help each other out and try to keep each other accountable! He just moved the treadmill out to the garage with some of our friends' help this evening so he'll start working out every morning before work. I have been doing Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred for a week and a half now so I'll continue doing that once Daniel goes down for his daily nap, and hopefully with that exercising and eating better, I can loose all of this baby weight + some more! :o)

Well, this has taken me three different times during the day to finish, so I should probably just end it now. I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Daniel update! :o)

Just with how busy everything has been and caring for two kids and all that fun stuff, I haven't been writing the monthly updates on Daniel... :o( That doesn't mean he hasn't been learning new things or growing, though, that's for sure! Here are a few recent pics that I took of him (he was laughing because he didn't want me to take pics of him at first but I kept sticking the camera wherever he would hide and that made him die laughing - lol)... Daniel is now 20 1/2 months old and has been growing and growing; he is such a big boy now! He is an amazing big brother and still takes care of Lydia all the time and I know he is going to have so much fun when she starts playing more and eating in a few months! :o) His biggest achievement the past three weeks or so has been his talking! He has said words from time to time quite a bit beforehand, but now it is almost constant! He LOVES repeating whatever we say and has several words he uses all the time when he points to the things or wants something, etc. His favorite words right now are "mine" (imagine that!), "box" (we have a big box with lights for him to play in), "draw", "truck" (everything that drives by outside that makes a big noise is a truck), "hi", "bye", "book", "wash", "ball", and so many other words that I couldn't even put here! It's so nice finally seeing that he really does know what things are and what they are called! I LOVE it! :o)

Other than talking he has been super busy playing with all his new toys from Christmas and loves to help Scott in the garage anytime he's able! :o) He has a few pliers inside that he will take around and "fix" everything by making a drilling noise (I know... he gets the tools mixed up sometimes) and pushing the pliers on one certain spot and then it's fixed! Lol. He has also been doing so good taking his one nap a day, and has recently started going in, picking out two books which he throws into his crib, throwing all of his stuffed animals and blankets in, and then coming to get me when he's ready for quiet time and nap time. :o) Then he will "read" to himself, or to his teddy bears, for a little while before falling asleep for a good 2 hours usually! It's so nice and I'm glad that he is getting so good at doing things by himself! :o)

Okay, I should probably post the pics and go for now. We have an appt. in a little while and I need to get Daniel up from his nap (he just woke up) and feed him some late lunch before getting Lydia up...

Happy 4 months, Lydia!

Dear Lydia,

Hello to our amazing little girl! You turned four months old yesterday, and I think it hit me when we were hanging out that you are definitely growing up! In some ways I think it's harder seeing you get so big and do so many new things all the time than it was with your brother, because I know that time passes fast enough and I don't want it to go too fast! But, at the same time, it is exciting to see you start enjoying new things and wanting to do things out of the ordinary! :o)

Just a week ago we finally put you in the Bumbo for the first time and you LOVED it! I'm not sure why we hadn't done that before, but I really think you are growing up so fast that I'm not keeping up with it! You still spit up quite a lot with your reflux, so you're not able to be in the bumbo as often as you'd like... Right now you'll just hang out in there until you spit up everywhere which you do NOT like one bit so then you get a really sad face, stick your lower lip out, and cry such sad cries! :o( It's so heartbreaking, but you are also very cute when you cry like that. It's much more of a lady-like cry than Daniel ever had. ;o) Yesterday, I pulled out the boppy pillow and sat you up against it and you had SO much fun just sitting there watching Daniel and I play and looking/playing at one of your books from Christmas! Even though you still enjoy playing on your activity mat and hitting / grabbing all the toys, I think you are slowly deciding you'd much rather sit up and see what's going on easier!

You are also realizing lately when I'm not in the room... You don't always cry about it when I go into another room, but you do enjoy it when I bring you with me and let you sit in your bouncer as I cook or clean... you love being around people to see what is going on! You also give some of the biggest smiles to anyone who comes over to see you! Lydia, you just light up our days so much!

You still have yet to roll over again... Daddy and I have decided we just don't have big rollers for kids... ;o) We are trying to get you to roll over again but you seem plenty content either lying on your back or doing tummy time, although we do need to spend more time with the tummy time... You don't mind it much at all, so that's more Mommy's fault for not letting you do it more often! Then, maybe you'll start rolling more!

You are still an amazing sleeper... we have been SO blessed by that, and it has helped Mommy be a much better Mommy during the day! You're still taking a good three naps a day and usually sleep from like 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. or so. You just got a new mobile for your crib from your grandparents and uncle Bryan, so you love looking at that when you are awake! I've also decided that you are the cutest when you are just waking up! You don't usually cry when you wake, so Mommy just goes in to check on you if I hear a few noises, and when I do I sometimes walk in seeing you looking all around with a half-sleepy expression on your face and your big, wide eyes! So sweet!

We love you so much, little girl! We had a wonderful Christmas with you and even though you took lots of naps during all the gift openings this year, you still were able to "help" open gifts or at least watch as Mommy opened them. You got so many amazing things and lots of cute outfits! It's been so much fun dressing you in all the cute outfits... you are super cute in every one of them! :o)

Oh, and you'll FINALLY be going in to the Dr. for a check-up appt. in a few weeks, but I did weigh you on our scale this morning and you weighed almost 15 pounds! Getting to be such a big girl!

Love you!
Mommy

P.S. Oh, and your hair is getting SO long! Daddy and Mommy made you a bow holder for Christmas and I have been trying to collect lots of cute hair things for you because I'm already able to do many things with your hair because you have so much of it! Such a beautiful little Lydia! :o)