Happy Birthday, Abby!

We started out the morning with our traditional birthday pancakes:

 

 

  

 

Then we had a small party, complete with a Dora pinata:

 

Grandma and Grandpa came for cupcakes and ice cream:

 

 

Happy Birthday, Abby!

 

A few things about Abby at this age:

 

1.” That makes me so happy!”

Abby says this several times a day. Because her sister shared with her, because she got the pink plate for lunch, because she is wearing two pairs of panties (at least that was her response the other day when I asked her why she was wearing two pairs of panties). It doesn’t take much to make this little girl very happy.

 

2. “That is not acceptable.”

This is another thing she says a lot , I couldn’t figure out where she was getting it from until I heard myself say it. Check out past blog posts for some of her spectacular messes and you might understand why. The other night she came out of her bedroom and said, “There is a fly in my room. That is not acceptable. Daddy, can you get your gun and shoot it"?”

 

3. She loves to be a kitty.

Abby’s favorite game is playing kitties. I frequently have a little girl climbing under tables, pawing at my leg, and meowing. Ironically, she is allergic to cats (as am I) and she knows it. We saw a black cat the other day while on a walk and Abby said, “That cat is allergic to me!” and refused to pet it.

 

4. “You are the bestest (insert sister, mom, dad, friend) ever!”

Another thing we hear a lot at our house. Anytime someone does something nice for Abby, this is her typical reply.

 

5. She’s learned her letters/counting/etc. along with Sandy and she’s quite good.

It does lead to some interesting response sometimes. Although she does know how to spell Abby, her most likely response to being asked how to spell her name is S-A-N-D-Y.

 

6. A few of her favorites:

Her favorite color is pink, her favorite TV shows are Dora and Phineas and Ferb. She loves to play princesses and dress up but she also loves trucks and cars and balls. She loves to eat yogurt, cheese, and apples.

 

7. She has very sensitive ears.

For such a loud child (and believe me, this child does not stop making noise ever), she has very sensitive ears. She plugs her ears for loud noises – like the vacuum or the toilet flushing. She can’t stand other people making loud noises. She even complains when people are laughing that it hurts her ears.

 

8. She loves her blankets and stuffed animals.

Before she can go to sleep, she has to have her special blanket and several of her favorite stuffed animals lined up next to her. She also needs a special water cup. And if she gets up in the middle of the night, she needs to bring all of it with her. She will occasionally try to crawl into my bed in the middle of the night and bring multiple loads of stuff with her.

 

9. She loves babies and is very excited to be a big sister.

Her prayers these day, go something like this: “Thank you for my mom. Thank you for my dad. Thank you for me sister. Thank you for me! Thank you for my baby brother. Thank you for the doctors that will help him come out of mommy’s tummy. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

 

10. Feisty is the main adjective people use to describe her after subbing in nursery.

Our nursery has been pretty inconsistent with leaders and there are frequently substitutes. Abby likes to follow a schedule and is quick to correct them if they aren’t doing the “right” things in the “right” order. She’s also quick to assert herself if she feels like another kid is taking her stuff or pushing her around. We’re working on that, and as she’s getting older and learning to use her words more than pushing or hitting, it’s getting better. I hope she never stops being feisty, though, because it is such a big part of her personality!

April Recap

We went to Bill’s mission reunion:

 

Bill & I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary.

 

We went out to breakfast at Penny Ann’s Cafe. Check out the hot chocolate they brought me:

 

 

We played with lots of play dough. Kind of random, but as I dug through the pictures on my phone from April almost half of them were of different play dough creations.

Abby made some spectacular messes. A last ditch effort to ensure the terrible twos are memorable?

 

Liquid eye shadow makes great war paint, don’t you think?

Bill normally makes the girls breakfast on Saturday mornings. This particular Saturday morning Abby woke us up at 6 by jumping on our bed and saying, “The sun is up! The sun is up! I want scrambled eggs for breakfast.” We both rolled over, waiting to see who would cave first and get up with her. After a few minutes, I got up and went into the kitchen to find this:

She had very carefully cracked eggs for her scrambled eggs. She just forgot a bowl.

 

And there was the day I came into the bathroom to find this:

She cut her bangs completely off:

Good things she’s so adorable when she’s sleeping:

Announcement

We are expecting a baby on or around November 5 (which makes me 12 weeks pregnant).

This has been an emotional roller coaster of a pregnancy and there have been four times that I was sure it was over, yet every time the ultrasound has shown the baby is still doing well. I’ve had pretty good reasons for being concerned, like the subchorionic hemorrhage I had last Thursday night (just hours after the ultrasound picture above).

Here is the ultrasound from last Friday showing the subchorionic hemorrhage, and the baby still doing well:

 

I had one when I was pregnant with Abby – and although it was very scary, it turned out okay. There was a lot more bleeding with this one. Also a lot of cramping, which I don’t remember with Abby. The bleeding is under control, the cramping has gotten much better, but still comes back if I do anything strenuous.

At this point, I’ve decided this is a miracle baby – there have been plenty of chances for this pregnancy to end, plenty of times I thought it had, so I hope that means the miracles will continue. Well, it is in God’s hands. 

The girls are incredibly excited about the baby! They wanted to carry around the ultrasound pictures, so Bill made them their own copies. Sandy colored hers in, both girls have them taped above their beds. Several times a day, one or both of them will come and put their head to my stomach to check on the baby. Usually they tell me the baby is laughing, although occasionally crying or screaming. 

Abby is convinced the baby is a girl. She came with me to an earlier ultrasound than either of the two pictured above and insisted the baby looked like a girl.

Happy Easter!

Sandy’s wearing clip-on earrings. She has been begging for some for a long time. Her Easter basket was actually a locking box that she could keep little treasures, like her earrings, safe from her little sister:

    

The girls got their Easter baskets Saturday morning. Here is Abby, holding a chocolate egg and, apparently, missing her pajamas.

Happy Easter!

Phone Pictures

I was cleaning picture off my cell phone and found some to share.

 

 

The girls playing on the W (for West High) at Sandy’s preschool.

 

 

Speaking of preschool, I have to admit that the stack of art projects Sandy comes up with usually ends up tossed in the trash. If she doesn’t see me do it, she doesn’t ever ask where they went. I do feel bad about sometimes. I hung this fish picture – painted with colored corn syrup -- on the fridge. The corn syrup stuff ran all the way down, what a sticky mess! I guess we’re back to throwing them in the garbage as soon as we get home.

 

Sandy’s “Princess Leia” hairstyle.

         

 

Here are the Easter baskets we grew grass in. I really liked how they turned out.

 

Due Date

Today is (was?) my due date. It’s been 5 months that I’ve known I wouldn’t be holding a baby this month.

Peter is a part of our family. Not a day goes by that the girls don’t talk about their little brother. Sandy can be a bit domineering and Abby likes to remind her that, “I’m a big sister!” Sandy says, “Yes, you are Peter’s big sister but I am Peter’s bigger big sister.”

The girls talk about their baby brother so casually, it brings up questions from people we don’t know well. “Oh, you have a baby boy at home?” Well, not exactly.

At my first appointment with Sandy, I asked my doctor how long we should wait to tell people we were pregnant. I was 9 weeks pregnant. He said everything looked good on the ultrasound and to go ahead and tell whoever we wanted, that miscarriages were very uncommon once an ultrasound had showed a beating heart.

I was blessed to have a healthy pregnancy with Sandy. With Abby, we had some hemorrhaging that was very scary, but it all turned out okay. I felt a bit invincible. Sure people have miscarriages and lose babies, but it didn’t seem like it could happen to me. Now that it has all of that invincibility is gone. Now there is so much fear of getting pregnant, fear of losing another baby. Fear of putting myself through that again, but mostly fear of putting my girls through that. I think the girls have dealt with this in healthy ways, but when I think of how little death I had come into contact with before my late teens, it makes me ache when I hear my 2-year-old say she has a baby in her tummy and it’s dead. She says it so matter of factly. But should a 2-year-old really be that matter-of-fact about a dead baby?

I woke up this morning feeling very melancholy, but I had to stop and think about why. My body fought so hard to keep Peter, even after we knew his heart had stopped beating. And, somehow, my body knew that today was his due date.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

When I realized St. Patrick’s Day was on Sunday, I looked for Easter dresses with green in them. They can wear them again for Easter in a couple of weeks.

 

Saturday morning the girls woke up to some “leprechaun gold” and a new St. Patrick’s day shirt in their shoes. Sandy wore her shirt, Abby refused. I said, “Don’t you think the leprechauns will be disappointed you don’t want to wear your shirt?” Abby’s reply? “But the Easter bunny loves my dress!”

 

We’ve been doing some fun things to get ready for St. Patrick’s Day, like these rainbow cupcakes:

We frosted them with cream cheese - whipped cream clouds that were amazing! We made layered rainbow jello that turned out amazing but doesn’t show up in the pictures.

 

We also made rainbow bread.

 

It was an absolute disaster – food coloring, flour and bread dough everywhere.

 

 

We had more food coloring on our hands than on the bread:

 

 

And it didn’t turn out quite like the picture on Pinterest. I used the wilton gel colors and I think I should have used liquid food coloring. But the girls thought it was pretty amazing!

 

Sandy’s preschool learned about pets a couple of weeks ago. She came home insisting she had to take a pet to school and we needed to go to the pet store and get a puppy. A call to her teacher confirmed there was certainly no such expectation, but if a parent wanted to bring a pet into class, they could. We were debating what to do when Sandy’s primary teacher gave her a purple plastic fish. She begged to take that. So, a freezer jam full of water and a plastic fish and she was ready to go:

 

She took it to preschool and was thrilled. She’s carried it everywhere with her since. Every night, she transfers it to a smaller container so she can clean out her fish bowl. She’s quite a responsible pet owner!

 

We’ve been growing grass in Easter baskets:

 

 

This is the grass from a couple of weeks, it is growing really good now. I’ll have to take an updated picture.

 

 

We' have had beautiful spring weather this month! Here’s a picture of the girls swinging in the backyard. It’s been such a cold winter, that 50s or 60s feel awesome. So awesome, the girls keep asking questions like, “Can we run through the sprinklers? Can I wear my swimsuit outside? Why do I have to wear shoes?” If our Arizona cousins were here, I bet they’d be wearing jackets and my kids think they should be running through sprinklers!

 

We decided to do another swap package like we did at Christmas time. This time we are swapping with a family in Greece. Here is the package we sent them:

Marshmallow peeps, grow your own snow kit, a book about salt lake, Jello (with a Jello salad recipe), honey (with a honey butter recipe), fry sauce, and salt water taffy. Hope they enjoy it!