I'm in love, seriously

If anyone decides they REALLY love me and wants to buy me a present for the baby, this is what I want, really, really, really bad.

Just look at the features on this thing

It has a baby wipe zipper pocket. How awesome is that!

So, any takers?

Are you hungry? Hunter sure is.

This is my first attempt at digital scrapbooking, I think it turned out really well. Thanks go out to about.com who directed me to www.digitalscrapbookplace.com for their tutorials. I have been trying to figure out how to use my Adobe Photoshop for the past year with much, much, much frustration. So, to commemorate my ability to actually figure out a computer program here is my blog entry for him and his insatiable appetite. This kid can eat! He takes after me with that, I love food. Ryan and Madison will eat, and they do enjoy food, but not like Hunter and I. I just love this little guy, he is so cute and so funny. Madison was too at this age, I love my kids.

I think if you click on the picture it will enlarge and take up the screen so you can see the entire page and read the text.

I still hold fast to my claim that Hunter's true first word was snack. Every time he goes to someone else's house he goes up to them and says "naa", his version of saying snack. he will follow me around the house asking for snacks if I don't feed him a decent meal. So, in attempt to preserve my sanity I feed him 3 packets of oatmeal for breakfast each day. That usually takes care of he needing to eat continually during the day.

He is very easily distracted by food, whenever I need him to come upstairs or go downstairs when he doesn't want to I tell him I have food for him and he scurries to do my bidding. I try to always follow through, but man, he can be stubborn. At least this one mention of food will take care of any lingering desire to disobey me. Like I said, he takes after me.

This boy is obsessed with shoes

I've already blogged about Hunter playing dressup with Madison's heels, I haven't grabbed a picture of him putting on my heels, but I did get this funny moment a few months ago. Hunter wants to be a big kid so bad, just like the rest of us. He came into the closet while I was getting ready one day and somehow found a pair of his daddy's sock and decided to put them on and then attempted to walk in his shoes as well. It was so sweet!

Here is how it went down....

Socks go on first.......

Then a jig must be danced.

He did managed to get the socks on all by himself, after all.....

Do you like how his daddy's ankle socks go almost up to his knees? That part got me rolling on the floor (well, almost, I did have to get the pictures before he moved on to other exciting endeavors)

Shoes go on next.....It didn't matter which shoe went on which foot, they are a tad bit too big anyway ...

Hmmm, maybe it's a little hard to walk in someone else's shoes...Good try, little dude, maybe someday you'll fit in your daddy's shoes.

This attempt went on for a while, long enough for me to run downstairs and grab my camera after seeing how cute he was being, and still grab some good pictures. Mads and I were enjoying the show.

To blog or not to blog.....

Many of you have given me a hard time for not blogging as much as I once did, I am trying to rectify that, however, this is an example as to why I was not as diligent as I had been.

There was quiet in the house for 2 minutes, the result:

In the few minutes I spent trying to finish up yesterday's blog post my dear, sweet monster of a little boy found Madison's chalk and wrote all over the wall of the landing midway up our stairs. No big deal, right? Chalk should be easy to get off. It would be, except in our case our home builder did not believe that painting the walls correctly was their responsibility (or so I have concluded, it's the one thing about our house that ticks me off). Our walls were painted, not with primer, but with watered down flat paint. Basically it is drywall, so as a result, anytime I have needed to wipe down the walls the paint comes off and I am left with whatever the texture is made of. So now in order to get rid of the chalk I will have to paint over it, but I'm figuring that the chalk would bleed through the flat paint they gave us instead of covering the mess. So, looks like it will stay as is until we have our entire home painted correctly using a primer.

What made it even worse was that Madison did not come and tell me what had happened right away. Why? Because just a few days ago we gave her a talking to about the fact that she cannot use her chalk when Hunter is awake and it should always be kept on a shelf he cannot reach, or else her chalk and chalkboard would be taken away. She got a towel and put water and soap on it to try and hide the mess. The result is smeared orange, green and blue chalk on my wall.

Oh, the joys of parenting....now I have to decide if I am willing to go through with my promise of taking away her chalkboard. I'm one of those mom's that works really hard at not threatening something I am not willing to follow through on, sometimes I hate being the mean parent all the time. Why couldn't she just followed the rules?

Madison turns 5

Madison posing then......

Madison posing now......

Madison turned 5 this past July, I am still in shock over it. I am having a really hard time believing that my baby girl is 5 already. I can't figure out where the time has gone!

She has grown up so much in the past year. Every now and again I look at her and no longer see a little girl, she has so many mannerisms and personality traits that scream teenager to me. Mostly she has developed a maturity to her that has surprised me, her insight and conversation skills have me floored. I guess I still think of her as being my little girl.

On her actual birthday, being the caring and loving parents that we are, we flew to Hawaii and left her and Hunter with my mom. This is the only picture I have of her on her actual birthDAY (she was headed to swimming lessons after dropping us off). My mom so generously offered to fly out and watch the kids for me while Ryan and I had a relaxing vacation all to our selves. It was a wonderful vacation and we found out that we were expecting our 3rd child on that trip, too, so that made it even better. My mom took her to celebrate at the restaurant of her choice....IHOP. She is so my child, I love IHOP and I LOVE breakfast foods. That might be the only thing she got from me (joking, of course, but she is definitely more Ryan than she is me).

We did celebrate with her on several occasions before and after we left for Hawaii. On July 2 we had her birthday party with her friends. This year we took her and some friends to see Ice Age 3. It was so fun, we rented the party room and they reserved seats for the kids and brought them all their own snack boxes with a drink, popcorn and one candy in it. I wish I had gotten a picture of all the little 4-6 year olds sitting on the front row with their snack box watching the movie. It was the cutest thing ever! I was so busy getting everyone situated before the movie and once it started I didn't want to disturb the other moviegoers with my flash going off while the movie was playing. I should have done it anyway.....Here are a bunch of candids that I got during the party. I think I got almsot every kid in at least one shot, she has some really wonderful friends that she plays with. We got a group shot, but a few of the kids had already left, we had a hard enough time corraling the ones there and getting them to all look at the camera.

A few years ago we signed Madison up for the CPK kids birthday club so she gets a free kids pizza the month of her birthday. We decided to take the kids on July 4th for dinner at CPK and since we were headed to Town Square (probably my favorite place to go in Vegas with the kids) we dressed them in their bathing suits so they could play at the sprinkler park in the kids area. They had so much fun! It turned off and the kids area closed at 7 or 8 pm and the kids were so sad! They would have stayed for hours more. I got some great pictures of them playing, so that made it even more fun for me.

Madison is so funny, she loves going to the sprinkler parks, but the water comes out with such force that she gets terrified of it. Mostly she runs around all the spurts of water and barely gets wet at all. I don't think her hair had one drop of water in it when we left. She loves just running around with all the kids and splashing in the puddles.

Hunter, on the other hand, was so fascinated by the sprinkler park. He would watch the water come up and then he would go over to the spout and dig his finger all around trying to figure out where all the water went. A few times he got socked straight in the face. He did NOT care for that at all! He ran in the water much more than Mads did, he was soaked by the time we left. He just kept giggling and walking around. There was a cute group of moms sitting by me and he would play in the water or with the spout and then he would walk over to them and clap as if he expected them to clap for him for doing whatever it was he had just done. It was adorable, and these sweet ladies were happy to oblige him. He is such a character.

We went to Utah for the July 24th celebration and while we were there we celebrated Madison's birthday with the family. Grandma Ainge had separate cakes for Madison and her cousin Sam during the family party and they got to open their presents with everyone. It was so fun! She loved having the princesses on her cake and the great part is that she got to play with the dolls after the cake was eaten. I'm pretty sure she still has them somewhere. They even lit up and everything, it was adorable.

After the party we headed to the Spanish Fork carnival for games and rides and then off to the rodeo. She even wore her cowgirl outfit to the party, the carnival and the rodeo, it was fun! She loved the rodeo, mostly because I let her eat popcorn, a snow cone and mini-doughnuts. She so rarely gets treats like that. She loved watching all the horses and got a kick out of the rodeo clowns. It was a super eventful day, she was exhausted by the time we got home for the night. She might have even slept in for an extra hour next day. For her that is a miracle. The child wakes up by 6 am almost every day no matter what time she goes to bed.

As this has become a journal for me, I wanted to include some little facts and tidbits about Madison before I forget them all. I promised myself that I wouldn't be the mom that forgets all the stats on my children, or confuses them. Well, as good as my intentions were, I have become that person. I contribute this tendency to the fact that pregnancy kills brain cells....I know I have lost a TON of them. The fact that I can even function each day is an accomplishment.

Madison Elizabeth was born July 8, 2004 at 7:22 am in Northridge, California at the Northridge Hospital. She weighed in at 6 lbs 9 oz and was 19 inches long.

She was born after 12 "wonderful" hours of labor (the "" signify my sarcasm in this last sentence). I was so incredibly exhausted by the time she was born. I was able to deliver her with no drugs, but lots of help from a wonderful doula. (I know, I know, I was crazy) Funny enough I did her labor drug free and it took 12 hours start to finish but Hunter required an epidural for less than 3 hours. More on that with Hunter's birthday post. Hence, our first family photo had me looking less than spectacular, and just plum worn out. I could hardly lift my head I was so tired.

I had gone into labor with Madison the previous evening, July 7, (considering she was a week late I was more than ready, her due date was July 1). Around 7 pm I started getting regular contractions and about 7:45, just as my contractions were 5 minutes apart, my water broke. I, of course, freaked out, less than 20% of women have water break that early in pregnancy. I figured the baby was going to come before we got to the hospital. Yeah, I was wrong. At about 8 pm we got in the car and went to the hospital. Thankfully we missed the wonderful rush hour traffic (it was a wednesday night, on the 5 and 405, in LA) and the hospital was about a half hour away without traffic. I loved my doctor and was willing to pass 2 hospitals to have him deliver Madison.

After a week of my dad calling me daily asking if I had had the baby yet I was more than ready to call him and tell him that I was headed to the hospital. It actually worked out perfectly, my parents were headed out that weekend to see me and the new baby, we figured it would be safe to get tickets since it was over a week after the baby's due date. I had Madison the morning of July 8 and that night my dad flew out of Memphis and was headed to the Olympic tryouts to work on some patients in Sacramento (I think) via LAX. For some reason or another, his fight was late leaving Memphis and he missed the last flight to Sacramento, so he rented a car and came to see me at the hospital and Madison on our first night together. I begged the nurses to let him in even though it was waaay after visiting hours. They granted an exception to the rule and let him in. He just hung out in my room from about 10 pm until 4 am when he had to head back to the airport. I felt really bad because Madison cried her first 3 days of life almost without stopping, so he just held her and calmed her down until 4 am. Needless to say, he did not get very much sleep. When he came back to LA 3 days later with my mom he adjusted her and she stopped crying and was a pretty pleasant baby after that.

Some memorable things about her:

When she was hungry she would make her "O" face (see first picture on the posting) and start bobbing her head around looking for food. It was so adorable.

Most newborns sneeze alot, she did as well, but whenever she would sneeze two times in a row she would follow it with a sigh. She didn't sigh when she sneezed once, only when she did it twice in a row. My heart would melt any time she did that. It lasted almost 6 months before she stopped sighing. I was so sad when she did. I wish I had known my camera would take videos so I could have recorded it!

For the first few weeks of her life she would only sleep if she could hear a heartbeat, so she slept on one of our chests for a while. It made it hard to sleep at night for us, but it was so fun to cuddle with her.

***I know the date on this post is off, it has taken me several days to finish it up. I don't know how to adjust the date, I'm not sure you can......

Dance time

Madison started dance class this last year. She really enjoyed it, shocking, I know....She chose Ballet and Tap as the class she wanted. Each term she quickly moved up to the next class, which is great since she was one of the oldest kids in her classes and is semi coordinated.

At the end of each term the teacher would let us come in and watch the class to see how the kids did. I was smart enough to bring my camera for one of the show-and-tell classes so I could get some good pictures. (I need a better lens, but I don't even want to begin trying to figure out which one I want, so at this point I can't zoom much better than this). But seriously, look how straight Madison is sitting up, I am so glad she loves taking dance classes. I'm having her sit out this session because I just can't juggle dance classes and having a baby...I'm so mean.....

In December her teacher had a recital for all of the classes, it was so cute! They all got costumes and learned a dance to a Christmas song. For being 3-6 year-olds they did really well (I included the video clip so you can watch the dance). Madison LOVED learning a dance instead of just doing warm up exercises and she thought it was so fun to have a "prop" during the dance. She was practicing all the time at home, but told me that she was disappointed the routine only had ballet and didn't get to showcase her tapping talents.

I just cannot get over how big and grown up she looks in pictures now...especially in these ones. She did a very good job of perfecting her "Diva" pose for the pictures we took. Needless to say it was not too much of a stretch for her.

First day of school

My children have both had big milestones in school this past school year. Madison started kindergarten in August (yes, in August, once again proof of my terrible blogging skills in the last year) and Hunter started preschool this month.

Madison was so excited to start school. She had been ready for kindergarten for a while now and was excited for the chance to learn and play with friends every day. She gets so sad on the weekends when she is home with the two of us and her brother and no friends. About a month after school started she got upset with me and asked "Mommy, why didn't you put me in all day kindergarten?" Well, honey, I sure would have if I could have. Trust me, 2 1/2 hours of school is not nearly enough for me either. I just told her that we didn't have that option. Then she went on and asked why she didn't get put in morning kindergarten with all of her friends. I asked for morning but she ended up with afternoon. I actually prefer afternoon, but everyone I already knew had morning and I really wanted to carpool. It has definitely worked out well for us though. The afternoon class is smaller so she gets more one-on-one attention and the kids in her class are great. Plus, I love her teacher. She is a lot like me so it is easier for Madison to stay on task. I'm a no-nonsense, super strict, scheduled (for the most part) parent and her teacher is the same way. Needless to say, we get along fabulously.

I have had a lot of fun seeing what all she is capable of. She hasn't been willing to learn from me like she is willing to learn from someone else. Within 2 months of school starting she was reading. I had been trying to get her to read for a few months and she was not having it. I'm just so proud of her.

The hardest thing about school is that her brother is sad without her at home all day. His nap schedule is completely messed up from me trying to not have him sleep while she is home, waiting until later results in me getting a break for 2 hours while she is at school. 1:00 in the afternoon is just so passed his tired point it's hard some days. Right now we are simply doing the best we can. When we go to pick up Madison he runs up to the gate and looks for her. When she comes out he loves to run and give her hugs. He just misses her so much. It is cute! I love that they get along so well.

I found one preschool here that takes 2 year-olds, I don't know why, but she claims she LOVES the 2 year-olds. He loves going and gets so excited when it is a school day. He goes for 2 hours, so 2 days a week I get about an hour and a half all to myself. As most mothers can attest, the opportunity to go to the grocery store, or Target, or wherever by myself is pure heaven. I love my children to death, but shopping is stressful with them!

Anyway, the little monster only says about 10 or so words (mommy, daddy, more, sippy, night-night, poo-poo, owie, eat, hair, no, and mine) so I wasn't sure how he would do, but his teacher says he does really well. She said he has really good coordination for his age and he understands everything you say to him. He follows directions really well and does pretty well with the other kids. His class is 2 and 3 year-olds so the older kids love to pick him up and carry him around. She says they treat him like a doll sometimes. I told her that he is used to it, that is what his sister does all the time. Apparently, he just lets them carry him and doesn't complain at all. Like I said, he is used to it.....

I took this picture on the 2nd day of class when he made this hat. He loved it, all day long he wore it and didn't want to take it off. He ended up learning the word hat as a result and just had so much fun wearing it. By that night he had torn it up, of course, but I love this picture.

In bath news......

The other morning Madison cuddled up to me in bed for almost an hour (it was my attempt at a lazy morning) and read me stories while I read a book. As I realized what time it was and I needed to get ready for the day, feed my kids, get them dressed, etc, I looked to her and said I needed to take a shower so she needed to get off my arm. She all of a sudden plugged her nose and said, "you smell, mommy." Really? I smell? It didn't bother you at any time in the last hour. Nice, huh? I'm sure I did, that is after all why I take showers daily, but come on, I didn't smell that bad when she wanted to cuddle. Sometimes she is such a brat.

This is what my kids do while I get ready in the morning. Most parents bathe their kids in a bathtub, mine play fully dressed with no water in the bathtub. Why, you ask? Well, every time Hunter takes a bath he has a bowel movement (yes, it's as gross as it sounds) so instead of bathing my kids in a bathtub and then having to move them over to the shower and then scrubbing out my tub I make life easy and shower them (thank goodness for the detachable shower head). Thus, they have resorted to using the bathtub as a play area. They make a slide out of the side of the tub, they put their bath toys in and sit and play just like a normal bath, and they also put the "candy" cane in the tub and dance.

Ryan's Aunt Pam bought this for Madison when they came to see me at the hospital after having Hunter (Madison conned them into getting it when they stopped for flowers at the store). It is probably my kids most favorite toy, it plays Mandy Moore's Candy and turns around. Madison has the directions figured out and she turns the same way it does when it sings (it's really cute). Almost every morning they play it for about 1/2 an hour while I get ready. They haven't gotten sick of it yet. It will be a sad day when the batteries finally die out, I don't know how it opens up! I'll figure something out....

It's a girl....

Yes, I know that everyone I know is aware of the fact that baby #3 is a girl, but I have a few stories I want to share with it. If I had been blogging like I wanted to then these would have been published months ago.....

And, why yes, I know this is a crappy ultrasound picture. I didn't like any of the pictures we got. To be honest, we have never had a good ultrasound picture taken-you know what I mean, one where you can actually tell a baby is in there. The kind that they show you in the magazines. Yeah, that's not any of ours....but enough of my soapbox.

Before Ryan and I decided we wanted another baby Madison started getting obsessed with having a baby sister. Just as we were trying to figure out when we wanted to get pregnant, or at least try to get pregnant, Madison let us know that every night she prayed to Jesus for a baby sister.

As she told us that we looked to each other and I asked her, "Why a baby sister?" She replied that she already had a baby brother and now she wanted a sister. I asked her if another brother would be ok and she said "yes, but then that's it, no more brothers." Heck, it's not like I have any control over it.....

To be fair to Madison, though, I really believed that she would get what she wanted. Why? Because she KNEW Hunter was a boy. I was positive I was having another girl, but she told me it was a boy because she wanted a brother. She was right.

I have never been accurate on the sex of our children. I was so certain that Madison was a boy that I took a yellow outfit to the hospital and didn't wash any of the pink clothes that had tags on them just in case I had to return them. Apparently mothers intuition is yet another myth in my life.

Ryan and I are overjoyed for a few different reasons, we really did want another girl. First, I really think girls should have a sister. I had 5 and I am so grateful for each of them. There is no way they can be replaced in my life. Second, the thought of two boys in a row terrified me. I am hoping that by having Hunter surrounded by females that he won't be quite as rambunctious. Two boys in a row are WAY too rambunctious for this girl who was raised with all sisters. I will be more than happy to have a boy for my 4th, but thankfully this one is a girl.

By the way, I am aware that my delusions run deep when it comes to boys but one can hope, right? Hunter is already way more rambunctious than his sister. He is all boy-he runs everywhere (when he isn't demanding to be carried-the little monster), he throws EVERYTHING (anything and everything is a projectile missile), he has already perfected grunting and lack of communication skills (he's 2 and says 12 words but understands everything I say-at least he's not stupid), he loves wrestling, not to mention the fact that the kid ALWAY has bumps and bruises on him, usually matching bruises on each side of his forehead (see photo above, he had matching head bruises and some scrape under his nose-thankfully I had taken their Christmas pictures 2 days before). I know there is only so much I can do, but the thought of two in a row sent me into panic mode. Thank goodness for little girls.

Hungry Man

I am very aware that I have COMPLETELY slacked as a blogger. There is no excuse, I just didn't make time and then I got so behind that I got quite overwhelmed and anyone that knows me knows that when I get overwhelmed I simply choose to avoid whatever it is that stressed me out. Yes, I am VERY aware that that trait is not so good....but come on, I'm 30, I doubt it will change much after perfecting it in the last few years.

My one and only New Year's Resolution is to be more diligent with our family blog than I was last year. Honestly, I don't think I could get any less diligent. Here is my first attempt at being better. We shall see how this year goes....

I uploaded a ton of pictures today and saw this one I took recently. I think this is my favorite picture of Hunter from the last year. Needless to say this little guy LOVES to eat. When he does sit down to eat he is quite precise (any guesses where that trait came from...I'll give you one hint, it's not from me). He gets stressed unless his tray is set up just so, his sippy cup MUST be in the correct spot and his plate must be ON his tray-not just the food, the plate. He also freaks out when food or water drips down his chin. He can usually handle it if there is food on his mouth (see accompanying picture), although not the last week. When it starts to drip he whines incessantly until I get a napkin and wipe his face. It cracks me up, but mostly it's annoying. It makes it hard for me to eat at the same time. Selfish, I know.....

When I took this picture we were at Cracker Barrel on our way home from Utah after Thanksgiving. Somehow he got his hands on a second fork and decided that 2 was definitely better than 1. I can't believe he kept this up long enough for me to get my camera out, but thank goodness he did because I foresee this picture providing up with laughs for years to come.