It's a Rogers Life

Tangled, The Dentist, and Valentine's Day

2012-02-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

We had such a relaxed, ordinary weekend at our house this past weekend. We had absolutely no plans, and no events, parties or birthdays to attend - just nothing to do and it was so great. Saturday morning the kids colored and then played all kinds of games with Daddy. Huston got to play Halo in the morning - a rare treat for him since he usually plays it at night after Clarke comes home from work. They played catch and "Hut" and I can't even remember what else. Huston walked around all afternoon with his comb, and a toy light saber that was broken in half and pretended to give us hair cuts. In the evening we had a family movie night and watched Tangled.

For dinner during our movie, I fed the kids peanut butter and jelly (on almost, but not quite, stale bread), popcorn, the last remaining bits of broken pretzels and some raisins (because there was no fruit in the house, but that's close, right?). I should win mom of the year for that dinner. Or maybe not. We all really liked the movie, but I was glad we were watching it at home, because Huston asked loud questions every 5 minutes, and Arden started running around the living room as soon as her food was gone.

On Monday morning I took the kids to the dentist for their first dental checkup. I was feeling mom guilt for not having taken Huston before, and I was afraid they would find a bunch of cavities and chastise me for being a bad mom. But everything turned out fine - Huston had a minor anxiety attack and wouldn't let them take x-rays of his teeth, but he did get in the chair and let the dentist count his teeth, and so did Arden. And neither one of them had anything wrong, so I'll call it a success. I desperately wanted to take pictures of them in the dentist chair, but it didn't seem right at the moment, so I settled for this picture of them in the waiting room. They were playing Tangled, of all things, and the kids were so happy to recognize it and watch it.

On Tuesday I made the kids pink heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. But I didn't take pictures of them, because they weren't very impressive. In fact, they were not impressive at all. But Huston did laugh with delight, so it was worth it. Then we met Clarke at Chick Fil A for a little family Valentine's lunch date.

After lunch, the kids and I headed to a random Cracker Barrel to meet a lady that I was selling something to on Craigslist. While we were waiting, I took their picture in a Cracker Barrel rocking chair. These pictures crack me up.

Then a guy walking by offered to take my picture with them, which is what I always want people to do, but I don't really like the picture. Here it is anyway.

For dinner we had baked spaghetti and breadsticks, and I lit candles and Clarke put on some nice music. The kids got a big kick out of the candlelight and Huston wanted to blow all of the candles out after we ate. It was fun to celebrate Valentine's Day as a family. Huston even got to play Halo with Daddy after dinner (yes, this is almost a daily occurrence now), because, as Clarke said, "Nothing says Valentine's Day like blowing up aliens."

Isn't she lovely?

2012-02-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

There's no point to this post, other than to show you pictures of my little girl.

Because she's so lovely and growing up so fast.

Making Valentines

2012-02-06T14:11:00.001-08:00

Pinterest tempts me with zillions of cute ideas for homemade Valentine's to bake and make. But the truth is, I don't really want to spend much time or money on this middle of February holiday. So, here's a rundown of how to make Valentine's treats to pass out to your kid's class with virtually no effort. No homemade Valentine's whoopie pies or heart shaped melted crayons from this chick. At least not this year.

Step 1. Buy Hershey's kisses on clearance after Christmas (40 cents a bag after clearance and coupon. That's the way I roll. I bought 12 bags. That's also the way I roll. But I only used 5 bags for this project - more for me to eat.)

Step 2. Separate the red and silver wrappers (aka Valentine's colors) from the green wrappers (save them for Saint Patrick's Day? Or a Baylor game party?). Ideally, your cushions should be off of your couch for this step, but if not, you may proceed as you see fit.

Step 3. Bribe your cute 4 year old with a snack to get him out of his bad mood and willing to participate in your fun activity.

Step 4. Get said cute 4 year old to put 5 red kisses and 5 silver kisses in each Ziploc snack size baggie. Take a picture of him (another one).

Step 5. Print off a cute free printable from online (mine is from Living Locurto). Hopefully your printer will be almost out of ink, so the black will show up as gray. This is a plus, because you know you're getting every last drop out of that ink cartridge (and you are cheap - see step 1).

Step 6. Get your 4 year old to sign his name to the back of each one. Take breaks and bribe with candy as necessary.

Step 7. Take pictures of the way he signs his name, because it's so darn cute.

That's it! Valentine's treats for hardly any money!

Snapshot of a Two Year Old

2012-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Today Arden was screaming at me because she wanted something and I said, "Arden, would you please just be patient?"

She replied, "No! I not be patient! I just fussy girl!"

Oh the joys of having a two year old.

The Night We Almost Went to the Rodeo

2012-01-19T17:25:00.000-08:00

So...we almost went to the rodeo tonight. But here's what happened instead.

The day started out normal for me, but trouble was already brewing with Clarke's parents, who were going to come with us (along with his sister and her husband).

Clarke's dad left their house at 4:30 this morning to go to Denton for a photography job. His mom discovered while she was getting ready for work that all of the water had stopped working at their house. Then, on her way to work, she got a flat tire.

I took the kids to my Bible study today and had a normal morning and afternoon, except for the fact that Arden didn't take a nap. I knew she was going to be so tired and cranky, but there was nothing I could do.

We were supposed to all meet at a restaurant at 5:30, and as I was getting the kids ready to leave, I decided it would be a good idea to have Huston wear his cowboy hat for a picture.

He hates pictures and hats. I don't know why I though I could reason with him. There was much screaming and crying that could have been avoided if I hadn't insisted on a picture.

(This was his best attempt at a smile)

I was all worked up by the time I left the house with the kids at 5 (mostly mad at myself for the picture taking fiasco). Then I ran into bad rush hour traffic, which got much, much worse when I got to this dumb construction zone on a bridge that is the bane of my existence. After waiting for forever, I had to turn around and go another way, and what should have been a 20 minute trip ended up taking an hour. While we're in traffic, Arden is crying in the back, "I'm tired! I'm not tired!" She finally fell asleep for the last ten minutes. I called Clarke to say I was running late, and he was also running late, as was his mom (from the same traffic). To top it off, his dad was still in Denton on his job, and he had our tickets to the rodeo with him.

We finally all got to the restaurant at 6 (minus his dad), managed to find a table and eat, and then we left to go to the stock show and see the animals while we waited for his dad who thought he'd be able to make it in time for the rodeo at 7:30. On our way over to the stock show, Melinda got a call on her cell phone that her dear friend's granddaughter has RSV.

We got to the entrance, and I handed the guy the voucher I printed off online, which, in conjunction with our museum membership card, was supposed to get us into the stock show for free. The guy starts giving me a hard time because the back of my membership card shows an expiration date of 12/31/11, even though my parents got us a renewal for Christmas, and I renewed it at the museum and they told me I would maybe get a new card in the mail, but I could just keep using my old card because they put it in the computer. He doesn't seem to believe me, and I'm about to lose my temper because I cannot believe all the things that have gone wrong.

That's when Arden starts throwing up.

And I catch it in my hand.

And then she throws up some more in the grass.

And we decide we're not going to stay for the rodeo, and when Huston hears this he starts to fall to pieces.

Thankfully, he is appeased when we tell him he can play Halo with Daddy when he gets home (that is a story for another day).

Now Arden is resting and seems okay, and Huston and Clarke have played Halo and Clarke is getting Huston ready for bed (which, for some reason, always involves lots of tickling and giggling and takes far longer than when I do it, but sounds like much more fun for Huston).

And that...is why we didn't make it to the rodeo.

There's always next year.

Dinah the Dinosaur

2012-01-13T06:34:00.001-08:00

Allow me to introduce you to Dinah, the Dinosaur.

Dinah has been an important part of our lives for the last two months or so. It started when two random events serendipitously collided. The first was that I was packing up some boxes for Operation Christmas Child and including a rubber dinosaur I got on clearance at Target in each one. There was one dinosaur left over that just laid around in our room for awhile because I'm lazy like that. Around this same time, Huston watched an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with a triceratops named Dinah. After watching the episode and seeing the rubber dinosaur in our room (who also happened to be a triceratops) he quickly adopted her as his own.

(This is Dinah doing tricks for the camera - like standing on her back and on her tail).
A few things you should know about Dinah:

Dinah has also been called "Baby Dinosaur" and "Baby Squishy Dinosaur."

Dinah shows her various emotions - she wags her tail when she's happy and her horns droop down when she's sad.

Dinah's emotions often line up with Huston's emotions. For example, this morning Huston was grouchy and told me, "Mommy, Dinah's mad at you."

Dinah makes a unique sound, difficult to transcribe, but which goes something like, "Buut-aah," though not exactly. I could not figure out where this sound came from, until I saw the Mickey episode again and realized the dinosaur on the show makes that exact sound.

Dinah likes to be silly. She likes you to ask her to say "Buut-aah," and sometimes she'll say it, sometimes she'll be silent, sometimes she'll squeak, and sometimes she'll say ribbit. You never know what mood she's going to be in.

My boy and his dinosaur - may you have many adventures together.

Arden: 25 months

2012-01-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

Arden's overdue for a little blog update, so here's one to start the new year. The picture below is from a sweet princess party I took Arden to this weekend. She wore a "Belle" costume that our neighbors gave us and the party favor was the little pink princess cape that the mom sewed for all the girls at the party. (Pretty sure this will be her Halloween costume since we already have it and it was free!)

I have to say that after all of Huston's drama about birthday parties over the years, it was so fun to take Arden by herself to a party. It was always so difficult to get Huston to just be normal at a party (forget about participating in anything) but Arden wanted to put on her princess dress, wear her cape, decorate her picture frame, listen to stories, play with the other girls, and basically do everything! She had so much fun.

Okay, so on to the actual Arden update. When I took her for her two year check up at the beginning of December, she was in the 90th percentile for height at 36 and 1/4 inches. You can get a rough estimate of full grown height by doubling their height at two years, which would put Arden at 6 feet! Obviously this is just an estimate, but it seems she'll be tall!

She still loves her Lambie and her "lil blankie" as she calls it. She can often be heard saying, "I want my lil blankie." She sleeps with both of those, as well as her "big blankie," but the little one really seems to be key to helping her fall asleep. She likes to rub it between her fingers and just kind of play with it until she drifts off.

Her favorite activity by far is reading or being read to. I don't know that I can accurately convey how much she loves to read (and always has). One of her favorite things at Christmas was reading the Lego instruction manual from one of Huston's toys. She will read anything, but her current favorite is an anthology of Curious George stories she got for Christmas. She'll ask, "Where my Keeeris George?" and then she'll plop down with it and read for a good 15 to 20 minutes.

Arden is such an early little riser lately, waking up between 6:15 and 6:45. She has also been extremely cling and attached to mommy. So attached that if I'm out of her sight for a second, she's crying, "Moooommmy, where are you? I tan't find youuu." Or crying if I suggest that Daddy give her a bath or change her diaper. She insists upon accompanying me to the bathroom or to check the mail or anywhere else where I might be out of sight. She's also within the past two weeks or so started crying when she goes down for a nap or bedtime. She used to go down so easily but now there's always weeping and wailing. One day she even cried so hard that she made herself throw up. This little throw up trick (that she's pulled a handful of times now) really works in her favor, as it makes me nervous to let her cry for too long.

She is so expressive and talkative. I wish I could accurately capture everything she says, because it's so adorable and distinct. Here's a small sampling:

The other day she was looking for Huston and said, "Huston....where are ya pal?"

She has such a southern twang. She says, "I need hey-elp" and "It's mines" pretty frequently.

One morning we were reading a Bible story (about Moses) and she asked, "What eeees that?"

I said, "That's the Red Sea."

After thinking a moment, she said, "Noooo, that not red sea! It's blue sea."

I love to ask her, "Are you my princess?" because she always responds, "No, I just my baby!"

I'll leave you with this snippet of Arden and Huston on the way home from church yesterday.

Arden said, "I want that fingy have da light." (That "thingy" was our Magna Doodle.)

Huston said, "Why did she say that?" and I said that I guessed it was because she didn't know it was called a Magna Doodle.

He proceeded to look at her, and tell her in a bossy voice, "Arden, it's called a Magna-doo-nel."

She said, "No! That fingy have da light!"

And Huston said, "NO! It's a Magna-nooool."

Then they both just started screaming at each other. It was pretty much the funniest fight ever.

Merry Merry!

2011-12-27T12:29:00.001-08:00

We had a great Christmas at our house and hope you did, too! Here are a few pictures - mostly from our Christmas morning. We spent the 23rd at my parent's house and Christmas afternoon at Clarke's parent's house, and have one more Christmas celebration tonight.

Here's the best picture I could get of Arden and Huston before church on Christmas Eve. Huston was not feeling the picture taking. Unfortunately, both of the kids had colds over Christmas, but I think they're finally getting over them now.

We went to the 6:00 contemporary service, and it was awesome. I loved having the kids in worship with us. Huston was really interested in the candles that we got to light while singing Silent Night and loved helping us blow them out. Both of the kids were very well behaved during the service.

Here's our family in front of a Christmas tree at church:

On Christmas morning, Arden woke up at 6:00 (she's such an early riser lately!) so she and I watched Mickey Mouse for awhile as we waited for Huston to get up.

I think he didn't get up until after 7, and then we woke up Clarke and let the kids open their stockings. Huston was thrilled with his candy and slinky and other trinkets. It was so fun watching him pull things out, one by one.

Arden loved her chocolate "co-ins."

After they opened their stockings, Huston was ready for breakfast, so I made some misshapen homemade donuts, which ended up pretty much tasting like funnel cake. Not exactly the healthiest breakfast, but the kids liked it.

Christmas morning in front of the tree:

Arden had a great time opening her presents, which included a new highchair for her dolls, a milk and orange juice bottle where the liquid "disappears," some marbles and a jar, a Very Hungry Caterpillar game, and a sticker book. Santa brought them the Lion King, Kerplunk, and a Melissa and Doug magnetic pattern block toy.

I made the mistake of letting Huston open his new "Up!" book from us as his first gift. He was beside himself with giddiness and couldn't stop paging through it. Unfortunately, this also meant that he had no interest in opening anything else. He opened one or two more gifts at our urging, but would barely glance at them before he returned to his book. Finally he just refused to open anything else and when we left to go to Clarke's parents' house, he still had 3 unopened presents. At least he really liked his book! Just today he opened another present (he still has one more left), which was a Melissa and Doug solar system puzzle and he's been loving that, too, because he's really interested in outer space lately.

Just had to throw in this picture of Arden with her great-grandparents. Such a sweet picture! We love you, Granny and Papaw!

Pretzel Dipping

2011-12-20T12:41:00.001-08:00

I had originally planned to let the kids help me bake and decorate sugar cookies this Christmas. But, because I am lazy, I downgraded to a chocolate pretzel dipping experience (with sprinkles, though!)

Huston took his job of dipping and shaking the sprinkles very seriously...

as you can tell by the disproportionate ratio of sprinkles to pretzels.

Arden played along, like "sure, Mom, I'll dip these pretzels for you..."

But they went straight in her mouth. Silly girl.

Lazy, but yummy fun.

Huston: 4 years, 4 months

2011-12-19T05:36:00.000-08:00

Huston had his Christmas preschool performance on Friday. He was really nervous about it and didn't want to do it, but we talked and talked about it for two weeks or more. The morning of his program he woke up and said, "Today is my program. I'm going to sing." Just like that. And I let my heart hope that he would. I took this picture of him outside of school that morning.

When the kids filed onto the risers, he was looking at us nervously and chewing his shirt. But when "Feliz Navidad" started, he started strumming his pretend guitar like the rest of the kids and singing the first few words. Then he just fell apart. Crying, arm flinging, utter despair. The girl next to him may have gotten hit by one of his flailing arms. And the girl behind him noticed his breakdown and reached down to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

I just have to record a few more things, before I forget them. Here's a prayer Huston said at dinner time on December 2nd:

"Thank you, God, for this day and for this food and for day and night, day and night, day and night and for Mommy and Daddy and Arden and please just bless Arden not to hit." I couldn't help but laugh a little when his prayer was over, and he explained, "I was just praying for God to take away that sin from Arden."

His favorite game to play with Daddy when he comes home from work, is "Hut," otherwise known as football. Huston says "Hut!" and Clarke tries to tackle him, while Huston tries to run past him to the hallway. Arden tries to "block" by sitting on Daddy or otherwise interfering. Mommy is not allowed in the room when this game is played. I get told, "No, Mommy! Go away! I don't want you in here!" But I don't even mind, because I love his special games with his Daddy.

I also love how he says, "releven" for "eleven" and "relarm" for "alarm." And how he says, "Warmart" and "fwavwite."

Huston loves talking about outer space, which he calls, "Out-Ar Space." One day he told me, "I'm just so glad God gave us gravity so we won't go flying into out-ar space."

He still loves the movie Up and spends most of his day flying his paper "Up" house around and reenacting scenes from the movie, or carrying around one of his two books about the movie. His sweet teacher Ms. Kate gave him an Up sticker book a few weeks ago, and he walked around with a smile on his face all day. The pictures below are from October, and we're on our fourth or fifth paper Up house now (because Huston freaks out if they get bent or wet or wrinkled - he's a bit of a perfectionist like his mother), but that's pretty much how he looks most of the day, carrying around his little paper house.

We took the kids to Austin this weekend to see some friends and to see the Christmas lights on 37th street (which were not as good as I remembered, but the kids liked them). I desperately wanted to go shopping at The Domain in the afternoon, but it quickly became apparent that was a terrible idea. It was super crowded and the kids were over tired and just weren't going to cooperate. So we took them to a park to play instead, and they had a blast. Being a parent really makes you constantly die to yourself, but it's not always easy. Even though I knew the kids needed a chance to play, I was so selfish and just kept clinging to the hope of shopping. Anyway, we were rewarded with a super fun hour of playing and I'm so glad we went to the park instead of being miserable while trying to shop.

Huston was being such a boy at the park - going down the slide head first, climbing on this difficult set of stairs and doing it over and over until he could do it by himself. It's so fun to watch him get more daring after being overly cautious and afraid for so long.

We let the kids have dinner at Chick Fil A, and Huston and Arden are always beyond adorable in the play area together. It's like that playground really bonds them together and makes them a team. Arden can't get up all the steps to the slide by herself, so Huston goes behind her, pushing her bottom up so she can make it up each step. It is SO. CUTE. I could watch it all day. This particular playground went up really high and we couldn't see the kids at the top of it. They made it all the way up, and Arden started freaking out, crying and screaming, and she wouldn't slide down the slide. I asked Huston if he could help her, and he immediately started talking in this soothing tone to her,

"It's okay baby girl. I'm right here. And I'm never going to leave you. It's okay. I'm just never going to leave you. Come on baby girl." And she slid down the slide with him. Clarke and I just sat there looking at each other while our hearts swelled with joy and pride.

I love that boy.

Christmas so far...

2011-12-13T10:39:00.000-08:00

Arden has soooo many cute Christmas outfits this year, thanks mostly to my mom's clearance finds at Dillard's last year. This lime polka dot confection, rimmed with fur, is one of my very favorites.

I wrapped 24 Christmas books before December started, and the kids have been opening one a night. Clarke's reading them "Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas" in this picture. After they read it, Arden went around saying, "Ooh Laa Laa" for days. I could just eat the kids up in their matching Gingerbread jammies.

We opened our new Little People nativity on December 1st and read the Christmas story. Arden calls Baby Jesus, "MY Baby Jesus." Huston's not that interested in it.

Huston did, however, LOVE helping me decorate the tree this year. He really helped me hang up a lot of the ornaments and was so excited about the whole process.

My friend Ashlee and I organized an advent devotional ornament exchange this year, which I might post about later if I have time. We got 24 girls together and everyone was assigned a day of the devotional - I had creation. Then we each made 24 copies of our ornament and had a little party where we distributed the ornaments so now we have one to go with each day of the devotional.

We have really enjoyed doing our advent devotional every night and hanging the ornament on the tree. The topics are simple, but good, and I hope it's preparing our kid's hearts for Christmas this year.

This Saturday Truitt and Melinda took the kids downtown to see the Christmas tree and lights. They had such a good time and came back talking about everything.

This sweet little outfit is from Melinda. So precious!

And Huston made his Rudolph shirt in school (and then threw a huge fit about wearing it and swore he was never going to wear it again).

I made the kids take another picture before church on Sunday because I thought their outfits were so cute. Huston was not amused.

Happy Late Thanksgiving!

2011-11-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

Look at this enormous, beautiful family.

We had a great Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Huston played with his cousins, Cody and Bradley. They're always so cute together.

The girls played with Grandpa:

Arden played dress up.

We celebrated Kierstyn's birthday.

Lots of fun was had with my brother's dog, Pup.

And we took some family pictures! My brother John's family:

All the cousins together:

My parents with all the grandkids:

My brother Ben, and his sweet girlfriend, Tracy:

And I'm not going to post our family picture, because I'm using it for our Christmas card.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too!

Arden's 2nd Birthday

2011-11-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

Someone special had her second birthday party today! And she had a blast!

I picked a "vintage cowgirl" theme for her party, but I ended up interpreting that pretty loosely. I just threw a burlap table runner on the table, some flowers in old starbucks bottles, mason jars for drinking pink lemonade, some star shaped platters that seemed cowgirl-ish to me (even though they're technically Christmas decor), and some vintage hankies from my mom thrown over jute string over the window and hutch.

My mom made the cake, as usual, and it was beautiful and delicious, as usual.

We had ham and cheese sandwiches on King's Hawaiian rolls, carrots and grapes, chips with homemade salsa, chocolate peanut butter balls, and cake. Simple, but yummy.

Arden wore a little denim mini skirt, cowgirl boots, and a pink t-shirt that said "cowgirl in training" that Mimi and Grandpa bought for her. She looked so sweet!

Clarke made an awesome video montage with pictures of her from throughout the year. It's become a tradition to do one every year for both of their birthdays. Arden went crazy when we first showed it to her, and she was gasping and pointing at all the pictures, saying "That's me!" and calling out the names of the other people in the pictures. She liked it so much that she started bawling when it ended, and we had to show it to her three times. Here she is watching it at her party with Mimi and Aunt Emily and Granny.

She loved when we sang "Happy Birthday" to her, and just squirmed in delight (unlike someone else I know). Here's the sweet face she gave, like "Is this for me?!"

Daddy helped her blow out the candles. Two years old!

She kept holding out her fork so we'd help her put bites on it.

Our wonderful family just spoiled her with presents and she loved it! She loved these two tiny ducks from Grandma (Grandma knows her well).

Sharing her crawling baby doll (from Aunt Emily and Uncle Christopher) with her cousin, Kierstyn.

Darling little table from Granny and Papaw, all set up for tea with new glasses and cups from Mimi and Grandpa.

Birthday girl.

Getting help with her new shopping cart and food from Uncle Ben and his girlfriend, Tracy.

Why is it so hard to get a good family picture? Huston did NOT want to smile.

Happy birthday, sweet Arden. We love you so so much!

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween from Mr. Fredricksen and our little bumblebee!

This year was probably the first really happy, exciting, and "successful" Halloween we've ever had with Huston. We started talking about it weeks and weeks ago, and he would scream and say he didn't want to dress up as anything for Halloween and he wasn't going to do it and on and on. But I wouldn't give up, and kept talking about how fun it would be. Eventually he announced that he was going to be Mr. Fredricksen (from Up! of course) for Halloween. But then he would scream and say he wasn't going to wear a bow tie. Finally he decided he would wear a bow tie and he even came around to suspenders. He was super excited to get his "quad cane" and put tennis balls on the bottom, just like in the movie. And obviously it was no problem convincing him to wear glasses. I shouldn't have pushed my luck, but I did. I chased him around trying to get him to let me spray his hair white, but he wouldn't have it, so I backed off.

Here he is in all his Mr. Fredricksen-ness.

I bought balloons for him to carry, but he didn't want to take them trick or treating. It was funny, because all the people we passed just thought he was dressed as an old man. Of course, Mr. Fredricksen is kind of an obscure character, so if he had carried the balloons it might have confused them more and left them wondering why the old man was carrying balloons.

I was so proud of him for saying trick or treat and thank you to all of the people who gave him candy. He got a huge kick out of ringing the doorbells and commenting on all the Halloween lights and decorations we saw.

We passed one house on our street that puts a strobe light up every year (which we haven't talked about for a year) and he said, "Hey, remember when I was two and they put that light out for Halloween?" Everything that happened a long time ago is "when I was two" and isn't that an amazing memory?

Here's our crazy, adorable bumblebee.

She was pleased as punch every time she got a new piece of candy in her bucket. She said "More! Like it! Candy!" Her little feet was trip-trapping along so quickly when we started trick or treating, but they got slower and slower and by the time we made it around the block to the house right next to ours, she looked up at Daddy and said, "Hold me?"

Enjoying the first piece of Halloween candy from our neighbor - a Reese's peanut butter cup.

How does Mr. Fredricksen eat a Reese's?

They were so tuckered out after trick or treating - Clarke read them one story and was about to read them another, but Arden said, "All done! Night night!" at the same time Huston was saying, "Bedtime!"

Now it's the next morning and they're both in their jammies carrying around their buckets full of candy. It's only 8:20 and Huston is already plotting how late it has to be before he can have a sucker. It might be a long day!

Fall at the Dallas Arboretum

2011-10-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday some friends and I took our kids to the Dallas Arboretum. I've always gone in the spring before, so it was exciting to finally get to go in the fall. They have a gorgeous "Pumpkin Village" set up with lots of different castles and houses made of pumpkins. The weather was beautiful, the company was divine, and the scenery spectacular.

"Look at all these pumpkins!"

Climbing through a narrow door in Rapunzel's house.

All the kiddos (minus sweet Caroline who was in her stroller). Huston was cracking up because Wyatt was throwing his goldfish crackers in the fountain.

Huston loved the grandfather clocks in Cinderella's castle.

Peeking out the window of one of the pumpkin houses.

Cinderella's house.

My pumpkin pie.

Chillin' on some hay bales.

So cute!

Rocking the wild glasses and examining a weird pumpkin.

My Sunshines

2011-10-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

This week:

Arden wore this outfit that was so adorable I wanted to die.

She has been talking up a storm. The other day she said " 'Mon. Follow me! I go find it!" when she was looking for something. I love how she says 'mon for Come on and 'mere for Come here.

There has been some serious sibling fighting this week. These two sure know how to get on each other's nerves in the silliest ways. For example, Arden will say "Boo" and Huston will say "I don't like her to say that!" which causes Arden to say "Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo" and Huston to whine and scream like the world's ending. Or, Huston will say "Cuckoo, cuckoo" and Arden will yell "Like that! Like that!" (which of course means she doesn't like that) causing Huston to say it over and over again and Arden to scream like the world's ending. This week has been a series of incidents just like the ones I just described. It is exhausting.

We've had some backyard playtime in the evenings. Huston and Arden like looking through our fence and making our neighbor's dogs bark. I'm sure they appreciate that.

Some quality Daddy time has been had. Saturday I went shopping with some friends and Daddy took them to the duck pond to feed the ducks grapes and to Chuy's for a special lunch. Huston misheard the word "geese" and called them "weest." He said, "You can just call them 'goose' or 'weest'." Then they got to have dinner at Cracker Barrel with Mimi and Grandpa and Granny and Papaw, too. They had so much fun that Huston was quite disappointed when I returned from shopping, and didn't even want me to come to dinner with them. Daddy read some great stories this week. The kids were waiting for him in the picture below (Arden's hair looks crazy because I just took it out of her pigtails). Two of their favorites were Mouse is Mad and Take Care, Good Knight, both random picks from the library. Arden likes to interrupt to point out random things which she'll say over and over until you acknowledge her, and Huston likes to interrupt to ask a bajillion questions. It can take awhile to make it through a story.

I bribed the kids with chips to get them to kiss each other for this picture.

I sang "You Are My Sunshine" to Huston and told him "You are my sunshine. Please don't take my sunshine away."

He told me, "But I'm just going to have to get my own house when I get big."

I said, "But I don't want you to."

And he responded, "Well, you can come visit me."

I told him, "But I'll miss you."

And he replied, "Well you can just come a lot of days. You can come Friday, Monday, Tuesday...But you might miss me. But that's a lot of days you can come. You can come ANY you want to my house when I get big."

I hope his wife agrees.

Nash Farm

2011-10-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Clarke and I took the kids out to a fun free event in Grapevine today, called Nash Farm. We met some friends out there and enjoyed the nice, fall-like weather. There was a little petting zoo and both Huston and Arden really liked petting all the animals. There were chickens, a bunny, sheep, goats, and a turkey. Huston liked the chickens the best.

There was also a pumpkin patch where the kids could pick out a pumpkin to take home.

They decorated them with washable markers which smeared all over the place as we were carrying them, but it was worth it because they were so cute while they were coloring.

I was so happy to get pictures of them with the pumpkins. Even though Arden's hair was driving me (and her) crazy because it was so windy. Her hair was flying in her face in almost every picture I took. Still, every year I wish I had pictures of them in a pumpkin patch, and this is the first year I've ever taken them. So even if they're not perfect, I'm still so happy about it.

Arden kept sitting in piles of dirt and rubbing her fingers in it. She loves dirt.

Huston and Wyatt had fun chasing each other and throwing hay at each other, until we put a stop to the hay throwing.

We went on a hayride right before we left, which was not that exciting, but was a nice way to end the morning.

I love fall!

What did you learn today?

2011-10-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

I asked Huston what he learned when I picked him up from Wee Care after my Bible study.

He said, "Jesus can make our friends not sick. He has the power to make us better."

I love hearing God's truth coming out of his precious mouth.

Time is of the Essence

2011-10-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

My initial plan for this Saturday was to spend some time cleaning and putting away toys and odds and ends.

Then I saw this quote on a blog this morning:

“Now is the time to get things done…wade in the water, sit in the sun, squish my toes in the mud by the door, explore the world of a boy just four.

Now is the time to study books, flowers, snails, how a cloud looks; to ponder “up,” where God sleeps nights, why mosquitoes take such big bites.

Later there’ll be time to sew and clean, paint the hall that soft new green, to make new drapes, refinish the floor – Later on…when he’s not just four.”

- Irene Foster

And so our morning took a different turn. We made a bigger mess and built some train tracks under the table.

It was so fun to be in his world for a little while.

Little Miss Opinionated

2011-09-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

My little girl is getting so big and opinionated these days. She is such a little princess, and has started saying that she doesn't like things, but she leaves off the "don't." So "I don't like that" is "Like that!" and "I don't want that" is "Want that!" But you can definitely tell by her tone of voice that what she is saying is negative.

I'm really trying to work with her about not whining so much. It's gotten out of control. It's either the terrible twos, or she's just gotten used to getting her way, but she can throw a fit like you wouldn't believe. Lately she has been demanding to sit in the back of the shopping cart, and if I don't oblige for some reason, she kicks and screams and makes such a scene.

If she doesn't want to clean up or do something I've asked, she'll say "Mommy do it," and if I'm trying to help her but she doesn't want my help, she'll say "Arden do it." You never know what it's going to be.

Some Arden-isms:

"flone" - phone

"gobbles" - goggles

"copy cart" - her shopping cart

"panpapes" - pancakes (sometimes she also calls them "canpapes"

"marmles" - marbles

"1, 3, 5" - the way she counts anything and everything. If you ask, "Arden, how many are there?" She'll say, "1, 3, 5!"

One of the most tiring things about her during the day, is that she'll all of a sudden want some random toy and start demanding it, and though I have no idea where it is, we must search the house until we find it. It's usually something weird, like a collection of plastic cards, a set of three small plastic balls, a set of three books that she likes, a certain shape (like a triangle) that's missing from her shapes. She loves things in collections and always knows when one of her items is gone. She'll say, "Missing one! Missing one!"

All these random objects she likes to hold frequently come with us on our shopping trips. She likes some numbers from a Bingo game, and if we're about to leave to run errands, she'll say, "With us! Numbers, with us!" Of course, halfway through shopping she loses interest in them, and then Mommy is responsible for not losing them (because I know she'll be demanding them again before too long).

It is so adorable to watch her play. She loves to push her shopping cart around and loves putting things in her shopping cart or stroller. She can get so involved in her own little world. She loves bath time, loves reading, and loves watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But we discovered she has a terrible fear of "Monsters Inc" and "Up!" because one day when Huston was watching "Monsters Inc" I was holding her and realized she was trembling violently. I immediately turned it off and if she ever wakes up from her nap and Huston's watching one of those movies, she yells, "All done! All done!" When I was talking with her about it, she said, "Scared...Arden scared." So, only Mickey for now.

Arden knows most of her colors now, which were really tripping her up for awhile, but not her letters. She can identify the numbers 3, 4, 5, 0, and a few others. She likes singing her ABC's and "Jesus Loves Me."

She's difficult, precious, opinionated, adorable, trying, and wonderful all at once. And she's almost 2! How did that happen?

A Good Sibling Day

2011-09-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Huston and Arden can act like such siblings sometimes. Shocking, I know. But truly, it amazes me how even at their young ages, they know how to antagonize each other with looks, pokes, and teasing. Huston can elicit screams from Arden with just a face, and Arden can make Huston so mad by taking the toys he considers precious.

Today, however, was an awesome sibling day. We went to the park, and they did everything together. Huston helped Arden up the stairs (holding her hand and kind of yanking her up), they slid down the slides together, played on the swings together, and Huston even helped push Arden on the tire swing.

Then Huston wanted to "catch" Arden coming down the slide, so she wouldn't fall. That's what the following pictures are:

So sweet.

Big Kids

2011-09-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

The day after we got back from Chicago, Huston started preschool. He's repeating the 3 year old class with the same sweet teachers he had last year, only now, instead of being the youngest kid in the class, he's the oldest. And it is awesome. I'm so glad we held him back because he is so much more confident and mature now.

I love how in his "back to school" picture, he's still sporting a big bruise on his forehead and a big bandaid - both from his separate falling-out-of-the-bed incidents. Unfortunate timing.

Can I just say that I'm always slightly jealous of people that post pictures of their kids wearing or holding their backpacks on the first day of school? Huston will not have it. He mostly refuses to even touch his backpack, let alone wear it. At least I have Arden for those kinds of pictures. This afternoon she was wearing her backpack and lunch box, carrying a purse and diaper bag, and also toting her lambie and two blankies. All at the same time.

Have I mentioned that I'm teaching at Huston's preschool this year? I'm one of two teachers in the 2 year old room. So Huston's first day of school was my first day of work. And I'm loving it so far. I love working two days a week instead of five. Love taking him to school with me. Love seeing him at recess on the playground. Love my co workers and the kids and pretty much everything about it. Hooray for less stress, more fun, and more time with my kids!

Don't you love that hilarious face?

In other big kid news, Arden's hair is getting soooooo long and scraggly that I occurred to me she might be able to sport a pony tail. So I attempted it the other day and was so enamored with it that I took a billion pictures of her outside. It just makes her look so big!

Don't you love those little curls and tendrils at the back?

Oh that face. I could eat it up.

Let's sum up this post with the obvious: My Kids Are Cute.

(actually, probably most of my posts could be summed up that way, but I'm cool with that)

Chicago!

2011-09-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

We went to Chicago!

Okay, so it wasn't just the two of us. We took the kiddos over Labor Day weekend to visit our friends the Casburns, and lots of our other friends (Stephen and Katherine, Sol and Carolyn, and Ian and Katherine) met us there for some good, quality hanging out time.

I booked our flights with airline miles and somehow we got first class on the way up there. Imagine us with two young kids, sitting with all these business men, and Huston says to his daddy, "Daddy, this is a big, fat airplane. Kind of like my big, fat poop the other day." Yes. Yes, he did say that.

Our flight left at 7:30 am, which was insanely early. We woke up at 4:30 (and Clarke hadn't gotten to bed until 2:30 because he was at the Baylor vs. TCU game the night before. Sic 'em Bears!). Our traveling went pretty smoothly until we had to wait for an hour for our rental car. The kids did really well, which is all I could really ask.

The kids immediately had a great time playing together. Arden is in love with Josh and Heidi's baby, Elise. Or "Baby 'Lise" as Arden calls her.

These two boys were best buds the entire time. When we were leaving, Logan said, "Thank you for coming to my house," and Huston said, "I like you." I started crying, it was so sweet. (Huston had an enormous bruise on his forehead during our trip, from falling out of his bed the night before we left. The night we got home from our trip, he fell out of his bed AGAIN, cut his forehead on his dresser and had blood all over his face. It was freaky, but he's fine. Anyway, I digress...)

Sol and Carolyn were so sweet to play with the kids. This is them playing Duck, Duck, Goose.

Clarke with Sol, Ian, and Josh. Stephen and Katherine came later that evening.

Here they are. Katherine, looking beautiful. And Stephen... well... Since he insisted on making this face, I'm insisting on putting it on my blog.

We barbecued in the evening and the kids chowed down. After we got them to bed, the adults talked and played two rounds of Fish Bowl. Could anything be more fun than that?

On Sunday, Clarke, Josh, Ian, and Katherine were gone all day at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. No pictures of that because the paparazzi didn't follow them. Heidi and I were alone with the kids, so we relaxed most of the afternoon and took them to the park around 4.

Here's beautiful Heidi with beautiful Baby 'Lise.

Huston and Hailey helping Arden find the stairs on the playground.

In the evening, we had Gino's East pizza for dinner. Seriously sooooo good. If you ever go to Chicago, eat there. You won't regret it.

The next day we took the train into Chicago.

The kids had a blast on the train ride. We met Stephen and Katherine downtown, and altogether there were 10 adults and 7 kids traipsing about the city. We were like our own tour group.

After we met up with Stephen and Katherine, all 17 of us took a water taxi to Navy Pier, where we walked around, had lunch, and saw a very bad, very painful improv act.

The guys.

The girls.

After Navy Pier, we walked and walked and walked, saw Carolyn's gorgeous apartment, got coffee at Intelligentsia, and then walked over to Millennium Park.

This is the Bean.

So fun to take pictures in front of.

I seriously could have stayed there all day.

Then we walked over to Crown Fountain.

It projects cool pictures of people's faces, and occasionally, water comes out of their mouths, making it look like they're spitting. It was cold, so I didn't let the kids get in, but it would have been awesome to splash around in on a warm day.

Clarke and Huston watching the fountain.

After hanging out at the fountain for awhile, it was getting late, so we said our goodbyes, took the train back to Josh and Heidi's, packed up, and got up bright and early the next morning for our flight home.

And we all felt like this.

BUT, it was so worth it. We had an amazing time with everyone and feel so lucky to have such great friends!

Doctor Anecdote

2011-08-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

Huston had his four year check up with the doctor today. When Clarke came home from work, I was trying to get Huston to recount for him how his doctor's visit went. He had to get a bunch of shots, give a urine specimen, and get a finger prick, and it was all quite traumatic. I said, "Tell Daddy about going to the doctor today."

Huston said, "When they shot me, I peed in a cup."

Clarke said, "Well if they had shot me, I probably would have peed in a cup, too."

Huston is 4!

2011-08-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

We had Huston's 4th birthday party this morning, and my sweet boy had a wonderful time, which made it so wonderful for me. Leading up to his party, he kept talking about it and sounding really excited, which was such a change from the previous two years when he really screamed about it and would keep saying he didn't want a party. We did an "Up!" theme, since that was his favorite movie for most of the year.

I bribed him with chocolate dipped pretzel sticks to take his picture under the balloon wreath I made. That wreath took so many balloons, that I've decided it's going to be our new family tradition to put it out for everyone's birthday.

I made these multicolored cupcakes to resemble the balloons in the movie, and my mom made those adorable cloud cookies. I love how they turned out! Of course her cookies were delicious and I thought my cupcakes were rather failed, but at least they made for a cute picture. The little "Up!" house was an online printable that I carefully folded and glued together.

Melinda brought these cute old suitcases for part of the decoration and I printed out the Ellie and Carl plane tickets from online.

For party favors, we had M&M's wrapped up as Mr. Fredricksen's bow ties, and some canteens I got 90% off at Target that I decided to call "Russell's Wilderness Explorer Canteens" since I needed to get rid of them. :)

Huston got some glasses that looked like Mr. Fredricksen's along with some other glasses that seem to have renewed his interest in playing with glasses.

We didn't sing Happy Birthday to him, as he still doesn't like that, but we did get him to pose for a few pictures in front of his cupcakes.

He loved eating his Grandma's cloud cookies. Not so much his mommy's cupcakes. That's okay. I felt the same way.

Goofing around with Grandpa.

Arden had such a blast at the party. I think she thought it was her party. She played with everyone and had a great time. She loved getting Uncle Ben's hat.

I wasn't going to have Huston open his presents at the party, as he usually hates the attention, but he approached the presents on his own and started trying to peek in a bag. I asked if he wanted to open it, and he did! After more people started watching and taking pictures he started to get shy, but we took a few breaks, and Aunt Emily helped him open the rest. He got so many great things that perfectly fit one "hard to buy for" boy!

Sweet Caroline got all tuckered out from the excitement. Love that sweet girl (and her momma!).
Abby was so sweet to come to Huston's party on her actual birthday. Happy birthday, Ab! (You and Marta look so cute!)

My dad just got back from Turkey yesterday. Thanks for coming in spite of your jet lag, Dad. We missed you while you were gone! And I forgot to tell my mom that I really liked her haircut. (I like your haircut, Mom.)
Sweet friends. So thankful for them.

Arden playing with one of Huston's toys. She wore her cupcake shirt that Grandma made in Huston's honor. And she even had little bows that said "Happy Birthday" in them.

Huston and Wyatt pretending to "sleep." Such hilarious little boys!

A family picture (don't remember how I bribed him to take this one, but it for sure involved some sort of food).

Happy Birthday, sweet Huston. Mommy and Daddy love you and we're so proud of our big four year old!

Washing Dishes

2011-08-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

This little boy didn't want to take a nap today. So the second time he came out of his room, asking if nap time was over, I told him he could stay up if he let me take his picture. I'm not above bargaining or bribing for a picture taking opportunity. He said "Ok," which shocked me, because he never lets me take his picture.

I can't believe this little goofball's going to be 4 years old in a couple of days.

He's so handsome.

Then he asked for a snack, and after he picked the M&M's out of his trail mix and then asked for a different snack, he was bored. So I told him he could help me wash dishes. He was pretty happy about that.

He pulled his little chair over to the sink, and asked me to put the water on the "spray." Then he used the measuring cup to rinse off the dishes. When he was done he asked me for some more dishes to wash. I hope he still likes this chore when he's older.

Stuck Inside

2011-08-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

So, it's like really hot outside. So incredibly hot that it makes me want to curl up and die. We've been mostly stuck inside recently except for a few morning excursions, a few swimming days, and a trip to the museum. One day when we were running errands, Huston said his nose was watering. He meant "sweating" but it was so cute.

I've been doing my best to come up with more creative, structured things to keep the kids busy and actually teach them stuff. Considering that I was a teacher, you'd think I'd be better about that, but I've been terrible. I just thought it would naturally happen, but the truth is, I have to be intentional about it. I'm discovering that's true for just about everything with parenting. Parenting on Purpose, Intentional Parenting, Parenting with a Vision. Whatever you call it, it takes effort and planning. And sometimes I'm just lazy. But I'm trying not to be.

Sooooo... we've done a few things lately. Nothing mind blowing. We've played felt board stories to go along with Brown Bear Brown Bear (Arden loves this book). We've been doing a Bible story a week and a letter a week. Last week we read books about Creation and made a little book about the 7 days of creation. We also did the letter A. The kids got on Starfall.com on the computer and Huston clicked around on the different activities. I downloaded a few toddler/preschool apps for my iphone and ipod and let the kids play with them. Arden likes to say "boop, boop" every time she hits a button. Huston likes to select all the wrong answers first and laugh hysterically, then pick the correct one when it's the only choice left.

Our friends, the Casburns, are in town. When they came to our house to play, Arden freaked out over their sweet baby, Elise. She kept saying "baby, baby, hold it, hold it, touch it, touch it." She realllly likes babies.
In pooping news, I think Huston has turned a corner. He pooped on the potty four times this past week and the most recent two episodes were perfect (no mess involved). Hallelujah! I think I prayed more about his pooping than about any other single thing in my life. I cannot tell you what a relief it is that he finally seems to be willing to do this. At some points on this journey, I really thought the day would never come.

Now that I've started rambling, I think I'll continue....

Ever since Kid's Kamp, Huston has been obsessed with watching his Kid's Kamp dvd, which has all of the skits from the week on it. He has been walking around reciting lines from it, many of which are scripture, to my delight. One day we were in a store with other kids around, and he started saying, "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. Honor your mother and your father." It was awesome. And hilarious. At lunch this sunday he picked up and separated the two sides of his hot dog bun, held them up so they looked like the two stone tablets Moses held, and started reciting the 10 commandments again. It was also awesome and hilarious.

Arden is talking a lot more in sentences these days. Her ability to learn new vocabulary words and string them together is just unbelievable. I haven't been able to record the words she knows, because she knows so many. She'll say, "More, more! Water please!" or she'll read a page of Brown Bear Brown Bear by saying "Purple Cat Purple Cat. See. I see Froggie... me." She loves to do everything her big brother does, loves to try to count (she says 1, 3, 5! but can count in order past 5 to about 8 or 9), loves to play in the bathtub, and loves reading stories. Both of the kids continue to love watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and during the intro, Arden will shout all of the characters names as they appear: "Daisy! Donald! Goofy!"

I've been getting a bunch of boxes of the kids' old clothes down and washing and tagging them to sell in the JBF sale this fall. It's making me sneezy (because there's a lot of dust, I guess), weepy (over their tiny, tiny clothes... oh so very weepy), and achy (from hunching over and pinning and folding and typing). The house looks like a children's clothing store exploded in it.

Oh, and the other morning I looked out the window and saw this:

It was pretty freaky. Of course, since we're city folk, I called someone to come and pick up the snake in case it was poisonous. It wasn't. So I guess we payed $160 to relocate it to the lake for nothing. I hope it appreciates our efforts.

Roll up to the Splash Pad 10 am...

2011-07-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone else singing "It's a Dad's Life?" That's a favorite song in our house and I can't help but sing it every time I hear the words "splash pad."

The kids and I tried out a splash pad near our house with some new friends that we met through Kid's Kamp. It was a hit, and even I had fun. It was one of the few days we've been outside that I've actually felt cool. I think we'll definitely be making another visit there before the summer is over.

Poop Issues

2011-07-25T12:08:00.001-07:00

I would apologize for writing so much about poop lately, but it's just such a big issue right now, that I don't think I will.

Huston pooped in the potty (the normal one - not the little potty) for the very first time on Saturday, July 23rd. Write that on your calendars, people. I might just celebrate that day every year. It could be bigger than Halloween. Probably just under Thanksgiving, but for sure bigger than Valentine's Day.

This poop occurred after a week of holding it in. I really don't think he had gone the entire week. Scary, I know. He had multiple incidents of little poopy smears in his underwear that were driving me crazy and on Saturday at a birthday party he let a little poop come out in the kiddie pool. These are the things they don't tell you about when you sign up for motherhood. That one day you will have to scoop your 3 year old out of a pool at a crowded party while he's screaming "Some poop came out! Some poop came out!" and leave your one year old in the hands of someone else while you rush him to your nice hostesses' bathroom and scrub his swimsuit out in her sink and try to rejoin the party as if everything were perfectly fine.

I was so fed up with all the poop that was coming out at inconvenient and inappropriate times and places, that I put Huston on the potty when we got home and told him to sit on it until the poop came out. I may or may not have been mildly upset and yelling in the car about how he was going to poop on the potty, which caused Arden to happily repeat "No, No! Poop! Potty!" and other words that I was saying in all seriousness, but that on her tongue sounded hilarious.

So he sat. And sat and sat. Think two hours or more. He screamed and cried at first, wanted me to join him in the bathroom, said no poop was coming out, etc., etc., etc. I was feeling incredibly defeated. Eventually I just told him I had to take a break and I walked out of the bathroom. Literally 30 seconds later, he yelled, "Mommy, the poop came out!" I didn't know whether or not to believe it, but I ran to the bathroom, and sure enough, there was poop in the potty!

And not just any poop. A big, loooooooong poop. Clarke said it looked like it came out of an NFL linebacker. I guess that's what you get when you hold your poop in for a week. As I was giving Huston his bath that night, he was talking about how great it was that he pooped in the potty.

And then he said, "It kind of looked like a beanstalk."

And it kind of did.

Red River

2011-07-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a weeklong vacation with Clarke's parents and grandparents in Red River, New Mexico. The cool temperatures were so refreshing and we made some great memories! Here's a rundown of our trip:

Saturday (July 9th): We were on the road by 6:30 am. Huston got excited before we even got on the highway, yelling "Look, a new gas station!" as we passed a very familiar, not at all new gas station. About 1.3 minutes into the drive, he said, "This is taking a long time," and I thought, "We have more than 11 hours left. This might have been a bad idea." Huston, however, ended up doing great on the drive. After we got back he told us that he liked the long long long ride to New Mexico, and indeed, he did seem to enjoy just looking out the window. He never really played with any toys, but on the way up he held his new bubble machine (seen below) for almost the whole trip and kept saying, "I can't wait to get to New Mexico so we can play with my bubble machine." Arden was mostly awful on the drive. Nothing kept her entertained for more than 30 seconds, so there was lots of screaming and unhappiness. It was a relief to finally make it, and much joy and giggling ensued when we arrived to find Mimi and Grandpa and Granny and Papaw, and when the bubble machine was finally opened.

Sunday (July 10th): Relaxing day around Red River. Huston immediately became fascinated with the ski lift and he loved watching it go up, watching the wheels move, talking about why it was stopped, talking about what time it turned on and off. He figured out that he could see it perfectly from our bedroom window, and spent the rest of his nap times just staring at it. We kept telling him we were going to go on it and he seemed scared and didn't want to, but his fascination got the best of him and at the end of the day Sunday he finally announced that Bear Bear wanted to go on the ski lift, which was the plan for the following day. We had lunch in Red River at a not-very-good place called the Old Tymer's Cafe, walked around to a few shops, and I went with Clarke to a park nearby to play a few holes of disc golf. Unfortunately, he couldn't play most of the course, or the course at the top of the ski lift, because the mountains were closed due to extreme fire danger. There's a random picture below of Arden with her shoes off. She kept saying "rocks, rocks" and "dirt, dirt" and wanting to play in the random piles of dirt and rocks. She stripped her own shoes off so she could really experience it.

Monday (July 11th): We rode the ski lift in Red River! It was all going so great. Huston was being brave and holding on to Bear Bear. Arden was not squirming too much, which was good because I was terribly afraid of her falling. The weather looked beautiful and we were having a really good time. Then, as we approached the top of the mountain, the freezing rain hit. And I don't mean freezing as in cold (though it was), I mean actual frozen pieces of hail. We were stuck on the lift for a few long minutes, as our children screamed and cried and as we got good and drenched and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a relief to make it to the top, where we got out and had lunch at the restaurant at the top while we semi-dried out. After lunch, Arden pooped and I hadn't brought any diapers (not having anticipated these events), so I cleaned her up and put her pants on with no diaper. I told her, "Arden, don't pee," and she said, "K." The next thing I knew, I was picking her up to go back down the lift, and she had peed all over her pants. It was quite an adventurous morning to say the least. In the evening we took the kids back to the same park where Clarke had played disc golf so they could play on the playground. There were tons of adorable chipmunks running around, which Arden started calling "munk chips."

Tuesday (July 12th): Clarke and Truitt and I went on a white-water rafting excursion. I begged not to go, but Clarke really wanted me to, and I'm glad I did. For some reason, I was really fearful about it, but it turned out to be fun. No pictures of this event yet (though I might buy some).

Wednesday (July 13th): All-family excursion to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and then to have lunch and go shopping in Taos. Arden was not that impressed with the bridge or gorge, but Huston seemed to like the view as he said, "I've never seen this before."

Thursday (July 14th): Date day! Clarke's dad went on another rafting trip, and we left the kids with Melinda and Granny and Papaw and headed off to Angel Fire, where Clarke had discovered there was a disc golf course that was actually open. We rode the ski lift up (so much more enjoyable without worrying about holding onto your small children) and I had fun following Clarke around while he played. It was just gorgeous. It ended up raining on us most of the time, but it wasn't too bad until the end. He had to give it up around hole 16 and we had to take a bus down the mountain because we didn't want to wait for it to stop raining. We had lunch in Taos and a delicious triple chocolate pie for dessert, found a cool toy story called Swirl where we spent a long time, and saw a movie (Horrible Bosses) before we headed back. Such a fun day!

Friday (July 15th): We ended up going back to Angel Fire to play the same disc golf course, this time with Truitt and Melinda tagging along. Huston got a bit exhausted from all the walking, but Arden loved touching and examining every tree and rock and flower we stumbled across. She is such a nature lover! As we were finishing the course, Melinda got a call from Granny saying that we were being kicked out of our condo, even though we had expected to stay until Saturday. Silly me somehow didn't make the right reservations or forgot what day we were supposed to leave or something, so we had to drive back to Red River, pack up the condo in a huge rush, and get out of there. I felt absolutely terrible! We ended up eating lunch around 2:30 and not leaving town until after 3. The kids took a nap, which was nice, but we were trying to make it to Abilene before we stopped and Arden wasn't having it. Just outside of Abilene she screamed so hard and worked herself up into such a fit that she threw up all over herself. We had to stop and clean her up and then we stopped at McDonald's for dinner at 9:30. Praise the Lord that after all that mess, both kids slept the rest of the way home. We didn't end up getting back until 3:30 in the morning!

One of my favorite parts of this trip was the good family time. Huston loved waking up and having breakfast with Granny and Papaw. Arden loved playing with some beads and jars that Melinda brought and reading books with Granny. Clarke and I loved playing "fishbowl" with his parents and grandparents. It was just good, quality, slow time together. When Huston woke up at home the Saturday morning after our trip, he started crying and saying that he wanted to go back to Red River. He keeps talking about going back there someday and playing with "the three remotes - the one from my room, and the one from Mimi's room, and the one downstairs." Apparently our remotes just can't compete with Red River's.

We interrupt this program...

2011-07-08T19:25:00.001-07:00

I was going to do a post with our fourth of July pictures, but didn't have time to go through them, so decided to post this important info instead: Huston pooped on the potty today! And Arden pooped on the party for the first time, too! Yes, I am still trying to get Huston to poop on the potty after all this time, and no, I'm not trying to train Arden. She just wants to be like Huston and seems to just naturally know what to do on the potty. Praise the Lord for that! Last night she peed on it for the first time, and she followed that up with a pee and a poop today. No fuss, no crying, no exhortations or pleading, or threatening, or begging, or encouraging, or screaming. Whereas Huston required all of the aforementioned in addition to fiber gummies, a suppository (yes, indeed) and HOURS and HOURS of sitting on the potty. I was so exhausted by the time he did it that I cried. And let it be known that I would have given in around hour 2 of this fiasco today, if it hadn't been for my mom's help. I'm convinced Huston would have kept holding it in just to spite me, but Grandma was the one with him at the end and coached him to success! We'll see if today's success will be repeated...

Huston had a hilarious conversation with Clarke at bedtime tonight. They were talking about the things God made, and when Clarke said, "And God made you!" Huston replied, "And you! And Mommy and Arden. It must have taken God a long time to make all the people." Then came this random question:

Huston: "How many people are there?"

Clarke: "Well, about 6 billion."

Huston: "Six?"

Clarke: "6 billion."

Huston: "Why are there 6 people?"

Clarke: "6 billion."

Huston: "6 blelillion?"

He is awesome.

Swim Lessons Week 1

2011-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

This brave boy just finished his first week of swim lessons. I could not have hoped for a better reaction from him, and am so proud of the way he's tried his best and battled through his fear this week. Here's a run down of the first four lessons:

Day 1: Huston let me put his swim suit on him and spray him with sunscreen without a fuss. He didntt cry at all, but in the car ride on the way to his lessons I hear him taking big, deep, loud breaths in the backseat, as he tries to calm his nerves. It just made my heart melt hearing him try to be brave. In a completely answered prayer, he got a sweet, young teacher named Miss Madeline who is perfect for him. I dropped him off (you're only allowed to watch the last five minutes of the lesson) and when I came back to observe I could see that she was pouring water over his head while he made a fishy face to practice holding his breath. You could tell he didn't like it, but he wasn't freaking out. It was absolutely amazing to me considering that he cries and screams if a drop of water so much as approaches his face during bath time. Miss Madeline said he was really fearful of the water, but that he was obedient and did everything she asked him to do. Hooray!

Day 2: Huston was calm on the way to his lesson and let me drop him off just fine. When I came back for the last five minutes and watched from around the corner, I could hear him crying "I want my mommy! I want my mommy!" and I thought for sure he was just done for the day and wasn't going to cooperate anymore. But then Miss Madeline held him and talked to him quietly, and the next thing I knew, he was putting his face in the water again, just like she asked. I was so incredibly proud of him for obeying her even though he was scared! I got to see him float on his back while she supported his head and practice his kicking a little, too. When I picked him up, he told me, "I told Miss Madeline I love her and she said she loves me too." I think the process of having to trust her with one of his biggest fears has made him really bond with her. That, and the fact that he just really likes sweet, pretty, young teachers! He wore his goggles during his lessons for the first time, and I was talking to him about how great it was that goggles keep water out of our eyes, and he said, "Yeah...but it still gets in my mouth!" Guess he's still working on holding his breath!

Day 3: Huston threw quite the fit about swimming lessons in the morning (I think he was confused and thought he was going to see Mimi and Grandpa in the morning and not have swim lessons, and when I explained that swim lessons were in the morning and he was going to see Mimi and Grandpa at night, he went to pieces). After he quit screaming, we prayed together and talked about how God wants us to tell him when we're scared and that it's okay to be scared and how God will always take care of us. His lip was quivering when I dropped him off, but he took Miss Madeline's hand and away they went. The last five minutes I saw him make "rocket hands" (hands clasped together over head) and then Miss Madeline would grab his hands while he kept his head in the water and kicked for five seconds. She said she had to hold his head down the first few times to get him to keep it in the water, but then he started doing it by himself. It seemed like such amazing progress for a boy who was so scared of getting even a drop of water on his face!

Day 4: He did great again! This time he made his rocket hands, kept his face in the water and kicked, but Miss Madeline didn't hold on to him at all - he just kicked all by himself. You could tell he was pretty freaked out to not be holding on to anything, because he could hardly remember to kick, but I was still so proud. He also practice floating on his back without Miss Madeline holding his head, and even though he didn't like it, he did it! She said he did really good, and I just couldn't be any prouder of him. It has truly been amazing to see him overcoming his fears and battling through in obedience and determination.

Here's a random picture of little sister, clutching flowers she collected while we waited for Huston to finish his swim lessons the first day.

And here's Huston, sporting the ouchie he got from wearing his swim goggles around the house on Monday, and then falling and having them cut into his skin. Poor guy!

Summer Activities So Far...

2011-06-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick run down of our summer activities thus far. Memorial Day weekend (before school was out for me) we took the kids to the zoo. Huston loved playing with the phones in the MOLA and seemed more interested in the zoo than he ever had been before. Arden's enthusiasm probably helped excite him a little more.

Arden particularly loved the aquariums and did everything she could to climb through the glass so she could get to where the fish and turtles were. You can see her puckering her mouth like a fish in the picture below. That girl really, really, really loves animals.

We got to feed some of the birds, too, which she really liked. Not sure why she's making this face, but I like it.

Here's a few random pictures of a game Clarke invented with the kids called "Arden in a Basket." It consisted of Arden climbing into this basket, Clarke picking her up and carrying her to wherever Huston told him, and Arden screaming when she got put down (unless they put her on the kitchen counter, which she liked). Unfortunately, Mommy put an end to this game because I really liked that basket and was afraid they were going to break it. (Side note: notice the ugly backsplash and countertops in our kitchen? They're now gone! We got new granite counters and a nice, clean white subway tile backsplash in its place. I'll post pictures, if we can ever get around to putting the new hardware on our cabinets).

Here's a random shot of my sticker-loving girl covering her favorite stuffed animal with stickers. It's hard to resist giving her a sheet of stickers when she calls for "Gickers! Gickers!" (Aren't her curls so delicious? I just love running my fingers through them and twirling the curls around).

We have taken the kids swimming once so far at the pool in our neighborhood. They had a really good time, though you can't tell at all from this picture where they look completely bored and annoyed.

One day while we were just hanging out at home, we got out the coloring books and colors and the kids entertained themselves for quite some time. Huston ended up standing the colors on end and pretending they were some kind of rocket ships, while Arden carefully and meticulously colored every little shape on the page. Such a difference between boys and girls!

Last week I got to meet some friends at the children's museum for the first time this whole year, and it was really fun. Arden is a great lover of rubber ducks, and grabbed about 6 of them when she saw them in the water tables outside, causing some other offended children to yell, "Hey, I want some, too." I got her down to about 3, which she happily carried around the rest of the time we were outside.

Huston loved putting this little paper cups inside the tube of air and watching them blow up and fall down. Look at that precious face of his! He's such a little boy now.

I tried to take a cute picture of the two of them together on this ABC bench, but they were not cooperative. Huston did try to kiss Arden for me, but it just ended up looking like he's smelling her armpit or something.

And one final random picture of a very happy girl playing with chalk outside. You should have heard her scream when I made her come back inside. She really knows how to throw a tantrum! But she's worth it.

Summer!

2011-06-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

It is officially summer vacation and I could not be happier! My year teaching has taught me a lot (hopefully I'll have time to do a post or so on it soon), but I am beyond happy to be back home with my kiddos. While they're taking a nap and I'm trying the self-cleaning feature on my oven (which has filled the house with a thick fog of smoke - is that normal?) I thought I'd post these pictures from Huston's Mother's Day tea at his preschool. These are the faces he made instead of singing the songs all the other kids were singing.

He cracked me up the other day as he was running around with no shirt on. He held Bear Bear up to his chest and said, "Look, Mommy, I'm giving Bear Bear milk!" Now he's done this before, but this time he pointed to his bare chest and said, "See, these are my ankles. This one has chocolate milk and this one has milk for Bear Bear." What a silly little man!

Yesterday

2011-05-22T12:39:00.001-07:00

Here are a few random pictures from yesterday. Arden was wearing this dress and had pigtails in her hair. I could just eat her up, she looks so adorable.

Here's the little princess with her big brother. They're such a couple of goof balls.

We went to the park in the afternoon and then out to lunch. Arden looooooves swinging. She'll let us push her for forever, whereas Huston freaked out every time we ever tried to put him in a swing, and still doesn't like to be pushed on them.

Here's Huston moping around when we first got to the park. He just walked around with his head hanging down and wouldn't play with anything. I cannot figure him out sometimes.

Once we found this bridge, he perked up and had a blast bouncing Arden up and down on it while she said "whoa!" over and over.

I haven't posted much about Arden lately, so I'll tack a few things on to the end. Today she has been singing her ABC's, or really EFG's. She says "e, f, g" over and over in a sing songy voice. It's so cute! She has been loving "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" on TV (along with Huston) and when she wants to watch it she'll say "mouse, mouse" and bring me the remote. She dances for the theme song, and at the end there's a song that says "Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog," and she dances and kind of says "dog, dog" while she does. One day Mickey Mouse got turned off and she brought me the remote and said, "oh no, mouse, tv, 'ere go?, mouse, oh no." She is such a talker and has an amazing vocabulary.

She has said a few short sentences recently. We were trying to figure out what she wanted the other day, and Clarke pointed to something and said "That?" and she replied, "Not that." She can string words together like, "Please milk" and loves to say "Bye Bye" when people leave. This week I said, "Do you want to snuggle with mommy?" and she reached up and said " 'nuggle," and then buried her head in my chest and snuggled. It was sooo sweet.

She says "bank" for her blanket, milk, drink, eat, bite, please, thanks, bye bye, ball, dog, duck, mouse, shoe, 'ere go?, no no, tv, up, book, hot, more, night night, diaper, pee pee, poo poo, sleeping, shhh, baby, bug, oh no, kiss, snuggle, see, look, off, toes, eyes, nose, head, boo boo, chip, cookie, and probably a lot I can't think of right now.

We have to keep an eye on Arden to keep her out of trouble - much more than we ever did with Huston. Last week she opened up one of my spices and spilled oregano all over the floor. Yesterday alone she absconded with different illicit objects three times to her favorite hiding places (behind our bed, and inside Huston's closet). Once I discovered her trying to play with a bag of coins, once tucked into Huston's closet with a pen, writing on a tiny scrap of paper, and once Huston found her in his closet with a pair of scissors that she had retrieved from the dining room table after climbing up a chair. Thankfully he alerted us before any harm could be done, but it just about gave me a heart attack.

Lately she's been playing with her baby doll more and more, and she's been bringing diapers from her room to pretend to change it's diaper, and some of her clothes which she lays on top of the baby to pretend to change it's clothes. She even found the aspirator bulb and was trying to clean out the baby's nose.

There's my brain dump for today - now I don't feel so bad about not updating the blog in forever!

My Little Preschooler

2011-04-13T14:31:00.001-07:00

Today was the best day. I took off from work to watch the kids while my mom is on vacation, and for the first time this entire year I got to take Huston to his preschool. Such a simple thing, but I can't tell you how much I looked forward to it and how happy it made me. He really loves his class and his teachers, and it was so sweet to walk him into his room and see him right at home there. When I picked him up, he wanted to show me all around the outside and run around and play and have a snack (aka the rest of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich from lunch) on the hill by his playground. This church is just one of the prettiest places in Fort Worth, I think. It's so beautiful. Arden had a great time running around, too, of course.

It just makes me so blissfully happy to be home with my children. I have missed it so much this year and I am so grateful for special days like today.

Up!

2011-04-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

Huston has been obsessed with the movie Up! for weeks now. I won't tell you how often he watches it, or you might wonder about my parenting. It has been absolutely hilarious to watch him internalize and act out this movie. While other boys his age are pretending to be superheroes or characters from Toy Story or Cars, Huston is pretending to be Mr. Fredricksen, a 70+ year old man. Every stick he finds becomes his "cane" and he comments in a loud voice every time he sees an older person using a cane: "Look! They have a cane like Mr. Fredricksen!"

He has been pretending that his room is his house. He often invites me to come play there, but I always have to knock first. He likes to ignore my first knock, and then make a grumbling sound and answer my second knock just like Mr. Fredrickson does when Russell knocks on his door when the house is floating. Sometimes when I come to his "house" I have to jump into it because Huston informs me that his house is already floating.

One day Melinda told me (and I later experienced for myself) that she heard loud crashes coming from his room and found Huston throwing objects out into the hallway. He explained that he was throwing out the heavy things so that his house would float (just like in the movie, of course).

This weekend I had some clothes hanging up to dry and I kept walking past and finding one shirt on the floor. It is a shirt that ties in the back and has long strings. I finally figured out why it kept falling when I walked past and saw Huston grabbing the strings and saying that he was trying to hold his house down to keep it from floating away. As I walked away, he continued talking to himself, saying, "We can walk your house to the Falls, Bear Bear." (aka Paradise Falls, Mr. Fredricken's destination, for those not quite as familiar with Up!).

His creativity and quirkiness continue to amuse and amaze me. And, for the record, he thinks Toy Story is scary. Go figure.

Huston's Theories

2011-04-03T14:53:00.001-07:00

Last weekend Clarke took Huston to run some errands. Huston kept spotting cars left and right that were like Mimi's car, like Mommy's car, like Aunt Emily's car, and like all the other cars that he knows and has recognized since he was tiny. After spotting a car like Mimi's, he asked, "Why do they just have a car like Mimi's?" Clarke offered some explanation and Huston said, "Or maybe they just think Mimi's cool and want to have a car like hers."

During their errand running they went to O'Reilly's for some new tail lights for Clarke's car. As they pulled up to the store a huge ball of flame erupted from some guy's car as he was working on it in the parking lot. Clarke pulled away to a safe distance until it was under control, and Huston asked, "Why is there fire coming out of that guy's car?" Clarke told him something about how the car was broken, but Huston had his own theories. He said, "Maybe he just likes fire," or, my favorite, "Maybe he just wants to cook some hot dogs."

Happy Cast-Off Day!

2011-03-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

If there is such a thing as a perfect day, today was it. For no particular reason other than lots of great family time, beautiful weather, and our super adorable kids. Clarke took the day off from work and we all went with Huston for his 9:30 appointment to get his cast removed. He had cried every time we mentioned getting his cast off, and just truly seemed to have grown fond of it and did NOT want it taken off. I don't know if he was really worried about it hurting, but all he would say was that he was going to miss it. Thankfully, though, he woke up excited this morning and didn't utter so much as a word of complaint - just bounded up cheerfully to the doctor's office, immediately recognizing which door it was, and going right inside.

I love the picture below of the nurse showing Huston how the saw used to remove the cast actually kind of tickles. Huston giggled about it. He wore those silly pink sunglasses (and another pair of Arden's purple flower shaped sunglasses) all day. They were his "thing" of the day and he threw such a fit when I dared to tell him that they were actually Arden's glasses, not his. He said, "They are my glasses! They're real! They're my glasses, they're not Arden's!"

Sweet, silly boy.

Getting the cast off took no time, and Huston was super brave and awesome the whole time. We had contemplated going to the zoo, but when we saw the spring break traffic, we decided to skip the zoo in favor of the little train that runs outside the zoo. Huston suddenly became not so brave at the site of the train and kept crying and saying he didn't want to go on it. Then he ran away and Clarke had to chase him down and pull him up out of the dirt that he dove into in his attempted escape. Somehow Clarke managed to convince him to get on, and of course Huston immediately loved it. On the ride, we went behind a bunch of buildings - one of which is the kids' pediatrician's office. Huston immediately recognized it, even from our weird perspective and location, and said, "Isn't that the doctor's office?!" It never fails to surprise me how good he is at remembering places and locations. He's like a GPS with photographic memory.

Arden loved it too, despite the serious look on her face in this picture. She kept pointing and saying "Duck! Duck!" every time we passed ducks in the water. It actually was a really fun train ride, and just the right length.

After the train ride, we headed to Gloria's for lunch and ate outside to enjoy the gorgeous day. While we were eating, Huston said, out of the blue, "Isn't that just so great that I got my cast off? Now I have two hands!"

Arden had a blast running around after lunch through the gate that Huston kept opening and closing. He still has such a love for opening gates. And Arden has such a love for running away and trying to escape. Especially if she knows you want her for something, like to put her shoes on or to change her diaper. She gets this impish look of glee in her eyes as she prepares to run away, and never fails to squeal with delight.

I was trying to get Clarke to take a self-portrait of all of us in our Saint Patricks' Day green after lunch, when a nice lady passed and offered to do it for us. I can't believe that it actually didn't turn out too bad.

After nap time, we took the kids out to the park by our house for some more playtime because Huston was anxious to use both arms while playing. Then we came back home and Huston begged to watch "Up!" again. He's obsessed with this movie lately and watches the entire thing pretty much every day. A few weeks ago his favorite movie was Monsters Inc. No telling what it will be next.

And that was pretty much our day. Wonderful and relaxing and fun. I'm so grateful for my family, for spring break, and for a healed arm on my sunglasses-wearing, gate-opening, inimitable boy.

Recently

2011-03-07T16:07:00.000-08:00

This is Arden on Sunday. She sat in her chair forever, surrounded by her books, just talking and reading and pointing at the pictures. I got some sweet video of it, too. She has quite the vocabulary now, with one of her first and favorite and most frequently used words being "up." She also says and signs "please" (leeease) and "thank you" (dant youuuuu). She can say "I love you," dada, doggie, and no no (this one cracks me up because she'll just bust it out randomly like when I try to feed her something she doesn't want she'll all of a sudden look up at me and say "nooo, noooo" and shake her head at me). She loves to say "yuck!" (a favorite learned from her big brother) and can say diaper, poo poo, and burp. All wonderful words, I know. She loves this book that we got for Huston when he was potty training about a little boy named Joshua and his potty. It tells you all the ins and outs of the body and she loves the page with the bottom on it. Last night Clarke read the side about how Joshua's body has many nice and useful parts, a head for thinking, eyes for seeing, etc. The opposite page says "...and a bottom for sitting and in it a little hole for making poo poo." (I know, I know...Clarke hates this book, for the record). Anyway, after he read the first page, Arden just pointed to the next page and said, quite matter-of-factly, "Poo Poo." It cracked us up.

She got her toe nails painted for the first time on Sunday. I was painting mine and she kept signing please the whole time. I was going to put the polish away, but she looked at me urgently, signing please and pointing to her toes. It was so cute! So I held her on my lap and painted her nails and she sat perfectly still. She's such a girly girl!

This is Huston playing outside yesterday. We had chalk out and he told me he was a painter and he was just painting the ground. Clarke and I always talk about how strange it is that Huston doesn't really play with toys. At all. His favorite things to do are to reenact real-life events. The other night he loved when I put on a pair of his glasses and he would pretend to fix them for me when they were broken. A few weeks ago he was playing with Bear Bear and he told me, "Bear Bear just keeps screaming. I've told him, like, five times, but he just keeps doing it on purpose." So, Bear Bear is also a big player on the pretending scene in his little world. Bear Bear had to get x-rays on his arm last week, because he broke his arm, too.

Huston is still such a big questioner. Everything is "why" and he'll ask you things over and over and over. So inquisitive. I can hardly ever get pictures of him because he runs away and gets so mad when I get out the camera. This past week he finally asked us to uncover the knobs on his bed, which had been draped with sheets for a year or so because he was afraid of them. Then he said, "Why didn't you know that I wasn't afraid of them anymore?" Speaking of afraid, he is still petrified of getting his nails clipped, especially his toe nails.

Those are all of my random thoughts for the moment. I just wanted a reason to post these pictures of my cuties.

A fractured wrist

2011-02-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

So Huston got his first cast yesterday (and hopefully, last). I never would have imagined my super-cautious, completely non-daring, timid, sweet boy would have ended up with a cast at the tender age of 3.

A seemingly normal fall off of his tricycle seems to have been the culprit. He was riding it around the house Tuesday night, holding Bear Bear and Blankie while he did it. He pedals reealllyy slowly so, as usual, I thought nothing about it. When he fell over to his left side with the tricycle kind of on top of him, he obviously cried and I kissed him and hugged him, but then he got right back up on the tricycle and kept playing. He played until bedtime, went to sleep, and I didn't have a clue anything was wrong. Wednesday morning he woke up, ate breakfast, and my mom said he was riding his tricycle again that morning. He never said a word about anything hurting.

The first clue I had that something was wrong was a call from his preschool teachers around 12:30 that afternoon. They said he was being even more clingy and reserved than usual, that he seemed really sad, and that he wasn't really having a good day. They also said he had kind of been pinching his arm really hard and leaving marks and when Ms. Kate took him out of the room to ask what was wrong, he burst into tears and said "It hurts!" She tried to figure out why it was hurting, but could only really get that it might have been hurting from pinching it. But then when Ms. Kate said that they noticed he hadn't been using his left arm all day, I got really worried. They told me that they put hand sanitizer in his right hand, and he just let his left arm dangle and kind of looked at it like, "What am I going to do now?" I immediately thought of the tricycle fall, but didn't know if it was possible the two were connected. How could he not have said anything all night and all morning, if there was something wrong?

When my mom picked him up from school shortly after that call, she noticed that he wasn't using his arm either, so I made a doctor's appointment and met them at the doctor's office. When the doctor touched his wrist, Huston winced and jerked and cried in pain. My poor baby! He had x-rays done (which he cried during because he had to move his arm in uncomfortable positions), and the doctor said it looked like a possible fracture, but we'd need to go to Cook's Orthopedic to be sure. They sent Huston home in a splint which he was NOT a fan of. He screamed all the way home about wanting to take it off but had finally calmed down by the time we got home.

Thursday morning we got our appointment set for 1:15 at Cook's. My mom went ahead and took Arden to bible study, and I stayed home with my sweet Huston, just the two of us. We had such a nice morning and afternoon together, playing and talking and having lunch at Chick Fil A at the mall. I was holding his hand as we walked into the mall and he said, "Mommy, I love you." It was like a little mommy and son date.

I was worried that his appointment would take a long time, but they got us right in, confirmed that he had a fractured wrist, and got his cast on him. The doctor said it wasn't a complete break, so he'll only have to wear the cast for three weeks (Praise God!). He said that at Huston's age, the bones are so soft that it's really more like a wrinkle in the bone. Huston cried a little bit from fear that it was going to hurt, and then after the cast was on he cried and said he wanted it off. By evening he had mostly adapted to it and was even making jokes about his arms, saying "Look, Mommy, this arm's up and this arm's down."

He went back to preschool today and had a great time. I was sooo grateful. He has been cracking me up with his adaptations, learning how to use his chin to hold and open things. The funniest thing, though, has been the way he's already taking advantage of us because he knows we feel sorry for him. He is forever trying to get us to put his glass of milk back in the refrigerator for him when he's done, and we're always telling him to go do it by himself. I hadn't mentioned a thing about resting his arm or being careful with it, but Wednesday night when he had the splint on, he walked all the way into Arden's room where I was (twice as far as it was to the refrigerator) and said, "Mommy, would you please put my milk away for me. I just need to rest my arms." Of course I did it.

Snow is Overrated

2011-02-04T08:08:00.001-08:00

Despite our not-so-great experience playing in the snow earlier in the week, the freshly fallen, fluffy snow tempted us outside again this morning. Although my instinct is always to stay inside where it's warm and just enjoy the view, I also think I might be denying my kids an essential part of their childhood if I don't take them outside to play in the snow, especially since it's so rare. Well, from now on, I won't feel bad about denying. Although Arden loved seeing the snow while we were holding her, she promptly fell as soon as we set her down and got all wet again. And why are there no pictures of Huston, you ask? Could it be because he started screaming and crying when we said we were going to play in the snow, tried to rip off his jacket, and refused to stand up when I set him down outside, which caused him to fall forward and get all wet and scream some more. It was awesome and soooo worth all of the wet clothes and towels and changing clothes and definitely, most definitely, worth the screaming. We're thinking about doing it all over again after lunch.

Why, yes, those are socks on my daughter's hands. Why, no, we don't have any gloves or mittens for our children.

After the great snow debacle, we came inside and Arden colored her first picture. She's been really into pretending that she's writing with pens lately, and she enjoyed taking the colors out of the box. Very little actual coloring took place, but she had fun anyway.

Here's Huston earlier this week, enjoying the view of the snow from the window.

Snow Day!

2011-02-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

Lots of hassle dressing the kids in their coats and shoes for about 45 seconds of fun and a few pictures, followed by tears because it was just too stinking cold outside. At least we're having lots of warm and cozy fun inside on this snowy day!

Big Boy on a Red Tricycle

2011-01-18T15:05:00.000-08:00

Who is this big grown up boy on a tricycle? I can't believe it's my little Huston - how did he get so big? He has just been delighting my heart so much the past few weeks - I feel like I've really been enjoying him as much as I can and trying to treasure every word from his mouth and every hug and every silly little thing he's doing. Here, in no particular order, are some of the wonderful things I'm loving right now:

- His prayers. He's offering them up more freely lately and last night at dinner prayed: "Thank you God for this food and for this day and for Arden and Mommy and Daddy and for Mimi and Mimi's Grandpa and for Grandma and Grandma's Grandpa. Amen." Then we started eating and he said "Oh, Mommy, I just forgot to thank God for the glasses," so we closed our eyes and he prayed, "Thank you God for the glasses and the pink glasses and the sunglasses. Amen."

- His songs. I love when he comes home singing songs from preschool. Lately he's been singing something about graham crackers, something about "things go up, things go down, and the world goes around and around," and "Skinamarinkydinkydink."

- Poopy jokes. Everything is funnier with the word "poop". Yesterday he was singing "Feliz Poopy-dad," "I wanna wish you a poopy Christmas," and "Skinnamarinkydinkydink, Skinnamarinkydoo, I poop you."

- Dancing in the bedroom when Daddy comes home from work. This is a tradition that we seem to go through phases of doing and not doing, but lately we've been doing it daily. Huston often requests "Hey Mambo" aka Mambo Italiano (Rosemary Clooney) and I love when he sings "mixed up siciliano." He's got some awesome dance moves.

- Running around with no pants on. Huston's still using a pull-up to do his business and it's working quite well. When he needs to poop he'll just ask for a pull-up and say, "I'd like a pull-up to poop but no pants on." And then he'll run around with no pants on until he's done.

- His love for haircuts. He always gets so excited when it's time to go get a haircut with Daddy. He really loves the whole experience.

- His memory - which astounds me. We were at the library and he pointed to the walls and said excitedly, "Look, Mommy! They're like your school!" and sure enough the walls had the same gray and green square tiles that my school does. He hasn't been inside my school in months. He's always remembering the roads we take to places, like "If we just keep going straight is my school down there," and "Is this the way to Granny and Papaw's house?" At the grocery store the other day he picked up the frozen Eggo waffles I'd thrown in the basket and said, "Mommy, these purple words say 'granola bar'." He was pointing to where it said "Nutri-grain" because he recognized it from his granola bar boxes. He can also "read" the words Baylor and TCU and all kinds of store names like Kroger and Walgreens and Tom Thumb, and the obvious ones, like Chick-fil-A and McDonalds.

- His vocabulary. I love how he tries out new words. At Kroger the other day, I gave the pharmacy the wrong insurance card and on the way out he said, "Why did you just hand those people a mistake?"

- Pronunciation. He says "oose" instead of "use" and "oosually" instead of "usually." I love it.

Sweet, Sweet Huston. I treasure you and every single thing about you.

love,

Mommy

Peek-a-boo

2011-01-15T19:53:00.001-08:00

I took these pictures of Arden this afternoon at the birthday party of a sweet friend. Just had to post them because she's looking so grown-up with her crooked pigtails and little boots (that she kept tripping over). She's been cracking me up with her favorite games lately, which include running away anytime she thinks you want her to come, especially if you're in the process of trying to change her clothes. She also likes to pretend to hand you something and then snatch it away and smile and laugh like she's so hilarious. She does this to Huston, too, when she has a toy that he wants. She'll hold it out like she's going to be so sweet and share, and then snatch it back before he can get it. Such a little sister!

My kiddos

2011-01-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

I've done a terrible job this year about documenting the little phases and quirks my sweet kids are going through. This is not good, since I have a terrible memory and am sure to forget all of their stages unless they're written down. Here's a quick recap of everything I can remember at this early hour before I head off to work:

Huston has been in a "why?" phase for months now. He can ask a string of questions like you would not believe. I keep thinking that I need to record some of them, but they're so frequent and so rapid-fire that I never can seem to remember exactly how they go. However, the other day on the way home from the store, it went something like this: "Hey. Hey. Hey, mommy. Hey, mommy, why did those people take their blue lights down? Why is Christmas over? When is it going to be Christmas again? When is it going to be Halloween? Why do we just wear costumes for Halloween? Hey, mommy, are we going to take our Christmas tree down?"

That doesn't even do it justice, but you get the idea.

Huston watches his favorite episode of Thomas (Creaky Cranky) almost daily and can recite it from memory. You'll hear him muttering around the house as he acts out the episode little snippets of the dialogue. He went back to preschool yesterday for the first time after Christmas break and came home singing "skid-a-ma-rink-a-doooo.... I loooove you." So adorable! I love when he comes home singing new songs.

He loves Arden and always really likes when she's around - he doesn't like me to put her to sleep for naps or bedtime, and is always anxious for her to wake up. When they run around and squeal and laugh together, nothing makes my heart happier. But he can also be such a brother to her. It seems like everyday there is some set of toys he has decided to protect for the day, that he doesn't want her anywhere near. And of course those are the toys that Arden will most want to have for the day. How do they start this sibling fighting so young? Arden kicks up the screaming if she thinks you're looking and that she might get her way. She knows how to use the drama to her advantage. I have to keep an eye on her because something I'll think Huston's done something to her, but she's really just screaming because she wants something.

His vocabulary continues to impress us, and I love how he'll say the same things back to us that we say to him.

Arden is a hilarious little ball of energy. She loves accessories, as I think I mentioned in the last post, and will wear necklaces all day long. She also likes putting her little backpack on her back and walking around the house with that on while carrying her lunch box. She loves climbing up and sitting in chairs that are her size, gets thrilled when she gets to bounce around and fall down on the couch or on our bed, and still loves stuffed animals.

Although she's not really talking yet, she understands almost everything and certainly has her own way of communicating. Over the Christmas break, she learned how to put her hands up (like the picture below) to ask "Where'd it go?" She loves to drop things and then whip those hands into position and look at you. Sometimes she says something like "d' go?" when she does this. She says "woof woof" when you ask her what a dog says, and can smack her lips together when you ask her what a fish says. I'm almost positive she says "liiiiiii" for light and some version of the word diaper. And "da da" is a frequent word with her, too. The other day we were outside and some birds flew across the sky and she yelled "buh - deeeeeeee." But she never would repeat it. She been like that for months now - we'll be sure that she's said a word so clearly, but she never will repeat it. She signs "please," waves bye-bye when she feels like it, and has an adorable exaggerated head nod for "yes."

*Edited to add* How could I forget to write that one of Arden's favorite things to do is read books? Every time she sees a book, she brings it right up to you, ready to sit in your lap and be read to. She never seems to tire of reading stories. Lately she has started to look through the books on her own and babble through them like she's reading them to herself. It's so adorable!

And now, I must leave these crazy, sweet kids sleeping in their beds, while I go to work. *sigh*

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

Huston and Arden had a great Christmas and we all had fun celebrating Christ's birth with our families. One of my favorite parts of this holiday season was hearing Huston sing the songs he learned in preschool around the house. He sang "Children Go Where I Send Thee" almost constantly the past few weeks (along with Rudolph, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, and a few others), and it was so cute. Of course, when it came time for his little Christmas program, he clammed up and refused to sing a word. He just covered his eyes and made weird faces the whole time. Typical Huston.

Huston got a tricycle on Christmas morning, which intrigued him for awhile (and he even got on it and rode it a little bit), but then he insisted we keep it out in the garage. I brought it back in the house against his wishes and he hasn't played with it much since then. He is so funny about gifts and toys. He did better about opening his presents this year, but at my parents' house I had to bribe him with a cookie to open his last three gifts. He just doesn't care that much about presents. His obsession for at least the last two months has been eyeglasses, and he did get some of those for Christmas. He has quite a collection and just likes to wear them and play with them. Every time his Mimi comes over he collects all of her reading glasses from her purse and won't let them out of his sweaty little hands until it's time for her to leave.

Arden loved opening her gifts this year! She got a darling zebra raincoat from her Mimi and Grandpa, and some dolls and a baby stroller, among other things. She is such a girlie girl and loves to wear accessories of all kinds. Every time she sees a necklace it has to go around her neck, and she loves to walk around the house with daddy's belt wrapped around her waist twice and buckled, or with a hat on her head. Such a contrast to Huston, who, within the span of just a few hours on Christmas Eve, refused to wear the button down shirt I wanted him to wear to church, his jacket, and then the pajamas I bought him that matched Arden's. I gave in to him on all three because he can put up quite the protest when it comes to clothes. At least I have Arden to pretty up!

We took the kids to the Christmas Eve service at our church and I loved having them with us in the sanctuary as we sang Christmas carols. Christmas day was spent at my parents' house and the kids had fun running around and playing with their cousins, eating too many sweets, and opening a mountain of gifts. Fun times all around!

Away in a Manger

2010-12-09T04:35:00.001-08:00

I was cleaning the house when I got home from school this week, and I really wanted to take this ENORMOUS box out to the trash in the garage, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet. My plans changed, however, when Huston woke up from his nap and almost immediately wrapped Bear Bear up in Blankie (swaddled him, if you will) and put him in the box and said, "Look, Mommy! Bear Bear's sleeping in a manger, just like Baby Jesus!" The rest of the afternoon and this week, he has continued to pretend that the box is a manger, and will say things like, "Do you want to come see Bear Bear sleeping in a manger?" and "Bear Bear's just a tiny baby." Yesterday Bear Bear was crying, and Huston sang him "Away in a Manger" to get him back to sleep.

So if you come to my house and trip over this giant box when you walk in the door, please forgive me. Now, at least, you'll know why it's there.

ardenthanks

2010-12-03T04:48:00.001-08:00

Shutterfly is doing another great promotion for bloggers. Click here to learn more. I love using Shutterfly for all of my invitations and thank you cards. Here's the thank you card I made for Arden's first birthday:

Hello There Thank You 3x5 folded card

Create custom thank you cards at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Arden's Thank You

2010-12-03T04:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, even though I haven't even posted about Arden's birthday part yet, not to mention Halloween or Thanksgiving or anything else that's been happening lately, I have to post this link to a thank you card I made for Arden's birthday. Shutterfly is doing another great promotion for bloggers where you can receive a $25 gift certificate for posting a link to your card project. So here it is!

Shutterfly Cards!

2010-11-09T17:56:00.001-08:00

We interrupt this program...

for a friendly little promotion! I read on my friend Ashlee's blog (thanks Ashlee!) about how Shutterfly is giving bloggers 50 free Christmas cards. Go here to find out more! It's an awesome deal if you're a blogger, and was too good for me to pass up, considering how much I love Shutterfly! I have made countless photo books through their site, including one a year each for Huston and Arden to keep track of all of their milestones. Since Arden's birthday is coming up next week, I need to start working on her one-year book soon! I've also made tons of gifts through their site, including wall calendars with pictures of the kids for the grandparents and great-grandparents and personalized stationary cards for friends and family.

They have a great selection of Christmas cards - I always spend hours pouring over all the choices and almost as much time trying to pick out the perfect pictures to send to our family and friends. I almost always choose a design that allows me to use more than one picture, because I can never narrow it down to just one!

Here's a sweet one that let's you use lots of pictures. You gotta love a card that let's you include a monogram, too!

Here's another one that I like that let's you highlight your kiddos:

I also like these for something funky and fun or these for something more traditional and classic or these for something a little vintage-y.

Go here to check out Shutterfly's selection of Christmas and holiday cards:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

Go here to check out their wall calendars:

http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/wall-calendars

and go here to check out some cool options for canvas art:

http://www.shutterfly.com/home-decor/canvas-wall-art

So Big!

2010-10-28T04:27:00.000-07:00

Arden is a little over 11 months now. That big first birthday is coming up fast (and Mommy is not ready for it - emotionally or actually). Here's a quick update on her sweet personality.

Arden is walking around like an adorable little toddler now. She had a slower transition to walking than Huston did, taking her first steps on August 26th, then having a big walking breakthrough on grandparent's day (September 12th), then continuing to do a mix of walking and crawling until about three weeks ago when she decided that she preferred walking and would purposefully get back up into a walking position anytime she fell down, instead of continuing her journey by crawling, which is what she did before. So now she is toddling all over the place, and I just can't get enough of her little tiny self step, step, stepping all over the house.

She loves stuffed animals right now, especially Huston's giant dog that Mimi got him from Ikea. It is enormous compared to her, but she gets so happy when she sees it and will carry it all over the house and talk to it and lie down on it. She snuggles and squeals with almost any stuffed animal you hand her, but that's her favorite by far.

She is soooo much more verbal than Huston was at this stage, jabbering to herself all the time, pointing at things and making sounds, and saying things that sound like "Hi," when she waves. She still loves dogs (and most animals) and makes the most adorable "woofing" sound. She raises her hands over her head when you ask, "How big is Arden?" and she LOVES reading books. Just in the past two weeks or so this has become an obsession with her. Her favorite is Pat the Bunny, and she does everything the book says. She pats the bunny, feels daddy's scratchy face, smells the flowers, looks in the mirror - it is so cute!

She loves pointing to things and making little noises to indicate her wants. She likes all kinds of drinks and always wants to taste what you have in your glass. She thinks whatever Huston is playing with must be cool, and always tries to play with his toys. She is determined and can really show her temper when she doesn't get her way, but is overall pretty laid back and calm. She likes playing with car keys, splashing in the bathtub, running around outside, swinging at the park, and just exploring the world.

She's my little sweetie pie.

Potties and other Huston things

2010-10-20T04:35:00.001-07:00

I have no time for cleverly composed posts these days, so this will just be a brain dump of Huston-related things. Enjoy!

We discovered black mold under our kitchen sink this weekend. It seems to have been due to a leak in our sink, so we headed to Lowe's after church on Sunday to buy a new sink. Huston was delighted that he got to play with the "potties" at Lowe's, which is one of his favorite things to do at this playground of a store. They have six potties in a row and he just walks around pretending to flush them and saying, "Huston just made pee pee in the potty." Then he'll walk around to the sink that's on display and pretend to wash his hands.

Huston has also been lately obsessed with a flashing strobe light down our street that someone has out as a part of their Halloween decorations. He can't stop talking about it, and makes his hand open and close and says, "Huston has a flashing light. For it was daytime you just turn your flashing light off for it won't waste electricity. Your flashing light is red." He was talking like this on our way home from Clarke's parents's house Sunday night. Clarke asked, "Did you buy your flashing light at Lowe's?" (because Huston had previously said that) and Huston said seamlessly, "Oh no. You just bought it at Tops." (get it? Lows? Tops? He created his own store with the opposite name.)

I thought that was pretty creative. Then yesterday he was walking around the house with a clothespin stuck to his shirt (because it looked cool), and I said "I like your clothespin." He replied, "Oh, it's an open pin." (get it? close? open?) I don't know where he's coming up with all these opposites, but I like it.

I also love how he says the following things:

starter up: meaning to start up, as in, "I have to starter up the car."

the earlier: meaning anything in the past, from earlier the same day to a few days ago to a year ago, as in, "The earlier you went to Mimi's house."

picked: meaning picked up, as in, "I just picked Bear Bear," or "Cranky picked Thomas," (from a favorite Thomas episode where Cranky the Crane picks Thomas up off the tracks).

drop down: meaning dropped off, as in, "Grandma just dropped me down at preschool."

Swinging - A Video Debut!

2010-10-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

We went to the park by our house late this afternoon to enjoy the beautiful fall weather. Here are some videos of the swinging action that went down. (In case you're wondering after viewing the first video, Huston did not, in fact, poop in his underwear at the park. Thankfully.)

Blossoming

2010-10-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here's my hilarious boy playing in a big tub of dirt, enjoying this fall weather that's letting him play outside more often. Huston has truly been blossoming lately and becoming more outgoing and less afraid. I think a big part of that is due to preschool, which he has been loving more than I could have ever dreamed. Tonight, while Clarke and I were at a new Bible study, we dropped him off at a house with two baby sitters and the other kids from the small group. The old Huston would never have allowed such a thing, but the new Huston didn't even blink. I mean, not even a whimper when I left him there. And before we left the house to go, he was saying "You're ready to go to that house now. You're ready to go play with the boys and girls." I could hardly believe it. When we picked him up, he was happy as a lark, talking about how they had a playground with rocks in it and how his "teachers" told him it was time to go upstairs (he seems to see everything through his school vocabulary). He just seems so grown up.

Clarke and I went through the drive through to pick up dinner after Bible study, and while Clarke was ordering, Huston rolled down his window (which he can reach with his foot) and started ordering out of it, saying, "Umm... you just want a chicken plate..." It was pretty hilarious.

One final Huston moment from today. Clarke came home and was asking Huston how his day was, and Huston was being stubborn and not responding. Clarke threatened to take away the ipod that he had let him hold if Huston couldn't be polite and respond to him, and Huston starts holding back sobs and in a weepy, quavering voice, says, "You just had a great day!"

He's a little character.

The Dress my Mommy Made...

2010-10-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

Since who knows when I'll sew again, I made Clarke take a picture of me with Arden in this little dress I made for her. I don't even really feel like I can say I made it, since I needed step by step help from my mom, but I did do all the actual sewing, so I guess it's okay.

Isn't this just the cutest picture of Clarke with Arden?

We were on our way to our friends' Zeb and Ally's house to hang out when we took these pictures. Huston got to hang out with all of our friends' kids, and had the best time following Enoch around the house. He thinks anything that Enoch does is awesome, and at one point during the party Huston came up to me and said, "Enoch said 'I'm Spiderman!', I'm going to be Spiderman, too!" He then started singing, very seriously, "The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout...."

Sound Theology

2010-09-28T04:36:00.000-07:00

Before I forget this hilarious tidbit, I better write it down. This past week Huston has started talking more about Jesus being in his heart. One night at bed he said, "Bear Bear has Jesus in his heart," and I said, "Oh really? Do you know that you can ask Jesus into your heart and he'll come in and stay there forever?" Huston then squinched his eyes shut and said, "Please, Jesus, will you come into my heart?" This was immediately followed, however, by, "No, Jesus! No! You don't want Jesus in your heart." I didn't push him because it was obvious he was looking to pick a fight.

The next day we were outside playing and he just randomly started running around saying, "No, Jesus! Go away! You don't want Jesus in your heart!" Again, since he was just trying to get a reaction out of me, I just ignored him.

But later that same day we came into the house and he had Bear Bear and Blankie on the couch, and he said, "Bear Bear has Jesus in his heart." We talked about it a little bit and then he said,

"For Bear Bear take a bath, Jesus just got all wet! For Jesus come out of his heart he got all wet!"

Now that is some sound theology.

Preschool Man

2010-09-09T04:45:00.001-07:00

Here's my big man eating breakfast before his first day of preschool yesterday (September 8th). My mom took him to school and they managed to get out of the car and into the school during a lull in the torrential downpour that lasted almost all morning. Huston didn't seem all that nervous leading up to school starting. I expected him to be saying "No, Mommy, Huston doesn't want to go to preschool," but every time we talked about it, he would just say, "You're going to preschool. Grandma's going to take you." He didn't cry when Grandma dropped him off. She said he just walked in nervously, kind of chewing his shirt. But when she picked him up the teachers did suggest that he bring something special next time because he was kind of whimpering for awhile. So Bear Bear might get to go to school next week.

Here he is standing in front of the door to Saint Stephen's. I loved the little snippets I got from him about school. He has a cubby hole with his name on it. I asked him what he put in his cubby hole and he said, "Oh, your backpack." (Almost every sentences starts with "oh" these days). He said, "Did they turn the lights off," and indeed they did turn the lights off for nap time and my mom said Huston was still sleeping when she came to pick him up (he was one of three kids still dead asleep on the floor while they other kids played). Never would I have expected that!

He came home with a heart sticker on his hand and based on the little "recipe" cooking activity he brought home, I deduced that they read The Kissing Hand, a sweet story about starting school. The little heart sticker is supposed to represent a mom's kiss that stays with you all day at school. He got really upset when his heart sticker fell off at home, and this from a kid that never wants to wear stickers for more than 3 seconds.

He told me they had circle time and he also told us "The music didn't work. Did it go 'mmmmmmmm'," so there must have been some kind of technological mishap that made an impression on him. And then late last night he suddenly bust out with, "At your preschool did they sing 'Days of the Week, Days of the Week.'" I found the Dr. Jean song on my ipod that I think they might have sung and he got really happy listening to it.

So, a fortuitous start to the school year. I hope he loves school and I can't wait to go up there and meet his teachers and see his little class.

Random Updates

2010-09-05T19:15:00.001-07:00

I just had to record, so I don't forget, that Arden waved for the first time yesterday, September 4th. Clarke and I took the kids to the park because the weather was so nice in the morning and Arden saw a lady walking three dogs and she got so excited. (Her first real interaction with a dog was at Huston's birthday party with my brother's dog, Pup. She loved Pup and followed her around making happy sounds during the whole party). Anyway, she stretched out her little hand and started waving it up and down while she kicked her legs and strained to go see the little doggies. The rest of the day she would occasionally move her hand up and down or open and close it while she watched it, as if she was thinking, "Oh, so that's how you do it."

Although she's not walking yet, she took her first steps about a week ago, on August 26th. It is so fun to set her a few feet away from me and let her toddle over. She looks just like Frankenstein with her arms outstretched and her lurching, lunging motions. She can easily take 5 or 6 steps in a row, but usually lunges towards you at the end and still doesn't really try to walk by herself.

Huston and Arden both had check ups last week (Arden's 9 month and Huston's 3 year). Arden is now 29 inches tall, which is 90th percentile, and 18 pounds, 12 ounces, which is 50th percentile. Huston is 38 and a half inches tall, which is in the 75th percentile, and he weighed 31 pounds, which I think is 50th percentile.

Okay, that's all the updates for now.

THREE!

2010-08-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

Happy 3rd Birthday, my sweet boy! I can't believe you're already three! You're an adorable, hilarious mess of a kid. You love windshield wipers and garage doors and are never happier than when you're allowed to push all of the buttons in a car or open and close a garage door. Today at your party you got to play with lots of windshield wipers and you told me, "Did you get to do Grandpa's wipers and Mimi's wipers and Uncle Jay's wipers!" You were not interested in opening your presents and, in fact, only opened them all because you were told you could play with windshield wipers after you opened gifts. You're so silly! Everything in the world is either a garage door or a windshield wiper to you. You use combs and straws from Chick-Fil-A as wipers, and the little "roll-top-esque" door on our hutch as a garage door.

You are afraid of the "knobs" on the end of your bed and always have to be reassured at night that they won't do anything to you. We cover all four of the posts up with blankets and you say, "The knobs don't have faces. The knobs can't talk to you. Bear Bear will help you. Jesus will not let the knobs talk to you." You sleep with Bear Bear, Blankie, and three real windshield wipers (two front and one back) every night.

Your favorite book of late is "Blue Goes to School" (as in Blue's Clues). You'll be starting preschool in two weeks and Mimi bought it for you to help you get ready. You have the whole thing memorized and can recite it.

You love the video "It's a Dad's Life" on You Tube and always ask to watch it on my ipod. You can sing almost the whole thing from memory and Daddy just told me today that when he gets you down out of your car seat you start to sing the part that says "my whole entourage hops out the minivan." You are fascinated by minivans and think that the dryer lint trap is just like a minivan door. I think you wish we had one so you could push the button to open and close the door. You love the way it slides closed.

You are completely dependent upon your little white chair that you push around the house that allows you to reach all the switches for the lights and the fans. The other day you turned our thermostat up into the 80's and almost sweat Grandma out of the house while she was watching you. You also knocked over our new computer while you were trying to "plug it in" as you said. You're a little more mischievous lately.

Here's some pictures from your party today. Happy birthday, Huston!

You had a great time at your party and loved the train cake Grandma made for you. You only freaked out when we sang the first few words of "happy birthday" and then you started screaming and crying so we had to stop. Still hate that song, I guess. Maybe next year...

You parked yourself by the Chick-Fil-A nugget tray and helped yourself to them. You had fun seeing all of our sweet friends and family and playing with everyone.

Comic Relief

2010-08-03T12:54:00.001-07:00

Some days are just harder than others. On those days when I want to simultaneously pull my hair out and hide under the bed, I am grateful for the little things that make me laugh. These adorable pictures of Huston and Arden playing the piano provided me with just such relief the day they were taken (this past week). They are both without clothes in these pictures because during the course of the day, Huston had peed in his underwear while sitting in time out for pushing Arden and taken his pullup off during nap time and peed on the floor. Arden, in turn, had peed and pooped all over herself and the floor while sitting in her high chair because (it turns out) her diaper wasn't fastened well and had come undone. Huston clued me into this catastrophe by yelling, "Mommy! Is there water on the floor!" Unfortunately, it was not water.

I had about had it with poop and pee by the time the day was over.

The pictures below were taken Sunday, after our sweet friends, the Browns, came over to spend the afternoon with us. During the course of playing with Ezra, Enoch, and Marta in his room, Huston pooped (and peed) in his underwear twice. He broke the lightbulb in our new lamp after having been told two times not to touch it. And he took his pullup off again during nap time and peed on the floor again.

Thank goodness these kids are hilarious and I love them so much, or some days I really might buy a one way ticket to a deserted tropical island.

Arden at 8 months

2010-07-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

My sweet little Arden is 8 months old now. Here's what she's been up to lately:

Her two favorite toys in the house are this piano that Huston got from his Great-Granny and Papaw and the "Elmo's Restaurant" play kitchen that Huston got for Christmas one year. The piano is a recent discovery, and she gets practically giddy with excitement when she crawls over and starts banging the keys and singing along with her high-pitched squeals. Other than these two things, no other toy can really hold her interest for long. She'd much rather be crawling around, pulling up on things, looking for scraps of paper or crumbs on the floor to eat, trying to crawl into toilets or rummage through garbage cans, or otherwise get into mischief. She is a little explorer.

Arden is eating Gerber puffs and cheerios, along with baby food. She gets pretty mad when I feed her baby food, though, and tries to grab the spoon out of my hand with every bite I give her. This makes for some incredibly messy meal times. It's obvious she'd much rather be feeding herself, but so far she hasn't liked the bananas and avocados I've offered her. I'll have to get more creative with the food choices soon. She started formula at her 11 o'clock feeding (in preparation for me returning to teaching this fall - a post for another day) and has taken to it beautifully. I am so grateful that she has not refused the bottle or formula.

She continues to think her big brother is awesome, and no one can amuse her more than he can. By far the sweetest sound I have ever heard is the two of them playing in the back seat of the car. Huston will do something silly and she will crack up with the most adorable laugh, and then Huston will laugh and do it again. It is precious and wonderful.

Arden loves splashing in the bathtub with Huston, playing in Huston's room, roaming around and exploring, playing peek-a-boo, snuggling stuffed animals (like her stuffed lamb and the stuffed monkeys and big dog in Huston's room), and grabbing her daddy's nose so he'll make a funny sound. She hates having scraps of paper and other forbidden things taken away from her, and will sometimes throw herself backwards onto the floor with her maddest scream when you take some such thing away from her. She uses her pacifier at naptime and bedtime, but doesn't love it like Huston loved his. She still only has her two lower front teeth and she still has the beginnings of some curls in her hair. In general she is an incredibly easy going baby and not hard to keep happy - just hard to keep out of trouble. :)

Fourth of July, Part 2

2010-07-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

I never thought it would take this long to complete the second part of this post! Our computer got infected with a nasty virus and we had to get a new one. I'm still learning my way around this new mac, and I'm missing my windows live writer. I can't do photo albums anymore, which makes it kind of tedious to post a lot of pictures. So here are just a few from our Fourth of July.

We ate dinner at Palio's in Mansfield, followed by ice cream at Braum's, followed by some fireworks viewed from a random field (with lots of bugs) with our dear friends, the Browns and Masons. One of Huston's favorite parts of the evening was getting to pee in the grass. After Clarke took him, he came back and announced to everyone, "Did you pee in the grass!" Arden stayed awake and seemed to enjoy the fireworks - she occasionally babbled things at them. Huston liked the fireworks too, but wanted to make sure they weren't going to "get him." He kept saying things like "They're not going to get you. They're not going to come get your head."

Happy Fourth! (just a month or so late)

Fourth of July Weekend, Part I

2010-07-06T07:05:00.001-07:00

Our fourth of July weekend started with an impromptu trip to the zoo on Saturday. Clarke thought the overcast weather would mean smaller crowds and a more pleasant experience for us, and he was right. Aside from a few “toddler moments” we had a great time, even if Huston was more interested in playing with the doors, telephones (inside the MOLA), and souvenir machines than in seeing the animals.

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This is Clarke, talking to the birds. He’s a bird-talker. I don’t know if you knew that about him.

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Huston playing with the souvenir machine.

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Running through the waters misters to cool off. Not really sure why he’s covering his ears.

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The obligatory “asleep on the way home” shot. Huston briefly woke up to tell us, “Is it too sunny. You close your eyes for it’s too sunny.” He wanted to make sure we didn’t think he had fallen asleep.

Kids Kamp Fun

2010-06-26T09:13:00.001-07:00

While I volunteered at our church’s Kids Kamp this week, Huston go to attend the Kids Kamp for preschoolers. He was not too excited the first few days, but by the end of the week he was having a blast and didn’t cry at all when I dropped him off on Friday. I have always been so sad that he never wants to talk about what he does in his Sunday school or Wee Care class. He gets so mad when I try to ask him questions and once told me angrily, “We don’t talk it ‘bout nursery.”

Well, this week Huston has finally decided to share some of his experiences, and I am just eating it up! I can’t get enough of him sharing little tidbits about his days at Kids Kamp, but I’m trying not to seem to eager or pushy for fear that he’ll get mad at me!

Mostly it has been silly little things, like “Do you have wipes at Kids Kamp, too, Mommy. Did your teacher take that little girl to the potty and she used wipes.” He also told me, “You didn’t like that puppet. Did they let you go in the other room for you didn’t like that puppet.” He told me, “Did you get a cookie at Kids Kamp, Mommy,” and “Did you eat cheese and bread at Kids Kamp, Mommy.” (Snacks are always important!)

My favorite thing by far that he’s told me, though, happened just this morning. He got my Bible down and in his “talking to himself” voice, started saying “This is the Bible. It how true words. It how true words.” They teach the kids that the Bible is God’s true word, so he must have just heard “it how true words,” instead of “it has true words.”

He then proceeded to line up his four empty deodorants beside the Bible and he told me “Are you gonna tell God about the deodorants.” Then he patted his Bible and said, “This is the Bible. It has true words. It has true words about the deodorants.”

Aren’t they cute?

2010-06-22T20:30:00.001-07:00

Happy Father’s Day!

2010-06-20T05:43:00.001-07:00

You’re the best daddy in the whole world and we love you so much!

love,

Huston and Arden

Yesterday at the park

2010-06-17T12:50:00.001-07:00

Another creative title. There should be some kind of an award for awesome creativity like this. I know I inspire you.

Okay, since I’m a dork, I’ll just let my pictures do the talking.

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Just for a comparison, here’s Huston in October 2008 playing with the gate at the park, along with a picture from yesterday. Where does the time go?

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Arden at 7 months

2010-06-16T11:41:00.001-07:00

(I know, I know, I come up with the most creative titles for my blog posts).

Sweet little Arden has hit two major milestones in the past week. First, she started crawling on June 8th, just a week shy of the 7 month mark. She was on the verge for quite some time, and finally figured out how to work those hands and legs together. Now she is all over the place. Huston never put things in his mouth, but Arden loves to. Her favorite forbidden treasure is paper of any kind. Somehow she manages to find pieces of paper all over the house and I’m constantly fishing little bits out of her mouth that she’s managed to chew off. She also likes to play with the doorstoppers and I’ve had to remove the little white caps from almost all of them because she kept getting those in her mouth. I must say that her newfound ability to get around the house is completely exhausting me. She can be surrounded by a sea of toys, but she will always crawl right over and around them to go for the paper, wires, remotes, and all the other “non-toys.”

I have no good pictures of her crawling yet because I’ve been too busy trying to keep her from hurting herself. (So here’s a picture of her wrestling Huston’s giant plastic shovel). It seems like every 3 minutes she gets herself into some kind of predicament (banging her head on furniture, crawling under something that she can’t get out of, slipping when whatever she’s holding onto moves) that makes her face scrunch up as she lets out her seriously “sad” cry. Either that, or she’s doing her “mad” cry because I’ve had to take away a forbidden toy. Like the rocks from the fireplace. Out of her mouth. She is a tricky little thing.

The second major milestone she’s reached recently (just yesterday, in fact) is pulling herself up. I didn’t expect her to be able to do this quite so soon, but yesterday she pulled herself up onto her knees by the toy bin and after her nap she had pulled herself all the way up to a standing position. Time to lower that crib!

(Look at those long, wispy bangs!)

Here she is after her nap this morning. Love that “help me, mommy, don’t take a picture” look.

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And a few more just because she’s so cute.

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Potty Time

2010-06-11T12:28:00.001-07:00

I finally took the plunge and started potty training Huston. I had given it a shot one day back in February and it was a complete and utter failure, so I was not too anxious to try again. Last Thursday, June 3rd, I decide I could procrastinate no longer. I rolled up the living room rug, busted out the Thomas underwear, got out the juice boxes, and set up the potty. It was a tiring endeavor the first few days, constantly asking if he had to go potty, sitting on the potty, trying to make the potty a fun place to be…. you get the idea.

(Showing off his moves in his cool Thomas underwear)

We spent part of the first morning outside. Here’s Arden enjoying some outside time, while Huston does a little multi-tasking.

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He had several successes and several accidents the first day, but actually pooped on the potty the very first day and Daddy gave him a “James” train (from Thomas the Tank Engine) as his big reward. I was so hyped that he did that the first day, but in the week since then he has not yet repeated that amazing feat. He has held his poop in for an entire day, pooped in his underwear, and pooped in his pull up. Just about everywhere except the potty.

For the most part, though, I think he’s doing really well. He hasn’t had a really big accident since about day 3. However, he still will not tell me when he needs to go and will always say “no” if I ask if he needs to go to the bathroom. He just can’t bear the thought of leaving what he’s playing with to go potty. So every hour or so I just have to take him to the bathroom and he’ll go. Thankfully, he seems to be able to hold it pretty well. Now his main thing if I haven’t made him go in awhile, is that he’ll just barely wet his underwear and then I’ll notice it and take him to the bathroom. We’re still working on that.

It has been a relief to get out of the house again the past few days. He stayed dry through Sunday school on Sunday, a visit to Chuck E Cheese for his cousins’ birthday party, all of the errands we’ve run, a trip to the mall, and he even went potty at church while I was at a women’s salad luncheon on Wednesday. I think our next big hurdle (besides the pooping thing) is getting over the fear of the normal sized potties in the world, which to him seem enormous and scary. He screams like I’m trying to drop him into a giant water hole if I suggest he sit on one (even with a special toddler seat on top of it).

So - there is more than you have probably ever, ever wanted to hear about potties. Hopefully Huston won’t see this one day and be beyond embarrassed. No one save this for his high school yearbook, okay? He might not appreciate that.

Parent Dedication

2010-06-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Here are just a few (very belated) pictures from our parent dedication for Arden on May 1st. We publicly committed ourselves to raising Arden in a Christian home and to giving her every opportunity to come to know Jesus as her Savior. The verse we chose for her was Proverbs 31:30: “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Arden wore a dress that was my mom’s when she was a baby. It was made by my mom’s godmother.

Huston did surprisingly well in the “big church” during the dedication. I left the sanctuary towards the end to go feed Arden, only to find out later that after I left he did a hilarious, slow crawl/inchworm move across the aisle so he could sit by his Mimi. I heard it had everyone around him cracking up.

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Sweet dreams

2010-05-24T18:06:00.001-07:00

I went back into Huston's room after putting him to bed tonight to tell him to stop playing with his humidifier. He wanted me to get up in his bed for a minute and snuggle, so I did. He turned his head to face me and (speaking with the correct pronouns, which he never does) he said, "I love your eyes" as he touched my eyes. Then he continued to touch all the parts of my face and said "I love your nose and your chin and your 'that' (pointing to my eyebrow)." "I love your hair and your shirt and your head. I love your face."

Has there ever been a sweeter goodnight? My heart just melted. Moments like that make all the difficulties and trials of parenting just fade away. I am so blessed to be a mom. So blessed by my sweet Huston. It is more than I deserve. Thank you, Lord.

Arden – 6 months

2010-05-22T19:16:00.001-07:00

Dear Arden,

Here’s what’s going on in your life at 6 months. (I can hardly believe you’re half a year old already!)

You are obsessed with tags. Your eyes bug out when you see a tag on one of your toys or blankets and your little hands reach up to grab it. You like to chew and suck on them. I wonder if you’ll still love tags when you’re older (like your Aunt Emily!).

You’ve started saying “na, na, na” and “da, da, da” this past week. It’s so adorable to hear your “talking.”

You got your first tooth the day after you turned 6 months old. It’s your bottom left front one. The one right beside it is coming it too.

At your 6 month checkup you weighed 16 pounds, 6 ounces (70th percentile) and you were 26 inches long (75th percentile).

So far you’ve eaten green beans, peas, and squash and you like all of them. You’re only eating at dinner time right now, because you haven’t been that interested in the morning or at lunch time.

You had your first sleepover with Huston at Mimi’s house on Friday, May 14th. You even slept through the night for her, which you’ve also been doing consistently for me for at least the past three weeks. It is so awesome to finally sleep through the night, that I don’t mind so much the 6 or 6:30 wake up time.

You are pretty much sitting up by yourself, although you tumble over easily enough. I always put your boppy behind you in case you fall.

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Your long, side-swept bangs are getting the tiniest little kink at the tips. I wonder if your hair will be curly.

I love to watch you get up on all fours now and rock back and forth. You always manage to push yourself backwards, away from the toys you’re trying to reach. It shouldn’t be too long now before you start crawling!

Big Boy Arden

2010-05-14T11:57:00.001-07:00

Arden has been getting on all fours this past week in a pre-crawling position and I’ve been commenting on how big she’s getting. Huston was beside me one day and said “She’s a big boy Arden!” Then yesterday he said, “She’s a big boy baby!” Isn’t that so darling? I guess we’ve never really had to use the phrase “big girl” before so he just made up his own version.

First Baseball Game

2010-05-10T16:31:00.001-07:00

We got four tickets to the Ranger’s game from Clarke’s firm for Saturday night, so we decided to take Huston and Arden to their very first baseball game.

Huston was excited and impressed from outside of the stadium. He watches the Rangers games on TV with Clarke sometimes and is always interested in the score and in the guys “falling down.” He’s really into bricks lately (mostly how it’s bumpy when you drive over bricks) so he loved the bricks that we walked on to cross the parking lot and the bricks on the walls of the stadium.

He was also impressed by the huge escalators and rode one with Clarke just for fun.

As soon as we walked into the stadium, however, the Rangers had a huge play and the crowd went crazy. Huston immediately freaked out about all the noise and started screaming and crying.

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Clarke took him to buy some ice cream in a hat, which he liked, but which he ate with both fingers plugging his ears to block out the crowd noise. That is, in fact, how he spent the majority of the game.

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By the end of the game, Huston was enjoying himself. He walked up and down the steps (until the usher made him stop) and he played with the stadium seats. Arden was having a ball the whole time, just looking around and enjoying all the sights. She would stare down the people around us until they looked at her, and then break into the biggest smiles. The people around us all seemed amused by both Huston and Arden. We made it to the fifth inning, and then called it a night. The weather was perfect, the tickets were free, and both kids had fun (eventually). I’d call that a success.

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(As a side note, as we arrived at our house after the game, Huston recited our entire address out of the blue – number and street name. I was quite impressed!)

Arden at 5 months

2010-05-06T14:11:00.001-07:00

This post is just a bit late, considering Arden turned 5 months on April 15th and is now closer to 6 months old. Things have been busy lately. :)

Darling, sweet Arden. You are such a little dear. You had your first taste of rice cereal on April 17th, just two days after you turned 5 months. You were definitely interested, but your tongue kept pushing the cereal back out of your mouth and onto your bib, where you licked it up.

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You’ve gotten better since then and have been eating rice cereal around 7 in the morning and 6 in the evening ever since. It’s funny to watch you get excited when you see it coming. We still haven’t tried vegetables or fruit yet, but we will soon.

(Huston really wanted to help feed you, and Bear Bear wanted to watch you eat.)

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You’ve been playing in your exersaucer a lot this month – you especially love to eat the star and the dragon head. You’ve become incredibly “grabby” and just want to grab everything around you and stick it in your mouth. The remote controls especially attract your attention and it’s become dangerous to hold you around the dinner table as you’ll grab for whatever food or utensil or drink is closest to you.

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You are getting so strong and can push yourself up now with your arms completely straight. For the longest time you could only flip yourself onto your stomach, but now you’re able to roll both ways. You are finally able to sleep without being swaddled and have slept through the night a few times, but not consistently. I think the rice cereal is helping you stay full longer and I’ve let you cry it out a few times, too. I dropped your late night feeding, so now you nurse at 7 am, 11, 3 pm, and just before you go to sleep.

You have the sweetest round face and chubby cheeks, beautiful blue eyes, chunky thighs with delicious baby fat rolls, and chubby little arms. You’re such an easy going little thing and are almost never fussy unless you’re really tired or hungry. You adore your older brother, get so happy when Daddy comes home, and just love to be around people. You kick both legs when you’re super happy, whether you’re on your stomach or your back. People are always telling me how beautiful you are and of course I believe them. In fact, a nursery worker at church said you reminded her of Snow White, with your fair skin, dark hair, and blue eyes.

My own little Snow White Princess. You are too much for words. As I write this, you’re playing on your blanket beside me, making sweet baby noises and smiling. The ruffles on your little diaper cover are so precious, but not as precious as your chubby legs and tiny feet, and not nearly as precious as the smile you just gave me.

I love you, my little sweetie pie.