The Dress and Pretend Phase

I think we have officially entered a new phase at our house. Jade is now pretending to do things. She carries her baby doll everywhere with her and makes it do everything she sees me doing with the real baby. It is super cute and she is such a good little mommy! Here they are playing outside at her table.

And she is also in the "I only want to wear dresses" phase, who knew a kid of mine would only wear dresses!! This is funny to me because I only wear them when I absolutely have to! Below are several dresses she has to wear, she looks so stinking cute in them!! I think we have a little lady in the making!

And what happens when we wear shorts and dresses in the summertime, combined with a very rambunctious and active toddler? You guessed it, lots of scrapes and bruises!!

This red dress is my favorite and a great color on her. I also wanted to show off the Capri Sun couch that Ben built for her. He made it using only capri sun boxes and half a roll of packing tape. Considering we got the boxes for free I would say it was the cheapest couch we have ever bought!! Jade absolutely loves it and sits/stands on it whenever she is in the living room.

Saturday in the Park...

This past Saturday Ben and I took the girls on a walk, it was super hot and so we decided to stop and play at the park. Jade loves the park and has now started to recognize them from far far away. She will spot the colors or the slide and yell "side (for slide) or "bus" (because there happens to be a bus that she can drive at this park). She will not be quiet or stop shouting until we let her out to play. This time we finally got a video of her on the big slide with Daddy. Jade has non-stop energy and will run and run until she drops at night!

All dressed up and ready to go...notice the doll...this thing now goes everywhere with us. Jade has her baby to take care of and I have mine. It is cute to see her be a little mother! I am now realizing and noticing all the little things I do as she does them to her doll. It's like looking in a mirror!

The bus

Just had to be wherever Daddy was...

"side"

Taking a rest...

The big slide...I was so impressed as Jade climbed up this all by herself, with Ben following of course. Then she was not scared at all to go down with him.

Chillin' at Home

The girls and I have been having a lot of fun this summer. We pretty much stay at home and hang out in the back yard when it's nice weather. We go on walks to the park or the store and have been making some fun stuff as well. Jade is finally enjoying putting puzzles together and is working on learning her shapes. She sometimes likes to color but after awhile she gets curious and tries to see what else the crayon will color on (a.k.a the kitchen tile)!

One afternoon we made apple fruit leather in our new dehydrator that we got for Christmas from my parents. I was so excited to finally try it out and make some healthy snacks for Jade. Needless to say she absolutely loved it and now calls it her apple snack.

Jade has also been loving to climb in and play in boxes lately. It is cute to watch her take her toys and doll in there and talk and play.

It has been great weather lately, not too hot not too cold, so we can go outside.

Kiera just chillin' in her bouncer...

Jade playing in the sandbox...

and being such a good little mommy to her doll...

Kiera is 2 months old already!

I can't believe I have another 2 month old already! Crazy how fast time flies, it seems like just yesterday that she was born. Kiera is starting to really smile and coo at us when we talk to her. She likes high voices the best and will get all serious and look like she is going to cry if someone talks to her in a deep voice. She is becoming more active during the day and will stay awake for about 1 - 2 1/2 hours depending on what we are doing. She is a fairly good napper during the day but usually has to have her swing to help her go to sleep. She also does really well at night, after I feed her about 10pm she will sleep until 3 or 4am and then wake again at 7 or 8am. I am still pretty exhausted though, I think my body was made to get more sleep because when Jade gets up at about 8am I can hardly open my eyes. Oh well, this too shall pass!

I have kind of nicknamed her "Kiera bear" because of when she was first born she would grunt like crazy at night and cry alot during the day. We think it was just because she was adjusting to my milk or maybe something I was eating. She will still grunt at times but is doing tons better with eating. I just need to stay away from dairy and chocolate, too bad those are two of my favorite things! So her nickname just kind of stuck, plus I think it sounds rather cute.

Kiera's stats at 2 months:

Weight: 11 lbs. 11 oz (80th)

Height: 23 in. (80th)

and what checkup would be complete without shots!! She got 3 shots in the leg and took an oral vaccine as well! She was such a trooper!

Here are some pictures of our sweet little Kiera bear...

I love this one because it looks like she is kind of grimacing and saying, "really mom, another picture?!" Plus her one leg pulled up make her look like a flamingo!

Our happy girl

Her first wink...he he!

The End of an Era

How do you say goodbye to something you have done for seven years? This past week has been one of mixed emotions for me. I said goodbye to Mrs. Wilson the teacher and hello to being a full-time Mom to my girls. Don't get me wrong, I am super excited to stay home and be a mom and face all of the adventures that await me there, but it was a little hard to let go of something I have done for so long.

I think my love of teaching really started at a young age. I always loved all of my teachers and wanted to be just like them. Being the oldest child in my family helped to as I was always bossing my siblings around and playing school with them. In high school I started to volunteer in classrooms and found I had a talent for teaching. I love teaching and getting that feeling of satisfaction and success when a child really understood something I taught them. There was nothing better than to see their understanding and their face light up. After high school it was off to Utah State University where I knew I would be trained by the best as they were ranked among the top ten education schools in the nation. I loved my college years filled with observations and student teaching. When it was time to graduate I interviewed for teaching jobs everywhere and finally chose to come to Utah County and teach at Freedom Elementary in Highland. And that is where I have stayed for my entire teaching career. It has been 7 years of fun, frustration, laughing, singing, heartache, and joy. Alot of happy things happened while teaching there, I got married and had my first little girl just to name a few. I met wonderful lifelong friends and hopefully changed some of my students lives. I always expected great things out of them and they rose to the challenge! I changed classrooms 4 times in seven years so I am now a pro at moving! I taught 4th grade for 4 years, 5th grade for 2 years and computers/technology for one year. I can honestly say I had the best principal and fellow teachers anywhere in the world. That is why I probably never moved schools and kept making the 40 minute round trip commute from Orem to Highland every day.

I will no longer be seeing this everyday...

or these wonderful friends...

But I will be molding the future in a new and exciting way, by striving the be the best Mother I can be. I will draw on my teaching experience to help me teach and nurture my girls. I am grateful for the experiences I had that have helped to make me who I am today. I am grateful that I now get the chance to stay home. I pray each day for patience and the ability to raise these children. I am sure many fun adventures await me on this new path, but I have waited a long time to be at this point in my life. So...here is to my new adventure of full time motherhood!!!

Sisters

My girls are growing up way too fast. We tried to get some pictures of them together. This is quite a feat to do since Jade won't sit still and Kiera is too little. Hey, at least we got some fun snapshots and memories.

Jade 22 months

Our little Jadee Lady is growing up! She is really turning into a little girl lately. The other day I was just looking at her from a distance and she is no longer a baby. She is losing her chubby face and growing taller every day it seems. She is getting more hair each day and it is super curly. It reminds me of my little sister's hair, perfect little ringlets all over when wet and then as it dries it does this sort of curly/wavy thing. Most days I can get something in her hair but it only lasts a couple minutes until she figures out how to get it out!

One of the cutest things she has started recently is when we are saying our prayers, she will squint her eyes shut but her head is still up and fold her arms. I wish I had a picture because it is just about all I can do to not laugh each time. It is so precious to see her like this. The other day I even caught her in the middle of her lunch, push her plate to the side, fold her arms and mumble her own little prayer. She says a big booming "amen" at the end and then continued eating her food. So cute! We have been working so hard on her saying amen at the end of prayers and yesterday in church she said it nice and loud for everyone to hear each time someone would say amen, and to top it all off it was fast and testimony meeting, so there were a lot of amens! Let's just say I heard lots of muffled chuckles behind us during the meeting!

Jadee loves to be the center of attention and will imitate most everything we do. Yesterday I was just letting out a sigh of frustration at something she did and immediately she made the same sound and stomped around the room. I need to be really careful as she does everything I do now! She is a big climber and finds anything and everything to climb on.

She now has 14 teeth with the most recent ones to come in being her eye or kanine teeth on the bottom. Poor kid, they would bleed when we brushed them because they were so poky and her gums so irritated! I am sure not a big fan of this teething thing, hopefully we are almost done for awhile because it has been constant since January when she started getting all four molars at once.

She is such a fun loving, care free kid. Most days she can be found running around laughing or getting into mischief. When she is caught doing something she should not be doing, she will still say "hi" or get this sad look on her face. She understands most everything we say and will now go and get us things we ask for, like baby's diaper or blanket, or her shoes, etc.

She loves anything Elmo and will now actually sit and watch almost a full episode of sesame street. She has never been a big movie or TV show fan, which is great in a way but I do love that she is getting a longer attention span.

Jade can point to alot of things and knows what they are called or sounds they make. The other day Ben was reading an alphabet book to her and as he would say an object, she would point it out on the page. We were super impressed because some things we did not think she had seen very often and we knew we had not pointed them out. She picks up on everything and has such a great memory. One example was, we have never flown a kite or pointed one out to her, but when she saw a picture of one she knew exactly what it was and said the word. All we can figure is that one time she saw Uncle Tommy flying a kite when we were at their house and she remembered it. Another example is the other day when she was playing in her sandbox, there were some bees that kept buzzing over her head and around the tree. When she heard one she would immediately look up, point to it, say "bee" and then make the buzzing sound. She even tried to stand up and catch them at one point until I carefully instructed her that that would not be a great idea!

She no longer really poses or smiles for pictures. In fact she turns completely away from you if you pull the camera out and ask her to smile. So most pics we have to sneak unless she is in a super cooperative mood. Hopefully the days of smiling for pictures will return soon!

She loves to be outside just playing and exploring. She could stay all day out there if we let her.

This shot was super funny because I had just asked her to sit and give me a big smile, and this is what I got......

She was supposed to look up at me, but again, this is what she interpreted posing as....

She can always be found with a "pretty" in her hair, if she puts it there, and something in her mouth. Most often it is one of the baby's toys or her fingers.

This was a rare shot when I asked her to smile and she actually did. Kind of goofy but hey I am not complaining at least she smiled!