A Hungry, obsessed mini-me or divide by three?

Hungry, Hungry Matthew: This week Matthew started expand his eating the past two weeks. Yogurt, banana, and sweet potatoes have been tried so far! This is on top of his oatmeal eating. Matthew is a hungry dude! I have a bad feeling that he is going to eat us out of house and home. Matthew is also trying to use sippy cups. The straw ones are all he has tried so far but he sure can get some liquid out of them. As a warning, if you are holding any food or a cup, he will try to steal it from you.


Sophie is a mini-me. A mini-me of Grace. Anything that Grace can do, Sophie can do better. Wait. Sophie catches onto EVERYTHING that Grace does. I show Grace how to hit play on the DVD player. The next thing I know, Sophie is hitting play. Sophie is singing most of her ABCs. Sophie talks in complete sentences. Sophie is working on potty training (and doing amazingly good!) Most of the time, Grace's mini-me doesn't bother her so I will enjoy this while it lasts. I know it will end since I too have a sister!=P

Grace's obsession. Grace is obsessed with Dora right now. Specifically, Dora TV shows and movies. She can seriously sit there with Dora on the TV all day. If you try to tell her Dora isn't on, she goes for a movie. When you want to get something done, this obsession is nice. At any other time, this obsession is enough to drive to insane. I am thinking The Little Mermaid obsession was better since at least it was a decent length movie. If you hear Grace "No swiping Buddy. No swiping." This is thanks to Dora and her constant "No swiping Swiper. No Swiping." Cute the first time, not the one millionth.

Hello 2010!

I made it a year! I admit my last several posts of 2009 are still in the draft mode but I will finish them here soon. It is great to look back over my posts from last year and see how the kids have grown.

This year will be exciting, well that is what I keep telling myself. For the first time, Brian won't be staying at home with the kids full time. He will doing his student teaching semester that he put off doing a year ago due our finances. Thankfully, my mom will be watching the kids during this short time frame since it would near impossible to find a day care to only take them for that time or someone to watch them during that time. We are so thankful for her doing this already and it hasn't even started yet.

Grace is still loving school. She was really excited school started back up this week. Brian has started to work on some crafts with her (a snake and a mask) and she loves them. She does get very upset if Sophie "breaks" her crafts though!

Sophie is flirting with wanting to potty train but isn't committed to the cause yet. She is a full blown two year old with the attitude and tantrums to go with it. Some days we want to send her back and get our 1 year old back. Sophie loves Matthew and is a really good big sister to him when she shoves his pacifier back into his mouth!=P

Matthew is a growing boy. He is 5 and half months and is fitting in his 12 month clothes perfectly. I have learned that when this happens he has a few more weeks left in them. It is a good thing I have a stash of 18 month clothes already. He is doing good with his eating oatmeal. That is he is doing good if Brian feeds him. He still won't eat much of it for me which is expected. Brian told me the other day that Matthew will eat us out of house and home if he keeps up his levels of eating.

A family moment: The girls, Brian, and I had a game time for the first time the other day. We played Hi Ho! Cherry-o. Sophie didn't fully get it but enjoyed it. Grace will run around asking to play the "cherry game". We are looking for to more family game nights as they get older!

Their Favorite Things ...

I did a favorite things post awhile back and I really love thinking about the kids favorite things. Maybe because that is one of my all time favorite songs from The Sound of Music? Maybe because I see so much of them through the changes in their favorite things? At any rate, I love them and am excited for this post. I am going to try to remember favorite things that have gone by the wayside already and the ones that are in the limelight right now for each of them.

Gracie ...
Back in the day: Sleeping Beauty Disney movie, breakfast (she isn't into it these days)
Lovin' it right now: school, drawing, princesses ... any Princesses!, Dora, games, asking for TV shows such as Mickey Choo Choo, Dora, and Phineas and Ferb (so we have to record them on the DVR)
Good ole standby: her blanket (a.k.a one of the Gerber cloth diapers that we use as burp cloths), jumping on our bed, the doll houses, baby dolls, Little Gym

Sophie ...
Back in the day: Lady and Tramp (a.k.a. "Dog Movie"), Little Gym (she isn't getting into it)
Lovin' it right now: reading books, singing songs, Disney movies, princesses, baby dolls, her new car seats that have a cup holder like Grace's
Good ole standby: her pink blanket, her pink bunny, still my dancin' queen, jumping on our bed

Matthew ...
Back in the day: sleeping all night, sucking his hand (not his thumb, but the part between his thumb and first finger)
Lovin' it right now: waking up once in the middle of the night, rolling over on his back (wait, he HATE that but he still does it!), pacifiers, football on TV (not sure what we do when football season ends!), a nightlight in his room, his Melissa and Doug snail toy
Good ole standby: walking ... he still loves be held if you are walking around, being held

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Grace has started to understand Christmas. When we told her it was Jesus' birthday, that was enough to make it "click" for her. Brian even made baby Jesus a "happy cake" (a.k.a a birthday cake) that we shared with my family on Christmas day.

I had a hard choice right before Christmas but decided to go ahead and have my gallbladder taken out on December 23rd. I had already missed all of the Christmas cookies and goodies and only had a taste of Sophie's birthday cake. When I was presented with the chance to have the surgery then and enjoy Christmas dinner, I felt I had to take that chance. I am soooo glad I did. I have been feeling MUCH better. It was hard to be sore around Christmas but the kids really helped in that area!


Christmas with little kids is like a tornado. They don't understand yet that presents are for different people and wanted to open them all. After watching the girls RIP open their presents, we let them open ours too because it was pure joy to watch them have at it! Grace still discards clothes when she finds them in boxes. There was an exception this year and that is her "Princess" coat that my mom got her. Sophie wants everything open all of the way. She unwrapped bars of soap in one of my gifts before I noticed what she had. oops! Matthew was just happy to be held so long. He is such a cuddle bug right now.

Sophie didn't catch that Christmas was over and kept asking for the "Santa Claus" song at bedtime. Brian gave in for an extra week or so before he started pushing for another song. The girls thought the Christmas clearance shopping at Walmart was the best thing, well until they realized they didn't keep out what they picked out. Hopefully they will still like those decorations next year!

After this Christmas, I am almost ready for next Christmas. Almost. I can't wait to see how excited they are next year. I can tell you right now that I do plan on enjoying Christmas cookies next year and will probably be a baking machine to make up for my lack of baking this year. So watch out!;)

And most importantly ... Happy Birthday, Jesus!

An Angel, A Baby, and A Two Year Old

A red angel - Grace had her Christmas play at preschool recently. I missed it due to my pesky gallbladder but Brian was able to record it. Of course in typical Grace fashion, she refused to put on her costume. She was to be an angel and wear a white robe. I guess I told her too much before they left how pretty her red dress was that she was wearing. She didn't want to cover up her dress with the costume so Grace was the red angel in the middle of the pack of angels. That's my Grace! (At least, she wasn't the one who shouted out they needed to go potty in the middle of the play! Take what you can get, right?=P)

A baby moment - With three kids, we had to hit the odds, right? Matthew has become our pacifier baby. This is probably good for his sake as he was really hurting his hand by sucking on it. At first, I only found pink and purple pacifiers but I did scrounge up a green one finally! He is happy sucking it but gets upset when he spits it out. I am not liking this spit it out, get upset game much. The girls are thumb suckers and the ONLY good thing about that is they don't lose their thumb. I am hoping this is a short lived habit for him but I guess time will tell.

Two at last - Sophie turned 2 on December 11th. At times, it was hard for us to remember she wasn't even two yet. She did so much so early because of her big sister leading the way for her. Sophie can run really fast. She completely runs like a girl but that is OK because she is a girl!;) She talks in complete sentences. She eats just about thing you give her. She listens really well and tries her best to help when you ask her to do something like throw something away or get a tissue. At the same time, we now have another two year old. No matter how far along she is in everything else, she is two and it is starting to show! Happy Birthday, my Sophie!

ABCs ... oatmeal ... and a teacher all swirled together!

Sophie's New Thing: Sophie has started to say the ABCs. Well she only gets to D so it is "ABCD" ... "ABCD" ... "ABCD". It is very cute but after about the twentieth ABCD, you wonder when she will get a few more letters in the alphabet!

Matthew's New Thing: Matthew got his first taste of Oatmeal on Thanksgiving day. My mom got the privilege of being the first one to feed him a solid. He didn't eat much because it is hard to figure out the swallowing thing for all babies but he did get some of it down. At this point, it is just practice eating off a spoon and practice swallowing something besides milk. He will get it. The way he eyes our food, I know he will catch on fast!

Grace's New Thing: Grace has become a teacher to Sophie and Matthew. She has started sharing some of her "lessons" that she learns at school with Sophie and Matthew. My favorite is the "good morning song". I don't know the song and only hear the parts she sings. They must hold hands when they sing this at school because she makes a point to hold Sophie and Matthew's hands and starts singing "good morning to you, good morning to you" ... "good morning to you, good morning to you". Maybe one day we will get hear the full song but for now, I enjoy the part she is teaching Sophie and Matthew while she holds their hands.

Small updates and missing sleep

Small update but updates none the less.

Grace is loves school and singing songs. She loves the "good morning song" they sing at preschool. She has taught it to Sophie and will sing it to Sophie and Matthew. They hold hands when they sing it at school so she has to hold hands when she sings it here at home. It is beyond cute.

Sophie has a lot of new phrases right now. "There ya are." "Where are ya, ___?" They all have ya or y'all in them. We are raising a good Southern girl here! Her other favorite phrase right now is "I don't want it!!" ha. I wonder how she learned that one so fast!

Matthew is still growing and growing. He loves to smile and laugh. He wants to look around and is trying his best to move around. He can turn around in a circle on his belly. He hasn't rolled over again yet. I think he is too busy trying to crawl. Stay put baby boy!


This past week is the first time all three kids were sick at the same time. Brian and I then got part of what they had too. The kids are thankfully starting to feel better but Brian and I want to go crawl in a cave and sleep for a week. There is no cave here to do that, besides it would be awfully darn cold in there right now so we will just have to make due on missing sleep. You think after three years of training, we would be used it by now but we aren't!