Us Lately

We Have A Birthday Girl

We have a three-year-old now! I can't believe Winnie is three, even though she usually talks like she's 15. I don't ever want her to grow up, but I also enjoy her more and more all the time.

We had a fantastic day. It included a trip to our favorite park, pizza, dinosaurs, doll houses, new books and new dresses.

The cake (you're looking at 10 eggs and 1 1/2 pounds of butter right there).

The candles

The presents. (Someone should brush that poor girls' hair--or at least wash her face. What was her mother thinking?)

The dolls on the cake go to this doll house.

A set of sporty red wheels.

Winnie got a bucket of dinosaurs from her cousins. I think they were her favorite toy of the evening. Even still, she told everyone they could chose one to take home. Only Luke took her up on the offer, though.

As Winnie went to bed tonight she was singing "Happy Birthday" to herself.

Rambling recent developments

A few weeks shy of 1 year old and Luke has finally decided he can sit. To clarify, he's been able to sit for months and months--he's just had no desire. If you tried to sit him down on the floor he'd immediately arch his back and refuse to bend. A couple of months ago he started kneeling on the floor when he was playing and now he's started to sit and kneel about equal amounts. I can't believe he's almost 1!

Winnie got a very cute haircut Saturday and I thought I had good pictures of it until I looked at them on the computer. On the computer I could see that Winnie had a goopy nose and some left-over soup on her mouth. We'll try again tomorrow.

Matt took the bar last week and we're now all enjoying a life of luxury with no studying in sight. No job in sight, either, but let's try to stay positive, shall we?

On a slightly related note 261 E 100 N went under contract on January 29th, right after I had settled on a fabulous "black bean" paint scheme. It had been on the market somewhere around 8 months! Couldn't it have waited a couple more months??? Who buys a house with broken windows in the middle of winter, anyway? I've been obsessively checking the county recorder's documents to see if anything has recorded showing that the sale has gone through. Nothing yet, so I still have a slight hope that the sale will fall through and we can snatch it up! I haven't been able to bring myself to drive by for fear I'll see vinyl replacement windows going in. Oh the horror.

The mischief a two year old can do. . .

during the time it takes to change one poopy diaper.

She cut all of this hair from the right side of her head (see how it looks a little sparse over her ear? She basically left a thin layer from the top of her head, but cut all the hair underneath). Ironically, her hair took forever to fill in on the sides and it was just recently starting to really grow there. This afternoon, before this happened, I'd scheduled Winnie's first professional haircut. We were going to just trim the back up to match the length of the sides. Now that the right side of Win's hair is only 1" long, I think that plan is out.

Family Projects

I bought Winnie a pair of slippers. She doesn't love them, but guess who does.

All of my seed catalogues started to arrive last month and I got a real case of Spring Fever. Winnie loves anything that involves scissors and glue, so we planted a garden. Winnie named it the "E" garden--and no, I don't know what that's supposed to mean, either. I'm not sure this garden is doing anything to make me more satisfied with my 120 square foot yard, or the contents of my refrigerator where it currently resides.

We got a second set of Duplos for Christmas and Winnie has started to want to build things other than plain stacks of Legos. Matt is always assigned to build the animals that Winnie sees on the sides of the bucket. I was busy trying to get everyone looking at the camera in this shot, and didn't notice that you can't really tell what they built, but it's a dragon.

Who Cut Your Hair, Sonora?

I think at some point, almost every toddler gets a hold of a pair of scissors and gives themselves a haircut.

Unfortunately, I gave Winnie this haircut. I am officially retiring from cutting the hair of wiggly toddlers. Do you think this will have grown out by Christmas?

Bonus points if you know the movie the title is from.

Confessions, Part 3 & A Munchkin

I made another ball. Another lemon-shaped ball. Remember attempt 1 and attempt 2? Isn't this supposed to be a simple sewing project?

After much tweeking and fussing around with it, it actually looked a little bit round. I then arranged it just so to take the picture so that you could almost believe it to be round! This one is for Luke, who doesn't care if it's round or not. I should have just sewn a football and called it a day.

On a happier note, here is Winnie modeling her new coat, awesome pigtails and some Halloween decorations.

Somehow, when I woke up yesterday morning, my babies had suddenly grown older all at once.

Winnie, who is starting to always give fake smiles for the camera, spent over an hour yesterday building with her blocks. Last time we played blocks Winnie was more interested in knocking them over the minute you stacked two. And now, suddenly, she's Dr. Seuss's city planner.

I haven't wanted Luke to be ready for solids, but I think he was more than ready. He's had cereal in a bottle for a month or so now, but tonight was his first chance to be spoon fed. Mmmm. Green beans. He was so excited about eating them that it was hard to feed him because he was flailing his feet and hands. Luke also started pushing himself up onto his hands and knees a couple of days ago. I'm not ready for crawling! He supposed to still be too little for that sort of thing!

Tonight after dinner, Winnie said to me, "That was yummy dinner, Mommy. Thank you very much".

I'm making meatloaf more often.

2-Year Molars

We think Winnie is getting her 2-year molars, and they seem to be more difficult for her than any of her other teeth were. Am I a terrible mom to want to laugh every time I look at this sad, sad little face? I also want to hug her, so maybe I'm redeemed.

Sunny Day Blues

This week the kids and I decided to come to my parents' house and let Matt have some peace and quiet to study for finals. Yesterday I was hurriedly doing laundry, changing sheets, doing dishes and packing bags to get ready for the trip. While I was doing all this, Winnie was doing this:

There were kids outside playing and she kept looking out wistfully and asking if she could go play too. By the time I was ready all the kids had gone inside. No one told me that being a mother came with so much guilt.

Happy Easter

The Easter Bunny always hides our Easter baskets, so when Winnie got up this morning, she got to have a little hunt around her room for her basket. Too bad the video of her search is too big for Blogger because she was really excited!

The Bunny had hidden Winnie's basket in the play pen. Because Winnie went to 2 Easter Egg hunts yesterday, he thought it best to keep it light on the candy and add other goodies to the basket. Winnie got a coloring book, crayons, measuring spoons (maybe mine will stay in the drawer now), and her very own pillow. She did get a chocolate rabbit which we then let her eat for breakfast. Aren't we good parents?

For a while now, Winnie has been asking to have one of her blankets folded up like a pillow, so we thought it was time to actually get her her own. She got a travel sized pillow and I couldn't find any pre-made cases for its size, but I had enough fabric in my stash to make her a little pillow case.

Grandma Susan bought Winnie this little dress a while ago and we saved it for today because we thought it would be the perfect Easter dress.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I downloaded my pictures that my camera lense got a little finger print on it at the Easter egg hunt yesterday so all of my pictures and video from today are cloudy.

2 Years Old

Winnie turned 2 yesterday. Where did the last 2 years go? Here's a picture of our sweet birthday girl, Queen Winnie:




Her ladybug cake:

Winnie was very excited about her birthday. All day long everything was her "birthday" something--her birthday breakfast, her birthday dress, her birthday daddy. . .

Matt and I gave Winnie a CD player for her birthday. I never would have thought I'd be giving a 2-year-old a CD player, but we set it up today and she knew how to use it without me even having to show her.

I Thought I Took More Pictures. . .

This is the only picture that ended up on my camera from our Thanksgiving weekend at my parents' house. Jack is just 5 weeks younger than Winnie and they are really cute to watch together. Don't let Winnie holding a fork fool you. . . While Winnie begs for utensils before she's willing to eat, her hands are still her tool of choice. Jack looks a lot more fierce with that fork than he really is, too.

Breakfast

This is the way we do breakfast at our house. Let's just pretend my floors are clean enough to eat off, okay?

18 Months and Counting

Monday was Winnie's 18-month birthday. At her check-up she was in the 27th percentile for weight (Carlquist genes), 80th for height (Morrise genes) and 97th for head circumference (both sides). She can say just about anything at this point and she's starting to use three and four word sentences. She's also starting to sing, although she's very selective about where and when. She prefers fill-in the blank type singing where she only has to provide a word of two, but I do catch her singing Rock-A-By to her babies from time-to-time. Winnie's current obsession is giving a hugs and kisses to everything--a loaf of bread in the grocery store, the oven, her shoes and Mom and Dad when we're lucky!

Here's her picture face. It's been weeks since we've been able to get anything but a squinty-eyed shot of her.

Nothing to Say, Just Pictures of Winnie

Matt made Winnie blueberry crepes for dinner and then we interviewed her about her day.

My favorite cheesy smile.

She has to wait a little longer before she can successfully borrow my clothes.

Two Weeks of Fun

I can't believe how quickly this summer has gone. Matt goes back to school on Monday! We're planning for Matt to graduate a semester early and we like to think of it as "he'll be done in a year", even though it's technically a year and 4 months. Thinking of it as a year makes going back to school this Fall seem better. It means we're nearly half-way done. Okay, that's easier for me to say than Matt. I'm not sure half-the time and half the work will coincide.


Matt's summer internship ended on August 8th, and in the last two weeks, between me working and not feeling well and Matt going to Youth Conference, we've tried to cram in all the fun we possibly could. Aside from watching movies, and staying up way later than I should have (these days that's anything after 10:00 pm), two of our favorite outings were Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point and Hogle Zoo.

We went to Farm Country on Saturday, August 16th. We invited Matt's brother Jake and his fiance Cassanda. It's a good thing they like each other because having one car seat and two adults in the back seat of the Tercel is one cozy ride. Matt, Winnie and I really enjoyed Farm Country. Jake and Cassanda enjoyed being together and could see that Farm Country would be a fun place to take your kids. :)

Winnie and Matt, learning to speak goat.





Me, Winnie, Jake and Cassanda on the wagon ride. Why are you yawning, Jake? Isn't Farm Country the most fun you've ever had?


It took a minute for Winnie to decide that riding a pony would be okay. Her new stall tactic is to ask for a hug anytime she doesn't want you to put her somewhere, i.e. in her car seat or to bed. As soon as she could see Matt was going to put her on the pony she suddenly was very cuddly. She didn't take long to adjust, though, and as you can see, ended up really liking it.

Last Wednesday we went to Hogle Zoo with Annalise and her youngest 3, Colin, Aidan and Logan. Inexplicably, Winnie's favorite animals at the whole zoo where the crocodiles. Wouldn't look at anything else in their building if she could help it. If we let her go for a second she was bee-lining for the crocodile enclosure.



All the kids were really good at the Zoo. At the end of the day, we'd worn Winnie out.

Water Fun

Swimming at Grandma & Grandpa Morrise's


Jumping on the trampoline with a sprinkler under it at Grandma & Grandpa Carlquist's

Winnie's Room

Here are a couple of recent additions to Winnie's room.

This is the Ikea crib that I painted black. I still want to put some vinyl decals on the foot of it, but haven't gotten around to making them. In the meantime, the Alice in Wonderland quilt that my grandma made her hangs on the crib. I love this quilt--I've used it to decorate the whole room around.

I bought these Red Riding Hood prints off of Etsy. They're paper cuts by a local artist named Cindy Ferguson. I'm amazed by how expressive she can make a silhouette. You can see more of her work on her blog.

And finally, here are a couple of recent pictures of Princess Winnie.