The Toy

For the past several months Kaylee has been waking up off and on crying and scared. When you go into her room, you see her with her butt up in the air holding her legs up because "the toy" is under her covers.

Let me give you a little background. She had not seen any Toy Story until yesterday. The only two movies that she had watched are Monsters Inc. and Tangled, neither one of which have a scary "toy".

Night after night we would tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of and tuck her back in.

Two nights ago "the toy" was found.

We were all downstairs. Adam and the girls were in the main room and I was emptying the dryer. The conversation went like this:

Kaylee: MOM!!!!!
Me: Yes Kaylee.
Kaylee: MOM!!!! WHERE ARE YOU????
Me: I am in the laundry room, Kaylee. What do you need?
Kaylee: MOM!!! (she appears in the laundry room) I SEE THE TOY!!!!
Me: What? (reality of what she said sets in) OH!!! Well, let's go see it!
Kaylee: OK! (turns around and leads me to the toy bucket) RIGHT THERE! (pointing wildly)

I pulled out "the toy" and asked her if she wanted me to show her how it worked and was frantically advised that she did not want to see it work. Adam suggested throwing it away and Kaylee was all about that! She walked with me to the trash and we threw it away.

What is "the toy"?



Here is a video of Kaylee and her friend playing with "the toy" around her 1st birthday.

I guess I can see why she would be afraid.

Hopefully, the toy's death by trash can will be the end of the nightmares. 

Jesus

Jesus- 

Came to earth as a baby. With nothing. To die for us. To save us. So we could live. In spite of who we are.


Isn't that the most beautiful gift anyone could ever receive?


Today I praise my Lord for coming to Earth in spite of who I am and who I have been, to live and die for me. 


Happy Birthday Jesus!

Cookie Confession

So, a while back I made the "best ever chocolate chip cookies" and labeled them okay but not fabulous.

Now I must confess. When I made the cookies I did not have unsalted butter. And before you consider me a failure, I googled what I could do without having to go to the store and everything I read said that I could use my salted butter and just eliminate the salt.

I did not feel like it was that big of a deal.

I was wrong, reader. It was a big deal.

One night I wanted some cookies and had some unsalted butter and decided to give the recipe another chance since I LOVED working with the actual dough.

The cookies were really good. While the cookies are still not fabulous, the recipe is now my go-to recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

They are super easy to make, the dough is amazing to work with, and the cookies taste good.

Win. Win. Win.

Kaylee's Kidbits

Where to start? Kaylee is the life of our house right now. She has so much energy and is excited about everything!

In the last 9 months her vocabulary has jumped leaps and bounds. Thinking back to when Ella was born and Kaylee came to the hospital to meet her, she could barely put a sentence together. Now she is having full conversations about super important things like the trash man driving down the road or how she needs her phone because her "Mamaw is calling".

She jumps everywhere. I never thought she could love something more than dancing. I was wrong. She LOVES to jump!

Singing is also something she loves to do. Her favorite song to sing is skinnamarinkydinkydink. It is the cutest thing ever. If you don't believe me, see for yourself.

She still loves to dance around the room. She always wants to listen to "Move" by MercyMe. Here is the live version if you want to hear it. (The radio version in my opinion is better on itunes, but this was the best one I could find for you to see.)

Potty training is going well. The only time she wears diapers is at bedtime and at naps. I know one of these days I need to just make the jump on this, but I am not quite ready to commit to cleaning up bed messes. She occasionally has accidents, but it is generally when a lot is going on or we have people over and she does not want to stop whatever she is doing. She has really done great overall!

She has been learning to share as Ella is getting more into playing. Sometimes this is difficult for her, but she is really doing much better than she used to. (There are times when she shares things with Ella that she shouldn't.)

Titus is still her favorite "toy" in the house. He loves her as well. After our excursion around the states, she held him from morning until night. Poor cat loved every minute. She would put him down and he would rub right up against her, purring, as if he was saying, "Kaylee, pick me up again." They play chase sometimes now. Kaylee will run after him and he will hide behind the couch and then she will run back down the hall and he will jump out and run after her. They do this off and on all day. (Sometimes it startles me because Titus is pretty stinking spazzy when he is running back and forth.)

She counts to 5 now and can sing most of the alphabet. She is such a big girl.

Kaylee brings me joy and I look forward to seeing the new developments that she will make over the next several months.

Ella's Endeavors

Ella is growing like a weed. She has grown up a TON in the last few weeks. There was one week in particular that she learned how to sit by herself, clap her hands, dance, and hold her bottle.

She is super adorable when she dances. She really gets into it. Check out these videos and see for yourself.

Anyways, she is not crawling yet, but she is everywhere!  She just scoots around on her bottom until she gets where she wants to be.  If she topples over, she just rolls to her belly and scoots backwards around the room to what she wants.  At this point I wonder if she will ever crawl since she already knows how to get to things without crawling. We will see I suppose.

She likes to make this terrible noise. It's like a growl mixed with a grunt. (You can sort of get the idea of what it sounds like if you watch the first dancing video above.)  It was cute the first time she did it. Now she will start doing it and Kaylee joins in. They do it back and forth for what feels like all day long. It is not so cute anymore.

We are dog-sitting Indy for my friend Angel while she and her husband are picking up their beautiful little girl Maddie from China. Ella LOVES Indy. He likes to lay on her blanket where she plays when we are out in the living room (we have hard wood floors) and she gets sooo excited and starts squealing at him. He is such a trooper because he will just lay there while she slobbers all over him. He must not mind though because when Kaylee does things he does not like he will come over to me and pout. He has not done this with Ella.

She still does not have any teeth. It is crazy to me becuase by this point Kaylee almost had all of her teeth. Ella is definitely teething. She drools and drools and drools. (which is nasty when you mix it with spit-up and the current snot she has) She is just a cute little bundle of grossness right now.

After her last appointment at 6 months, we put her on solids and weaned her off of her reflux medication to see how she did without it.  I am happy to say that she is no longer on the medication and seems to be doing fine.  She still spits-up a LOT as I mentioned above, but it has gotten a little better now that she is on solids.  I am just glad she is feeling better.

She and Kaylee play so great together! Kaylee will jump to entertain herself and Ella will just bust out laughing which of course encourages Kaylee to jump more. It is super cute!

You would think that since I already have Kaylee that Ella's accomplishments and growth would not surprise me, but I just cannot get over how quickly they grow up. I know that they are both still very young and I have lots of time with them left, but they make huge educational leaps those first few years that the time just flies!

Elanor is such a good baby and I look forward to the growing she is going to do in the next few months especially.

Motivational Dress

So a few days before our busyness began, I realized that my current sewing project was not going to be completed when I wanted it to be. I had recently been given a bag of clothing from a friend and after going through the bag I found several things that I wanted to "up-cycle". Before Pinterest I would have never known what that word meant so if you are not familiar with the term it means that you are using old clothing (or other older used items) to make something new. In this bag I found a shirt and skirt that I thought I could use for something. I forgot to take pictures of them separate, but remembered after I pinned them together before I cut and sewed.

I decided to cut off the skirt and re-hem it and sew it to the top and add a belt. I am going to add some belt loops as soon as I remember where I placed the leftover fabric, but for now here is the finished project.

I can't wait to wear it! Motivation to lose the "baby weight".

The Last 4 Weeks

It has been a fabulous 4 weeks.  Today has been hard because not only is life back to normal, but I woke up with a terrible head cold. My main reason for writing today though is to catch you up on what has been going on here.

About 6 weeks ago Adam found out that he was heading to St Louis for work the week before Thanksgiving so we headed there with him to see my parents before they jump into bell ringing season.

It was such a great visit. My Dad has mono and while I feel bad for him, I was glad to get some extra time with him since usually he stays super busy during our visits. The girls loved seeing their Papa and Nana. Kaylee helped Nana decorate the Christmas tree.

We had Christmas together while we were there and Mom and Dad got Kaylee Rapunzel from her favorite "Princess Movie". It also came with a matching dress. She loves that doll!

After our wonderful visit with my parents, we went home to do laundry and re-pack to head to Minnesota for Thanksgiving. First stop was Adam's Aunt and Uncle's house. We had a great visit with them and then headed further north to visit our best friends Meggan and Trevor. Kaylee and Addison were fast friends.

We did a lot of relaxing and playing and dancing and laughing! The boys gave us some time off and we did the same for them. We had such a great visit and it made me wonder why we live so far away from one another.

After our few days with the Schwirtz's we started making our journey home by spending a night with our great friends Casey and Daniel. We spent the evening eating this amazing soup that Casey made and playing some Tichu. Adam and I won and I am pretty certain this is the first time we have ever won as a team.

We got home at about 8 pm from our trip and so I unpacked, cleaned, and got the girls into bed while Adam took his Grandma home. (She had ridden with us to Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving with Adam's Aunt and Uncle. - She is brave for traveling with us.) The very next morning I ran to get groceries because our awesome friends Kim and Chris were coming to visit for a night. 

Ella had a ton of fun with Brayden. She really wanted to keep up with him as he was crawling everywhere leaving her in the dust.

We played lots of games in their one night stay. I was so glad they came to visit!

The morning the Hoch's left was a pretty somber event for me because I knew life was going to slow down and get back to normal. I decided to take a 3 hour nap to delay the inevitable. Good thing I did! That evening my brother Michael and his wife Rachel showed up for a week long stay. 

We went shopping, took pictures, played games, ate great food, and sang lots! I was extremely grateful that they flew out to visit! We recorded two songs while we were together. You can find them here and here.

These last four weeks have been such a huge blessing and makes me ever so grateful as we go into this Christmas season. Thanks to all of you for allowing us to be a part of your lives! We love you and miss you already!