Aleta's Birthday

My baby Aleta turned 2 this month!  I can't believe my youngest child is already 2.  I wanted to have a little party for her, but we have been so incredibly busy (and so incredibly tired) the past few weeks, and the thought of trying to plan a party just made me want to cry.  So I decided she didn't need a party!  Instead, we invited our next-door neighbors Katie & Justin (They are nursery leaders at church, and Aleta just LOVES them) over for Aleta's birthday dinner and cake, and we had a nice, relaxing night at home.  We had spaghetti & meatballs (one of the kids' favorite meals), and Aleta opened presents, and we had cake and ice cream.  Although we didn't actually eat ice cream, because I forgot that it was in the freezer, which is exactly what I did for Jacob's birthday back in September, too!  At least this time I hadn't bought 4 half gallons of it for a party... we probably gained 10 pounds from eating all that ice cream ourselves after Jacob's party!

It's a terrible picture, but it's the only one I got during dinner!

Aleta was super excited about her cake.  She gobbled up her piece and then sat there screaming, "I need more cake!  I need more cake!".  She loved it!  Naomi, on the other hand, has never really liked cake.  She tells me she wants cake, or a cupcake, and then just licks off the icing and says she's done.

She didn't think a fork was necessary.

Naomi was very excited for party hats.  She was with me a few weeks ago at the Dollar Tree, and she saw the hats in the party aisle and begged me for some.  Since Aleta's birthday was coming up, we bought a pack.  It's been a week since Aleta's birthday, and Naomi will still occasionally decide to wear one of the party hats for meals.  Silly girl!

We got Aleta a big stuffed owl, which Naomi picked out... that girl really loves owls for some reason!  Naomi and I were grocery shopping at Walmart a couple months ago, and she saw the big stuffed owl and got so excited.  But I had already promised to sew Naomi the stuffed owl she saw & wanted on Pinterest, so she really didn't need a second stuffed owl (Naomi doesn't play with stuffed animals much, anyway).  Aleta, on the other hand, loves stuffed animals.  She carries them everywhere and cuddles them and hugs them.  So Naomi and I decided to buy it for Aleta for her birthday!  It's called a pillow pet, I think, and it was only 12 dollars, which I thought was a pretty good price for the size of it!

Aleta will occasionally share her owl with Naomi.

Her other gift was a toy broom set.  Aleta has a thing for brooms... I don't get it!  If they leave the broom out in the nursery room at church, Aleta will run right to it and start playing with it.  She does the same thing here at home, or at Nanny & Granddaddy's house, or anywhere she can find a broom.  She loves them!  So she has been loving her toy broom!  And I got it for free with my Swagbucks giftcards, which was pretty awesome!    I started doing Swagbucks this year, and I love it so much!  If you haven't heard of it, when you sign up for an account, you can earn "swagbucks" for doing surveys, or watching little videos, or playing games, or searching the web using their search engine.  I get most of mine through surveys.  Then with the swagbucks, you can buy gift cards to lots of places, like Amazon or Walmart or Target.  I paid for almost our entire Christmas this year with Amazon gift cards I got from Swagbucks.  I added it up, and I got about $140 worth of free stuff!  Pretty freakin' awesome. (I will be posting more later about all the free stuff I got for Christmas!)

A little bit about my beautiful 2-year-old:
Aleta loves "reading" books and will sit for a long time by herself, just looking through all of our books.  She even picks up my books, which have no pictures, and sits there "reading" them.  She is really good at playing by herself.  I'll quite often find her in the playroom, playing alone quietly.  She also loves playing with Naomi, of course.  One of their favorite games recently is to turn our big rocking/arm chair thing so its back is next to the couch, and then they climb on top of it and then jump/flop onto the couch cushions.  Over and over and over.  Aleta loves painting and coloring.  She's usually pretty good about keeping it on paper, but I have had to clean up the walls a few times since we've moved here!  She calls all of those coloring activities "color paint".  So when she asks to "color paint" she either wants crayons, markers, or paint, and I have to figure out which one.  She is a pretty good eater, most of the time.  She will often eat twice as much as Naomi.  And she LOVES fruits & vegetables (especially fruit, like watermelons & grapes), which is nice!  She loves shoes and is almost always wearing her boots or a pair of shoes, even if she's not wearing any clothes (which is often the case).  I don't know what it is about little kids and being naked!

A funny story about Aleta from the other day... I was giving Aleta some crackers, which she calls "crack".  So every time she needed more, she would start yelling, "I need more crack!  I need more crack!".   It made me laugh. :)

Here are a few pictures taken on her actual birthday (we had her little party the day before)... her face is covered in sticky candy cane residue, in case you were wondering.  Somehow I didn't notice until after taking all of the pictures!

She's saying "Cheese"

 

Happy Birthday, my darling girl!  We love you so much!

Other Family Updates

I posted all about Naomi on her birthday post, but I figured it would be good to give updates for the rest of us!

Aleta is 15 months old now.  She runs around and climbs on the furniture and can pretty much keep up with Naomi.  Her favorite place to sit is on top of the couch, looking out the window.  She talks a lot for her age.  She is always repeating things that we say and mimicking our sounds.  She was hanging out in the kitchen with me tonight while I was cooking dinner, and I was singing along to a song that was on a video game Jacob was playing in the living room (not words, but just singing along with the tune).  Every time I stopped singing, Aleta would start making the same sounds I had been making, in a little sing-songy voice.  It was cute.

The girls running around and playing with hats...

Aleta says night night, let go, wee!, no, go, stop, mine, yummy, yum, cheese, jump, cup, bubbles, ball, mama, shoes, don't touch, up, sit, cookie, and probably a bunch more words that I can't think of at the moment.  She loves reading books and spends a good part of every day looking at books.  She also LOVES stuffed animals.  Naomi never really got interested in stuffed animals other than her hippo, but Aleta loves them.  She will grab & snuggle 2 or 3 of them at a time.  She used to hate shoes, and she would scream bloody murder the second I tried putting them on her feet.  She would continue to scream and kick until I finally gave up and took them off.  Then about 2 weeks ago, she suddenly decided she LOVES shoes and wants to wear them every moment of the day.  She will bring me one of my shoes, or one of Jacob's, and cry until I put it on her foot, and then when it falls off a few seconds later, she will bring it back and cry again until I put it on her again.  This continues until I get tired of it (which doesn't take long), and then she throws a tantrum.  Aleta loves being held and snuggled, and she doesn't go to bed easily unless I snuggle her for a few minutes in the rocking chair.  It's nice--Naomi never really liked being held or cuddled.  I remember looking forward to Naomi's bottle times before naps & bedtime because it was the only time she would let me hold her for more than a few seconds.

Jacob is still plugging away at school and clinicals.  He graduates in May, and we are SO excited for him to finally get his degree!  We still aren't sure what we will be doing or where we will be going when he is finished.  We are applying to every job we can find, and there's also a really cool Master's program that he applied for and would really like to do.  So we will see what happens!  (And if you want us to come live by you, find us a nuclear medicine job and we'll make it happen! haha)

Oh, one thing that I forgot to put in Naomi's birthday post.  I mentioned that she loves playing games on the wii... in the last few days, she has started yelling "Are you kidding me?!" at the tv periodically while she is playing.  I guess she has been listening to Jacob while he plays Call of Duty... he frequently yells that at the tv when things aren't going well for him.  I find it pretty funny, but I don't think I want that to become a habit of hers!  I also wanted to mention how proud I am of her for how quickly she picks up on good manners and knowing the right way to treat people.  She is really good at saying "thank you" (maybe not as good with please, but we will work on that!), and she is always telling Jacob, Aleta, and me to "be nice!" if she thinks we are doing something that isn't nice.  She started yelling "shut up!" a couple weeks ago when people were being loud, which I was NOT ok with, so I explained to her that it's nicer to say "quiet, please".  She very quickly stopped yelling shut up and started saying, "Quiet, please!" instead.  I was so proud!  (Well, she actually YELLS it, but at least she switched to the nicer words!)

Before this year, Naomi only got to go out in the snow once, and it was before she even turned 1, so she didn't really play in it.  Last year we didn't really get any snow, so I was really excited to take her out in the snow this year!  We went out a couple times when we got our last snowstorm.  Naomi LOVED it.  She wasn't a huge fan of the sled, but she loved making snow angels, building a snowman, and shoveling (no idea why that's fun, but it's cute!).  Aleta, on the other hand, HATED it.  She screamed and cried the whole time she was outside, so it didn't last too long.  She usually loves going outside and tries to escape every time the door is open, but she didn't like the snow at all!

Me & Naomi in the snow!

And here are a few other random photos from things we've been doing lately!

Jacob & I had our Chinese date in February (from our monthly dates that I gave him for his birthday).  We ate yummy orange chicken and watched a ridiculous Jackie Chan movie--the Medallion.  It was completely ridiculous and silly, but we enjoyed it!

On one of our snow days when Jacob got to stay home from clinicals, I made cinnamon rolls and brought him breakfast in bed. Just for fun! :)

Naomi took markers and "painted her eyes" (her words) like Mommy one day.  She watches me do my makeup, and I guess she wanted to wear some, too!

Aleta apparently wanted to be like her big sister, so she painted her eyes as well!

Aleta's face in this photo cracks me up.

We had cupcakes on Naomi's birthday... Aleta LOVED them.

Christmas

Christmas this year did not turn out at all like we had planned, but we still had a wonderful holiday.  Both of our kiddos got very, very sick last week, so we had to change most of our plans.  Naomi was over the worst of it by the weekend, but poor Aleta came down with the bug on Saturday and had a fever that spiked at 104.2--it was terrifying!!  Naomi's fever had spiked at 104.3, which was also super scary for me, but I was even more worried when Aleta's got that high.  She is just barely one year old and still so little!  I went in her room and checked on her every few hours that first night--I was just so scared that her fever would spike back up when the medicine wore off, which it did, so I kept checking on her and giving her doses of tylenol and ibuprofen as needed.  Thankfully, on Sunday her fever was MUCH better.  I don't think it went above 102.  What I was especially grateful for was that Aleta didn't have the vomiting or the rash that Naomi had when she was sick. Naomi was throwing up for 2 days and had an awful, itchy rash all over her entire body.  She would just sit in her chair, scratching her stomach and arms and legs and crying.  It was so sad!  I knew if Aleta got the rash, it would be even worse because she is so young and wouldn't understand what was happening.  And she would be too young to take Benadryl, which was the only thing we could give Naomi to help.  So I am so grateful that Aleta only had the fever!! 

Since Aleta didn't get the bug as badly as Naomi, she seemed to get better much faster than we had expected.  By Christmas Eve, she was pretty happy again and only had a low fever.  We still stayed home on Christmas Eve instead of going to Jacob's parents' as we had originally planned, since the girls were still sick.  There are a lot of young babies in Jacob's family, and I didn't want any of them to get what our girls had!  And I was worried about our kids being exposed to any other sicknesses or germs when their immune systems have been so run down.  So we stayed home.   I made peanut butter fudge and chocolate fudge and sugar cookies.  We had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for dinner, and then spent some time as a family decorating the cookies.  Then the girls played in their bath, and we read a Christmas story before bed.  It was a nice, low-key day, which was just what we needed.  After the kids were asleep, I stayed up late cleaning, arranging the gifts under the tree, and making our crock-pot breakfast casserole for Christmas morning.  I was so glad that I had wrapped everything ahead of time, because I was up until almost 3 in the morning doing everything else!  I wrapped the gifts slowly this year, taking my time to make them look extra good.  I was proud of my gift-wrapping this year.  I used bows that actually matched the wrapping paper, and I used curling ribbon on some of the presents to make them look pretty.  I even searched online for free gift tags and found tags that looked good with each of the different wrapping papers that I used.  Then I hung the gift tags from the bows with thread.  I especially liked the special tags I found for the gifts from Santa... they were so cute!

Reading our Christmas story

Special gift tags from Santa... how cute are these?

My pretty wrapped gifts!

Thanks to the generosity of others and a few amazing deals that I found, the girls had some great presents to open on Christmas morning!  Aleta still doesn't really know what to do with a wrapped gift, so we had to help her, but Naomi loved opening her presents.  The play kitchen from my parents was a huge hit, as I knew it would be.  The girls will be having lots of fun with that over the next few years!!  I think Aleta's favorite gift was a Build-a-Bear teddy bear she received.  It was adorable, and she especially loves stuffed animals and teddy bears.  She was so cute with the teddy bear, hugging it and patting it on the back.  (She recently started doing that whenever we hug her--she pats us on the back or shoulder while she hugs us.  It's pretty adorable.)

She did not want Daddy's help to unwrap her present.

Naomi, unwrapping her present SO fast!

Aleta with one of her new toys... it was wrapped in a trash bag, haha.

Aleta with her new activity cube!

Naomi LOVES soccer balls, so we finally got her one of her own.

Since the girls were feeling so much better, we were finally able to go see Jacob's family and spend the rest of Christmas day with them. We had a delicious Christmas dinner, and we even got to make gingerbread houses, which I had really wanted to do this year.  We just ran out of time and were too busy with everyone being sick this month, so I was happy that we got to make one on Christmas day!  Jacob constructed our little house, but I did something stupid when I started to decorate it and accidentally collapsed the whole thing.  We still had fun eating graham crackers and icing though. :)   

A bunch of the girls went to see Les Mis at the 9:50 showing last night, so I went, too.  Jacob stayed back with the kids and played Halo 4 all night with his brother, so I am pretty sure he had fun as well.  Les Mis was amazing!  But since it was so late and I had slept so little the night before, I was exhausted, so I want to rent it and watch it again when it comes out on DVD.  I think I will enjoy it even more when I'm not falling asleep in my chair. :)  We didn't get back to our house until a little after 3 in the morning, so Jacob and I spent most of today taking turns napping!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!

the rest of our week

I was so wiped out from all of our fun on Thursday that I was too exhausted on Friday to do much.  The girls and I spent the morning at the playground, so we did make my goal of getting out of the house and doing something fun, and then Jacob & I spent the rest of the day/evening cleaning & organizing the house and working on our food storage.  I also finished a little house project--I have been trying to figure out what to hang on the wall by the kitchen table for a while now, but it was hard to find something that I liked for the kitchen that I was capable of making and that wouldn't cost me anything.  I finally found an idea for something that I kinda liked a couple weeks ago, and I was able to finish the project and get it hung up on Friday.  I think I like it... it will do for now, at least, until someday when we have money and can buy real wall art!

Centered on the wall behind the kitchen table

Close-up!  There's something about the teapot that bugs me... but it was the hardest one to draw and cut out... I am not an artist!

I have to admit that on Saturday I was not able to get out of the house with the girls to do anything fun.  My goal was to get out every day last week and take them somewhere fun, but I just couldn't do it on Saturday.  I had planned to take them to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning to get some yummy home-baked treats, but I ended up having to work, so it didn't work out.  Then Jacob was gone with the car for the rest of the day playing paintball with his brothers.  I did make a delicious dinner of sweet & sour chicken, though, so the day wasn't a complete waste!

I was going to post the video I mentioned yesterday of Naomi playing with the food coloring in the tub, but in today's world, I am slightly worried that some crazy person would think it was inappropriate.  So I won't be posting that one.  But here's a video of Aleta babbling in her crib in the morning!  (Ignore the vacuum handle and boxes mess... we had recently finished cleaning and boxing up too-small baby clothes.)

Also, here is Aleta's 5-month picture with the giant caterpillar... she is getting so big!!  I completely missed taking a 4-month picture, and her 5-month picture is like 10 days late, but oh well.  I try my best!