Naomi's Birthday Party

We had Naomi's birthday party this weekend at Jacob's parents' house.  Naomi was SO excited for her party.  She'd been talking all week about her birthday party, and birthday balloons, and birthday cake... and she loved it all, of course!  Especially being the center of attention.  We did an Easter egg hunt for the kids--Aleta loved being outside but didn't care at all about the eggs.  But Naomi loved gathering the eggs and putting them in her basket.

Naomi got some boas and dress-up shoes for her dress-up center, a Disney Princess stamp set, and a bunch of new clothes that my parents sent from Pennsylvania.  Thanks everybody!!

I didn't get a ton of pictures, but here are a few!

 

My lame decorations... haha

 

 

And a video or two...

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.

3 years ago...

Three years ago, I became a mother.  I loved my tiny 5 pound, 11 ounce baby!

I can't believe Naomi is 3 years old today.  I still think of her as my little baby, but when I look at these pictures, she looks so grown up.

Naomi talks ALL the time.  I took her out for a little birthday outing today to pick out cupcakes and run a few errands, and Naomi was talking constantly when we were out.  Driving in the car, this is what I heard from the backseat, "Look!  Trees!  More trees!  Lots of trees!  Look!  Cars!  Lots of cars!  Look!  A truck!  It's a bus?  A yellow bus!  Where's Daddy?  I miss Daddy.  Let's go home and see Daddy and Aleta.  We're getting cupcakes?  Yummy cupcakes!  Birthday pancakes? (that is what she calls birthday cake/cupcakes) *yawn* I'm really tired.  Omi is really tired.  Ouch! (as we go over a tiny bump)  That hurt Omi!  Are we going to the store?  I'm hungry!  I want a yummy dinner!  Look!  Trees!  Oh, the trees are gone.  We need to buy some more!"  ("buy some more" is her solution for every problem.)

Naomi knows all of her capital letters.  She can count to 14 or so and recognizes some of the numbers.  She knows most of the basic colors.  She knows circles and triangles and can draw circles but needs help drawing triangles.  She LOVES puzzles.  And bubbles.  And building towers with her blocks, or cans of food, or boxes, or anything else that she can stack.  She also loves throwing/catching a ball, kicking her soccer ball, coloring, slides & swings, having dance parties, playing baseball & tennis on the Wii, reading (sometimes), and singing songs.  Oh, and she loves watching tv and movies, but we are trying to steer her away from that!  She is still a terrible eater most of the time, but she does love pizza, spaghetti, her Granddaddy's spanish rice, chocolate, cookies, chips, & ice cream.  And lately, green beans.  She ate an entire can by herself for lunch the other day.  So, if it is a food she likes AND is in the mood for, she'll eat really well.  Otherwise, forget it!  She's not touching it.

Naomi playing baseball on the Wii.  (She dressed herself on this particular day, in case you were wondering about her outfit!)

Naomi has a very specific bedtime routine, and if we forget even one little thing and put her to bed without it, she will stand by her bedroom door crying until we come back in and do the thing we forgot.  Her routine goes something like this:  We change her diaper & get her into pajamas.  We brush her teeth, and wash her hands, and she points to the red & green food coloring in the bathroom cabinet. (We use it to make bathtime a little more fun!)  Then we go in her room and put together her alphabet puzzle and sometimes her number puzzle (but half of the pieces are missing, so we just do as much as we can).  Then we read books (she becomes very attached to library books for this part of her routine.  When we have to take her books back, she chooses a few of the new library books as her "bedtime books").  Then we sing songs, in this order:  Popcorn Popping, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Once There Was a Snowman.  Then we say prayers, lay down to snuggle, and she spells her name while pointing to the wooden letters on her wall.  When she's had enough snuggling, she gives us kisses and hugs, and we cover her with her blankie (making sure she also has her hippo and her little mermaid magnet), and she will finally go to bed.

Naomi treats her hippo like her baby... this was after she changed his "stinky diaper". 

Naomi is such a good big sister.  She loves "Tah-ee" SO much.  She has recently started sometimes calling Aleta something that sounds a lot more like "Aleta" instead of "Tah-ee", and it makes me a little sad.  I think it's cute hearing Naomi's little nickname for Aleta.  Naomi and Aleta play together all the time, running around and laughing and chasing each other.  (The video is from November, but it's still cute!)

Naomi is such a fun little girl.  She is incredibly energetic and always has to be busy doing something and running around, which is why she doesn't always love reading--she just doesn't want to sit still long enough to read a story.  I love that she is old enough now to have conversations with me.  She makes me laugh all the time.

I love you, my beautiful Naomi-girl!!

 

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!!

Evidence that I'm not always a lame mom

I've been trying to take Naomi out of the house more often to do some fun things... I have been needing to make up for the fact that I've been a pretty terrible mother lately. And by "lately", I mean pretty much since I got pregnant with Aleta. I was just always so sick and tired, and then I had Aleta and I was just plain tired, so I have been a total slacker mom. I'm still doing a pretty bad job, but I am trying... that's the important thing, right?

One of our favorite things to do together is go to the Lend & Learn library. That place is awesome! It's open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays during the school year from 10 to 1. Basically there are 4 rooms full of toys that you can come and play with. The main area, kind of in the middle, has puppets and puzzles and blocks and cars and other things, along with a table to color or do art projects or eat snacks on. Then there's what I call the reading room with books and magazines and baby toys and comfy places to sit. There's a room with make-believe play stuff, like play food and dishes, a kid table, a play kitchen, a children's couch, a mailbox, a play store, baby dolls and accessories, and lots of dress-up clothes. Finally, there's Naomi's favorite room which has a couple slides, ride-on toys, little basketball hoops and balls, and some other toys. They also have a room full of toys that you can check out and keep at home for a month to play with. And the best part is that it's all completely FREE! Yeah... we love it.

Coloring at the Lend & Learn

Perfect-sized couch!

Naomi looks so big to me in this picture.

We have also gone to the mall a few times to run around and use up some of Naomi's energy (she seems to have an endless supply these days). On one of our outings back in April, I took Naomi to get sandals for the spring/summer. We tried on & bought some sandals at Sears and then wandered around the mall for a little while. As we walked past all of the coin-operated rides, Naomi ran right over to play on them. I found a few quarters in my bag, so I figured I'd be a cool mom and let her ride one! Naomi, who had been smiling and laughing and happily playing in the ride, totally freaked out when it turned on and started moving. It was pretty funny... but I was also quite annoyed that I wasted a dollar! At least I have learned my lesson... Naomi has more fun playing on the rides when they aren't on. And that makes it free, so really, I can't complain!

hehe... Her facial expression here makes me laugh.  She was having fun, I swear!

We've also been trying to get out to the park more often to enjoy the nice weather.  One of our favorite parks is Cosmo park, which is HUGE!  I only take Naomi to that park either when Aleta is at home with Jacob, or when Jacob is able to come with us, because it's way too hard to follow Naomi around if I also have Aleta in the stroller.  There are too many different levels, and I can't bring Aleta everywhere and make sure Naomi is being safe if I have both girls with me.

Cute/creepy? smile to show she's having fun!

This girl loves the slide!

Static!