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!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

That's what I would tell you if you asked me how we have been lately... we have been SO busy!!  I have been working two part-time babysitting jobs, one during the day and one in the evening (and the daytime job has somehow turned into full-time lately), and it has made my life a thousand times crazier.  Three weeks ago, I worked 53 hours and went two full days without seeing my girls (oh my, that was so hard!!), and last week, I worked 47 hours.  It has made cooking and cleaning and laundry pretty much impossible, so Jacob has taken over a lot of the cleaning for me.  Luckily, he had a 3-week break from school and has been able to help me out a ton.  But he went back to school on Monday of this week, so I don't know how we are going to survive now!  Stay tuned, because I'm sure it will be interesting. :)

Last week, our friend Angela came to visit for a few days!  She is one of my old roommates from BYU (and also Jacob's ex-girlfriend... but that's a story for another day!).  We had a lot of fun, even though she was only here for 3 days.  We tried out the lake/beach area at Stephen's Lake Park here in Columbia.  Somehow, we even got Naomi to get into the lake and play in the water a little bit!  I think I've mentioned that she has an awful fear of water when it's in a lake, or a pool, or a splash park, or pretty much anywhere other than a bathtub or sink.  So we were shocked that we were successful in coaxing her into the water!  She had a moment when she fell face-first into the water and I was afraid it was going to ruin our progress, but it ended up being ok.

Aleta, in her cute HUGE hat.  (I couldn't find the baby hat!)

 

Naomi, nervously eyeing the water.

I don't know what Naomi is doing here, but it made me laugh. :)

At least Naomi smiled for this one, even if she didn't look at the camera!

Angela's first experience with Steak 'n Shake!

Smiling at Daddy

Me & Ang, about to leave for the airport.

Jacob & I went to his 10-year high school reunion a couple weekends ago, which was a major letdown for him.  First, they held it in a bar, which is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.  That's just trashy.  I get that they're all from some small hick town in Missouri, but come on!  Couldn't they have even tried to make it a little more classy?  The bar smelled SO badly like cigarette smoke that I felt like I needed a shower as soon as I got home to wash the stink off of me.  And it was so loud that Jacob and I had to literally scream at each other to be heard, even though we were sitting right beside each other.  That's not exactly the atmosphere I would think people would want at a reunion, when they are trying to catch up with friends they haven't seen in years. And there wasn't even close to enough room for everyone who came--they didn't rent out the bar, so it wasn't just reunion people there.  They had maybe 12 tables reserved, which filled up quickly.  By the time Jacob & I left, our table was surrounded by people who were standing because there wasn't anywhere left to sit.  And once it got crowded, we never saw our waitress again, so it took us close to 45 minutes to track her down so we could pay for our 2 sodas and leave.  It was awful.  I'd never been to a bar before, and from what I saw, I don't think I have been missing anything!  We wanted to make the most of our night out (since it's the first date night we've had in a long time) so we stopped at IHOP on the way home to have a delicious dinner.  I had chocolate chip pancakes (made with chocolate batter), and Jacob had stuffed French toast.  Yum!!

I think Jacob jabbed me in the side or tickled me or something.

About to leave for the reunion.

Last Friday, we attended a Convocation Ceremony for Jacob at Mizzou, where the people entering his major (nuclear medicine) and a few other majors in the health professions got a pin & recited some oath.  It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but Jacob has had to work EXTREMELY hard to get to this point, and I'm really glad we went to the ceremony.  It was an excuse for me to wear a dress & get all dolled up, and I was proud to see Jacob walk across the stage, even if it was just for a silly pin.  I'm so proud of Jacob and the way that he has handled certain experiences that he has unfortunately had to go through in the past year.  Let's be honest--the world can suck a lot of the time, and things are unfair, but Jacob handles all of the crappiness like a pro.  My husband is awesome!  (pictures from the ceremony to come in a future post)

Naomi has been busy being a typical 2-year-old... she enjoys throwing thirty tantrums a day, refusing to eat anything but snacks, and waking up Aleta when I have FINALLY gotten her down for her nap.  She is beautiful and funny, and she has been talking more and more.  She loves to give hugs... she will randomly jump up from where she is sitting, yell "HUG!!", and throw her arms around me.  Or Jacob.  Or Aleta.  Or even Hippo.  She jumped up from her chair in the living room one day, yelled "Hug!", and ran right past both Jacob and me before picking Hippo up from where he was laying on the floor and giving him a big hug.   She can match up colors, and she counts to 8... after 8, she just starts repeating "one" or "two" over & over.  She is definitely a cutie!

For some reason, Naomi squints & kinda scrunches up her face when she says, "Cheese!".

Trying to steal the camera from me... those are chip crumbs all over her face, in case you were wondering!

Aleta has been crawling around for a few weeks now.  She army crawls mostly, or scoots backwards, but she can pretty much get around to anywhere she wants to go.  She is still a really happy baby, and she is usually content to play on the floor and entertain herself.  Naomi was never that way, so I am loving it!  She still eats like a pro--she downs everything I give her.  She hasn't been sleeping so great for me lately, but I guess she has to have one flaw... haha.

Before she could really crawl forward much, she was playing on the floor one day and crawled/scooted backward across the living room until she had backed herself into this spot!  She got stuck between the couch and the wall and couldn't get out!

 

8-month photos

Happy girl!!

As for me, I've been working pretty much nonstop, like I said earlier.  I am not used to being a mother and a wife and working full-time hours, and I am having a rough time finding a balance!  The baby I watch during the day has been very needy lately... and she has the worst separation anxiety I've ever seen.  She screams bloody murder if I leave the room or even walk too far from her (basically, if I get farther than a few feet away, she screams) and doesn't stop until I come back and pick her up to soothe her.  When she screams, it upsets Aleta (who is usually so happy!), so then I have two screaming babies.  It makes it impossible to get anything done while I am watching her, which as I said, has been every day lately.  And then I'm gone in the evenings for my other job, so the housework has definitely suffered.  Hopefully I can find a balance soon so my life & our home can be less of a mess!

Jacob & I had a Brazilian-themed date night at home last weekend, which was fun!  I got the idea from this website, which has AMAZING date ideas & ideas of other ways to keep the romance alive in your marriage.  Anyway, they have a bunch of date night ideas where all of the activities are themed around a country, so you can have a night in Italy, or Mexico, etc. But they didn't have a night for Brazil.  So I planned my own!  I was planning on decorating the kitchen with a big Brazil flag & streamers & other things in the colors from the flag.  Then I had planned on making a yummy Brazilian dinner, which we would eat while listening to Brazilian music, and then we were going to make Brigadeiros together for dessert.  Finally, we would watch Rio, which neither of us had seen yet.  But that's not exactly how the night went down.  I was exhausted from working 47 hours that week, and I had no time to do anything to prep for the date, and our kids were awful and wouldn't go to bed until later than I had hoped, so we only had the time and energy to make Brigadeiros and then watch Rio.  *sigh*  Oh well... I guess we'll just have to visit Brazil for date night again soon, and I can do all the other things I had planned!

This is how I informed Jacob of our date night... you can make your own plane tickets here.  How fun is that?

Our Brigadeiros!  They were delicious!

P.S.  I forgot to mention that Jacob served his mission for our church in Brazil, so he lived there for 2 years and speaks Portuguese.  That's why I chose Brazil for our date night... I thought it would be fun for him to "revisit".  haha :)

6 months

Last Saturday the 16th was Aleta's half birthday!  I can't believe 6 months have already gone by since she was born.  She has gotten SO big!

3 days old--first day at home

2 weeks

3 weeks

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months--I forgot to take a picture with the caterpillar this month, so these are her Easter photos.

5 months

And 6 months!!

I fed Aleta rice cereal for the first time last Saturday.  She didn't hate it, which was surprising.  Naomi absolutely hated rice cereal.  I tried everything I could think of to get her to eat it--mixing it with breastmilk, mixing it with different baby food fruits and vegetables, I tried the oatmeal kind and then the mixed fruit or banana kinds--nothing helped.  She wouldn't touch the stuff.

Aleta, on the other hand, loved it! She didn't eat a ton when she tried it for the first time on Saturday, but she was still getting used to it.  Every other time I've fed her, she has eaten every last bite of her cereal.  I keep accidentally making way more than I mean to, and she still she eats it all!

First bite!

Tasting it... thinking about it...

Happy girl!

I don't know what this face was... haha