The Daily Grind

I've had a goal lately of taking pictures of the everyday things that make me smile.

 

 

This is how Skyler sleeps.  He likes to fall asleep with his light on now that he sleeps without Lily.  He builds what he calls his "bird nest" -- aka pile of stuffed animals -- and he usually sleeps smack dab in the middle of it.  He also likes to squish everything onto the bottom half of his bed and he always keeps a water cup on the edge of his bed.

 

Skyler likes to build "bird nests" wherever he goes.  He's made them at my parents' house and he keeps one in our master bedroom so he can chill in there while we do family scripture study.

 

Breakfast on the deck on a rainy morning.  I really love Lily and Skyler's bedhead and tired (or is it pirate?) smiles.

 

The excitement that comes when you open Ella's door when she wakes up from her nap.  Her curls bounce as she jumps up and down hyperventilating.  Oh chubby legged babyliciousness... When I posted on facebook about how excited I was that she was starting to pull herself into standing position on her own I loved what April said when I mentioned that Ella was behind physically:  "Of course she's behind. Her cheeks weigh more than any other kid's. It's hard work lifting all that adorableness!"  Truer words have never been spoken.

 

The kids constantly share food with Ella.  There's a reason why she's so chubby and it's not solely because of Ben and me.  Just tonight Lily was feeding her some frozen yogurt at Costco.  In this picture Lily is sharing her snowcone with Ella because our HOA hired an ice cream truck to give free ice cream to everyone in the neighborhood (I love this house!)  There are times when Lily and Skyler share food with Ella when it's not cute.  Like at dinner.  When it's green beans.  "But we're shaaaaaaaaring, Mom."  Riiiiiiight.

 

Adventures in the back yard.  Getting a bigger yard was pretty big on our wishlist when we were house hunting.  We had debated getting a nicer house with a yard the same size as our last one, but I'm so glad we went for the bigger yard now.  After just a couple of days in our house I told Ben that I had never seen their imaginations so alive before.  They would go back into the trees with a frisbee and make leaf soup and all sorts of other delicacies and come in covered in dirt.  To me, that's exactly what they should be doing at this age.

 

Playtime in the bonus room.  This was the very first house we looked at when we were starting to look into buying again.  The kids ran upstairs without us and we couldn't even hear them running around and playing because of how well the house is built.  Ben and I looked at each other and silently said, "SOLD!"

 

I'm going to keep taking pictures of the daily grind and I'll post a few here and there because sometime in the next few weeks our "normal" is about to be flipped upside down with Lily starting school and Thad making his first appearance. 

Kiddo-isms

Sadly I got this shot just seconds after the A/C turned off and Ella's dress was left deflated.  Just imagine it being all puffed up and I'll virtually fist bump you.  She loves that vent.  But let me tell you that that vent does not love her hair.  If you've ever wondered what a blond baby afro would look like you should check out Ella after she's done playing with the vent.

 

 

While we were getting into the car after church on Sunday:

Ben:  "So what did you learn about in Primary?"

Lily:  "Sharing.  And look!  I got a whole bag of candy!"

Ben:  "So are you going to share your candy?"

Lily:  *shrugs*  "Maybe."

(Despite her less than enthusiastic reaction, she actually gave Skyler about half her candy)

 

 

When it was Skyler's turn to pray Sunday night:

"Dear Heavenly Father, please bless this food (he still struggles to remember that you don't do that during family prayers).  And please bless us that we can live with Jesus again someday because when we get old we're going to die.  Name of Jesus Christ, amen."  He also told me tonight that since I'm old (25......riiiiiiight) I'm going to die soon. 

 

 

After Skyler's pooping incident, we had some pretty serious talks with him about how he needed to tell us anytime he needed to use the bathroom.  We must have stressed the subject a little too much because as we were leaving the pool on Monday night Skyler started announcing to everybody who would listen that he "DIDN'T POOP IN [HIS] SWIMSUIT!!!"  We would try to hush him and change the subject and then he would yell it again, so proud of himself. 

 

 

Lily sings all. day. long.  Sometimes it drives me completely crazy.  I'll ask her what she wants for lunch and she'll sing back (in total pop star fashion), "Peanut butter and je-eh-eh-eh-lllllly!"  Complete with a 5 year-old fake vibrato.  Anyway.  This week she was singing the Super Why theme song, and of course, she typically gets half the words wrong anytime she sings any song.  But she knows the Super Why song pretty well because I get it stuck in my head all the time and I sing it myself.  (Okay.  So she's a mini me.  No need to point fingers).  This was how Lily chose to sing it one day this week:  "Super Why!  Super Why!  He's the guy, he's --  SUP-AH FLY!"  Yep.  My daughter.

 

 

Also, since I'm super pregnant (not that that's my real reason but I like to make excuses for my weirdness) I pick up a lot of things with my toes rather than squat down and start up my Braxton hicks.  Lily and Skyler have learned over the years to pick up things with their toes rather than being normal and just bending over.  I sort of have this mixed sense of pride and shame in this.  Ella is really quick at mimicking.  So you guessed it.  My 12 month-old is now picking things up with her toes.  And when it gets too hard to pick up she'll jam the item in between her toes and then "hand" it to herself.  Yep.  That's my other daughter. 



In case you forgot, I have 3.5 kids.

Every now and then I feel the need to provide my future self an accurate description of real life as a pregnant mom of 3.  Some days are glorious.  And other days are full of Braxton hicks, marker on something that shouldn't be colored on, and lots of saying "Give each other space!" etc. 

Today was one of the bad days, though it wasn't supposed to be.  Today was an IKEA day.  I treasure these trips since we only allow ourselves to take them once a year because a) IKEA is almost 3 hours away and b) we could spend a lot of money there if we didn't have self-control.  I was excited to go, even though I'm 34 weeks along.  Here's a run down of what happened:


- Leave 12 minutes late.  Not bad.
- Pick up some Bojangles because that is our tradition for any multi-hour roadtrip since we take them so rarely.  Boberry biscuits and chicken biscuits.  The day is starting well.
- Take a new route to IKEA.  It's back roads and farmland 90% of the way.  In other words, free therapy.  There were only a few, "Are we getting close?" and "Sort of, we're only 2 1/2 hours away!" comments.
- Arrive at IKEA at the same time as my parents.  Score!
- Make the kids go to the bathroom as soon as we arrive.  They are deathly afraid of bathroom fans so we had to wait for a family bathroom to become available.  No biggie.
- We start our journey through the maze of furniture amazingness.  My heart issues kick in immediately.  I start losing my hearing and vision.  In the meantime, Lily and Skyler are really bummed that we didn't put them in the play land right away (we were waiting to do that later).
- I try to see how far I can go on my own two feet.  It's not far.  Maybe 15 feet at a time before I lose my hearing again?  Eventually my dad gets a wheelchair for me.  This fixes all of my whooziness. 
- Lily and Skyler continue to complain about not being in the cool play area.  We all convince them that we'll be eating lunch soon and as soon as we're done eating they'll get to go play.
- Eat lunch.  Make the kids visit the bathroom again.  Drop kids off.  Yes! 
- 10 minutes later my dad hears someone say over the intercom that "Heather Macbeth is needed at the play area."  My dad wheels me back at lightning speed.  They tell me that Skyler pooped in his pants.  "They have to be potty trained to come in here."  "He is potty trained."  "Well now we have to shut down the whole place."  I watch as a screaming Skyler and Lily come out of the play land.  I also watch as the line of parents who want to drop off their kids are turned away.  "Oh, so can we just drop them off later?"  "No, we're closed for the rest of the day." I'm embarrassed and extremely frustrated.  Because anyone who knows Skyler knows that when he's upset, the whole hemisphere knows about it.  I try to quiet him unsuccessfully.  Ben takes him to the car to get cleaned up and changed.
- We hurry and get our things out of the warehouse which takes some time since we lost our list of aisle and bin numbers.  While Ben and my parents are checking out, all 3 kids are whining and I'm still weak from my heart.  I am emotionally and physically drained.  We take our stuff outside in the 95 degree heat and I'm dying of thirst.  So we stop at a McDonalds to get water for everybody and to take one last potty break before the rest of the trip.  I take Lily in.  The automatic toilet flushes itself before she even gets on and she screams louder than I've ever heard her.  After 5 minutes of this, I give up on any hopes of her doing anything.  We leave.
- Lily sucks her thumb on our way home (we've been working hard on getting her to stop for the last couple of weeks) and lied about it.


I was ready to yell, "Bedtime!" as soon as we got home at 5:30, but I knew we would pay the price for that tomorrow morning. 

But almost immediately it was like the skies cleared (not literally.  It was pouring buckets) and I noticed our newly delivered rug waiting on the porch.  I was a little giddy.  Rugs are expensive.  But we were able to combine a sale and a coupon and get a pretty awesome deal on a rug that miraculously matches our house really well.  Pay no mind to the matchbox cars that are vrooming down the roads on our Moroccan Rug.

I'm feeling a little bit better now.  But here's my new problem.  Our rug is made of wool and comes from India.  As Ben put it, "Our house smells like a dairy farm."  Here's to hoping our guests don't think we're making our baby live in poopy diapers when in reality we just have a gorgeous rug that puts off that aroma.  Cheers!

An Unexpected Note

When I was released from the Primary presidency in the Garner Ward, I was given a thank you card signed by all the Primary teachers.  Even though this kind of has nothing to do with this post, I had to add that they also gave me an orchid.  It was GORGEOUS.  And all I had to do was feed it 3 ice cubes a week and it would stay in perfect condition.  It was ideal for when we were staging our home and everyone who ever saw it thought it was fake because it was that perfect.  And honestly, I say this while I laugh because even my dad was so convinced that it was fake that he left it in his car during the move because he wasn't worried about it dying.  Ha!  Needless to say, it's a goner. I love that story.  I had to record it.

Anyway..... back to the real post.  Apparently I had put the card on top of the fridge and it somehow slipped behind it, so when we moved, I lost the card.  But in the mail this week, I noticed a card from our old address.  What?  Inside was the card I had received from Primary and a letter from our buyers. 

Hello Mrs. Macbeth,

I hope you and your family are doing well and settling into your new home.  We are enjoying your "old home" -- you took such great care of it!  (that's because they don't know about any of the crayon, marker, acrylic paint, and vaseline that was once on practically every surface of our house) -- and the new neighborhood.

We found this thank you card when cleaning behind the fridge.  You seem to have meant a lot to the people who signed it; I couldn't just throw it in the trash.  By the way, you've had a lasting impression on the neighbors I've met too -- they all speak so highly of you!  Please relay to your husband that our children LOVE the castle.

When I read this I think I just blinked a couple of times and was left dumbfounded.  Things got a little hairy the closer we got to our closing date.  Between them asking if they could move in before the actual closing to repairing things that didn't need to actually be repaired, we were starting to get a little frustrated.  But I kept telling myself that when Ben and I had two comparable offers on the table, it was beyond clear to us who was supposed to have our house after we said one short prayer.

I think this letter really sealed the deal for me.  I strangely haven't missed our old house at all, even when Lily and Skyler have said things like, "I miss the castle."  But I especially know now that our old house is being loved by someone who is supposed to be there. 

In the meantime, we feel completely at home in our new house.  It is beyond awesome.  Lily is getting ready to go to school.  I'm getting ready for Thad to arrive.  Ben is enjoying a shorter commute.  Skyler is loving lots of space to play in the backyard without adult supervision.  And we are all loving the neighborhood pool where Lily and Skyler are suddenly not deathly afraid of swimming now that we have a 3-story water slide to enjoy. 

Life and change are good.

My wife is AWESOME!!!

I

LOVE

YOU

HEATHER!!!!!

 

:p..............q:

4

Skyler turned 4 on July 30th.  We had a combined celebration for Ella and Skyler's birthdays with my parents.  So the first few pictures are from Ella's birthday.  Skyler held all the presents over his head after he unwrapped them and it reminded me so much of my Grandpa because he would do that, too, even with his Alzheimer's.  I think it was a Samoan thing?

 

 

 He loved his books from Grandmum and Pop Pop.  He was even nice enough to share them with Lily that night.

Oh the Plasma Car.  I'm going to have to write up a whole post about that probably.  It has been a HUGE hit.

 

Today was Skyler's birthday party.  Check out those light up LEGO'S.  Umm... awesome!

 

 

 

After all the presents were opened, the kids all went on a treasure hunt to find their party favors.  It shouldn't have been a surprise that Skyler ended up in tears.  Oh Skyler. 

 

They found the "treasure" under the deck.  Big water guns for everybody!

 

The kids sort of squirted around a little bit.  Or cried a little bit if you're Skyler.  *sigh*  I love that kid.  I just don't love his constant screaming tears.  One day he'll get past it.  One day.

 

But then Ben distracted them and got them to attack him which they all enjoyed.  Poor little Phoenix.  He should be a stunt man when he grows up. 

 

And for the third year in a row Skyler chose donuts as his birthday treat.  I love living in an area that has so many Krispy Kremes.

 

Things I love about Skyler right now:

• That he actually wants to participate in family scripture study and prayers now that we do them on Mommy and Daddy's bed.  He went through an extreme rebellious stage with this for quite a few months, and after praying and praying and praying, we somehow came up with the whole change of location thing and it has been a hit ever since. 
• He adores his sisters.  He says goodnight to Ella for every nap and gets depressed when he has to say goodnight to Lily at night.  He watches in the hallway as I close her door and it sinks in all over that they don't share a room anymore.  It's slightly depressing yet sweet.  Today at his party, some of our friends were joking about taking Ella home to stay with them and Skyler got genuinely upset about it.  Ha!  It was sweet.
• He's a little smarty-pants.  Since he and Lily are so close in age, I work with them on the same things at the same time.  So he's almost at Lily's level when it comes to academics.
• His mind works just like Ben's.  He likes to build and create whereas Lily prefers drawing and pretending. 
• Right when you're not expecting it, Skyler will come up behind you and give you the biggest hug and kiss ever.
• He is still obsessed with all things tiny and cute.  I think he would die of happiness if I ever took him to a pet store to actually choose a pet.  He is Mia's favorite kid.  She trusts him more than the girls.
• He is beyond thrilled that Thad will be arriving in a month and a half.  Skyler loves to tell people (especially strangers) all about his yet-to-be-born little brother.  Of course he pronounces his name "Fad."

We love our Little Handsome and always will.  Happy 4th birthday Skyler!

Cross dressing, kites, and snails. In that order.

Sometimes I forget to put the SD card in my camera before taking pictures.  It happens.  So since we lost our camera cord in the move and I just got my new one in the mail today, I discovered these gems on my Nikon.

 

 

 

You know when your kids are ridiculously quiet and for the first little while you're soaking it up and not even realizing it's quiet?  And then it starts sinking in and all of a sudden your heartbeat picks up a little?  Because with kids, silence is usually a dangerous thing?

 

Yep.  It happened right before we moved.  And so I started waddle-running for Lily and Skyler's room and of course, it was locked. So I unlocked it and they hid shamefully behind their bunk beds.

 

And this is what I found:

 

I will entitle this picture "BLACKMAIL."  Oh, Skyler.  You have a long future of sucking up to me when you're a teenager.

 

Ben rarely has to be in the office, but he had to be in the office on my birthday.  So I figured that in order to have a fun and non-whiny kid day, we would do a bunch of fun things for them.  So we went to Target and looked around.  We ate icees and noticed that paint/build your own kites kits were on clearance so we took one home and the kids painted it.

 

I was told several times that day that I'm the "coolest mom ever."  Not to make any of y'all jealous or anything.  Apparently my kids are just that easy to please.

 

And take a look at this girl's hair.  She's sort of obsessed with it.  As in there is maybe one day a year when she will let me come near her with scissors to trim it, and when that day comes we get down to business immediately before she changes her mind.

 

One of those days happened a couple of weeks ago and since I cut her hair so rarely, I completely forgot that hair gets shorter once it dries.  In other words, the little woman has got short hair now people.  And get this: she loves it!  What???

 

This picture was taken just the other day on Ben's iphone.  We have a creek that runs behind our house and a family of deer likes to hang out back there between the creek and our fence.  Ben was able to sneak close enough to capture this picture of the fawn.  This is one of the awesome perks of having a wooded lot.  Lily told us that she has watched the deer from her room at night time before.

 

One of the not so awesome perks of all the trees was when our kids brought in a "cool shell" this week.  I immediately screamed and threw it across the room, which of course put the kids in hysterics and they were wondering what was going on.  I calmed down and said, "Just pick up the shell and bring it over here."  Of course, after seeing me, they were going nowhere near that shell.  Ben came down to figure out what was going on just to tell the kids how cool it was that they found a snail.  That's right.  I don't do snails.  Or slugs, worms, snakes, or anything else that moves weirdly.  I'd much rather deal with spiders.  They don't bother me.  For now I'll just stick to deer.

 

 

This week as I was doing scripture study with the kids when Ben was at activity night (since he's the new Teacher's Quorum advisor), I asked the kids how you get to heaven.  Skyler answered, "On a plane!  No, no, no.  That's wrong.  On a helicopter!"