Baby Super Powers

Babies are amazing.

They have this super power that makes you melt and forget every cry, scream, and whine they make.  All they have to do is fall into the world of slumber and I'm a puddle on the floor.

Gah.

One day I'll be in control of myself.  One day.

Playing in the Rain

I know I'm weird when I say that heavy rain is my favorite weather.  One day this week we had heavy rain all day.  It was one of the best days ever.  So while Thad was taking his morning nap, Skyler, Ella, and I headed out for some splashing and tag in the rain.

I think the success of the day can be measured by the 3 different dresses Ella had to wear that day.  Ever since I had Yes Day with Skyler I've been trying to do things out of the norm that make the kids happy.  It's made a positive difference in how Skyler sometimes reacts to me saying no.  I'm crossing my fingers for more warm rainy days ahead.

Ben Love

Let me just start off by saying that I don't know the right balance for certain things.  Ben and I constantly talk about how blessed we are.  We have no idea why we've been given so many blessings.  But with all this comes a struggle with how much you should be publicly grateful for your blessings.  For example -- with Ben's job -- most people are amazed and supportive of how much time Ben gets to work from home.  His hours are flexible and he's not usually allowed to work more than 40 hours per week.  But when I tell people about how grateful I am that he gets so much time with us, on the rare occasion people think I'm rubbing it in their faces that we have it so good.  So let me just say this: I never ever mean to seem greater than someone else.  On that note, I am thankful that this isn't a rare moment in our house:

Try not to be distracted by the Flash on the right.  Skyler's got serious speed and he makes sure he tells everyone about it.

Now, with how much I adore and love Ben, there are certain things that he's a little OCD about.  One example is that I'm not allowed to touch the turkey after it comes out of the oven on Thanksgiving.  Ben is very very particular about this.  Also, I'm never allowed to cut his or Skyler's hair.  Ben cuts both his own and Skyler's.  But for a while now, I've been wanting to give Skyler a pompadour cut.  I knew it wouldn't fly with Ben.  Skyler and I both secretly knew we were going to cut his hair.  So one day as soon as Ben was out the door to take Lily to the bus stop, we ran to the bathroom (Skyler with the promise of two chocolate chip cookies) and cut away.  

Ba-bam.  My first ever boy hair cut. 

 Ben wasn't upset when he got home.  Instead he was actually laughing that I thought he was such a control freak.  Anyhoo, I decided the cut only looked good styled and that Skyler wouldn't let me style it everyday so I buzzed it back down to a regular cut the next day.  So we were back at square one.

This is the kind of love that our children have for Ben.  It makes me laugh every time I see it.  A few weeks ago Lily and I went to visit Ben in his office and I told Lily to write him a sweet note he could keep at his desk.  She wrote something to the effect of, "Mommy told me to write you a note.  I love you Ben."  It really doesn't get much better than that.  Why they sometimes call him "Ben" and me "Mommy" is still a question I'm trying to answer.

Easter

This whole week we've been prepping the kids for Easter, little by little.  We've been talking about Christ and that Easter isn't about the Easter Bunny.  The Easter Bunny is simply a perk of Easter.  We really got it ingrained in their minds this year.  It made Easter so much more meaningful to me.  Lily really really got it this year.  All morning long she kept talking about how grateful she is for Jesus and that it's because of Him that we celebrate Easter.  Ah, the perks of being a parent.

But Easter sort of started on Saturday.  I was staring into space out of my kitchen window and I saw a little brown thing hopping.  It was a bunny.  Which of course got me excited.  Which of course led me to tell the kids that it was possibly the Easter Bunny and that he must be getting ready to "bring your goodies."  The kids were excited, I was excited.  It was a pretty cool way to start off Easter. 

Then before bed we watched a little video on lds.org about the end of Christ's life.  Lily got close to tears and it's just so rewarding when they get it.

Then the Easter Bunny came and the kids had to go find their baskets!

Yes.  My house really does look like this all the time.

No.  I'm not going to make some dumb excuse as to why my house doesn't look awesome.  It just adds more of a challenge to the egg hunt, riiiiiiiiight?  Consider it done on purpose.  *shakes head*

 Ella not realizing that candy tastes much better without first consuming the metallic covering.

Skyler was seriously so fast that every picture I have of him is blurred.  I kept saying, "Wait!  Wait!  Just let the camera focus!"  But alas, there were eggs to be found.  All while Ella's just chillin' with her basket letting Lily and Skyler do all the work because, hey, they were bringing her eggs to share anyway.  Why actually put effort into it?  Am I right? 

This year the Easter Bunny strayed a little bit from candy overload and gave them bubbles, books, a couple of movies, and the big hit of the day -- plastic tops.  Since church is at 1:00, we spent a good while on the floor with them.

We also dyed eggs on Friday.  It was the kids' first time and can I just say that these 12 eggs win the award for the ugliest eggs EVER.  First off, I did a very "Heather" thing to do -- I broke 8 out of the 12 shells.  Then the dye wouldn't stick to the eggs.  Lily gave herself "Anna hands" when she accidentally stuck her fingers in the blue dye.  I could go on.  It's actually slightly hysterical.

After church we went over to my parents' for dinner.  The last time our whole family was in a picture together was when Thad was blessed, so I brought the camera and this was our biggest gem.  Obviously we have a little work to do before we have our family portraits done this summer....   

And who would've guessed?  The Easter Bunny struck again when Papa was telling the kids a story upstairs!  He left another egg hunt in the backyard.  I was telling my mom how perfect it is that she was able to get Ella over her fear of grass just a week ago so she could participate in the hunt with her own feet touching those intensely scary blades of fescue.  Score! 

My boys have a magical gift called Let's-have-a-diaper-blowout-every-time-we're-at-Nanni-and-Papa's-house.  (You can imagine how horrible it was when Skyler was a baby considering we were actually living with my parents.  It was a daily thing.  Or twice daily.)  The only clothes available for Thad was this outfit my grandma made my dad when he was a baby.  Thad rocked it. 

And last, but not least, we celebrated my parents birthday.  My dad is three days older than my mom and both of their birthdays are this week so we celebrated today.  Much to my mom's dismay, two of the candles ended up breaking and so they read "HAPPY BIRTDA."  So we had no choice other than to sing "Happy bert-duh" instead of the typical Happy Birthday song.  

Our Easter was fantastic and I hope that y'all's was too.

Kiddo Randomness

Thad, Thad, Thad.  He is our first child to be ahead or on schedule as far as physical/mobility milestones go.  He is the happiest baby ever but he struggles going to sleep because he's rolling all over the place and ends up wound up in his blanket or with an arm or leg stuck through the bars.  Meh.  He's cute.  He can get away with having me re-tuck him in 3 times for each nap.

The craziest thing Thad does is when he's lying on his back. He arches his back off the floor and scoots backward using his head like an inchworm and goes all over the place.  It's insane.  He can push himself out of his bumbo or he uses his feet to scoot himself all around the house since we have wood floors.  This baby is serious about keeping up with his energetic siblings.

Since Ben is in Young Men, he goes on campouts A LOT.  While he's gone I like to do whatever makes the kids happiest so that I'm happiest.  Because, let's face it -- four young kids to one mom is a crazy ratio that could bring any adult to tears.  So this past Saturday while Ben was gone all day I took the kids to my parents' house where they always have a blast.  My mom made this movie clip while I was making Thad a bottle inside.  

When Ella was eating breakfast before heading to my parents', she had cocoa pebbles for the first time.  She'd stick two pieces of cereal in her spoon and then put the spoon in her mouth.  It took FOREVER for her to eat.  And as you can see in the movie, her aim is true.  ;)

The Woman is Bink-less

Ella is a special one.  She's 1 1/2 going on 20.  She likes her nails painted, a purse on her arm [when she's awake and sometimes when she's asleep], and her "pretty" or "sparkly" shoes on.  She acts like she's boss -- and don't tell her, but she is the boss -- and therefore, it should be easy for anyone to understand why Ben and I lovingly refer to her as "The Woman."

The Woman has lots of wonderful features.  She's got hair that would make several three year-old's jealous, she can scream "Snowman" when we sing Do You Want to Build a Snowman, she has a pretty impressive vocabulary, and her sense of humor has me laughing constantly.

But.

[There always has to be a but].

The Woman likes to haunt us at night time.  She was our one and only child to take a pacifier [which is an AMAZING thing].  But she was also our only child to take a pacifier [which is a HORRIBLE thing].  She has always needed it to sleep and, heaven forbid, if that bink falls out of her mouth while she's sleeping, she lets the whole house know.  Typically, she's crying or screaming.  Sometimes it's just a loud, "UH OH!"  It's not very cute when it's 1 AM.  And 2 AM.  And 3 AM.  And then she's up for good at 6 -- sometimes earlier.

Ben and I were getting exhausted from getting up several times a night with her for several months.  [I mean, really.  How messed up is it that it isn't our baby who is giving us sleep deprivation?]  One morning a couple of weeks ago we were both so miffed before Ben headed off to work that we gathered up the binks that we could find and -- snip, snip -- the binks were cut in half.  We handed them back to Ella who put them in her mouth, gave us a look that screamed What have you done to me?!, and she threw them back at me.  Excellent, excellent.  Ben left for work and I told him to be prepared for an insane wife when he returned home.

But Ella didn't really notice that her bink was gone throughout the day.  But when it was naptime, I let her have her bink that had the end partially clipped off.  She popped it out, put it back in, popped it out -- was really just unsure of what to do with it.  I didn't watch her on the monitor, but I do know that eventually she fell asleep.  The same thing happened that night.

The next day, I clipped it even lower.  She had just enough left on her bink to get a grip with her teeth to the point where she bit a hole through it.

Then after a few days of that, I took the bink away altogether.  She'd cry for a few minutes before she fell asleep, but it was never for long.  Now she doesn't even think about it.  Yay Ella!  And yay us!

But Ella's still Ella and she's still waking up at night to talk to herself or cry that she can't find her blankie that's lying on top of her. Ugh.  One day... Anybody know if Maleficent still does a sleep until kissed curse anymore?

Spring Break

I have exactly zero pictures of this week.  ZERO.

[Besides the picture I took of a snake to see if the kids were in danger playing in the backyard with it lying in the grass, but then I compared it to the pictures online and I found out it wasn't poisonous after all and it also turned out to be dead.  Run-on sentence anyone?]

Anyhoo.  This week was Lily's Spring Break.

I didn't want to mess things up.  I wanted to have a flexible plan so that we weren't stuck at the house with the kids whining that they were bored.  So Ben and I had an informal planning session in which we listed a few activities the kids might be interested in doing.  Then we called them down, let them choose what they wanted to do, and set a schedule in stone on the calendar.  It made the break amazing!

So on Friday we all picked up Lily from the bus stop and headed out to a restaurant -- where Lily got food poisoning.  YAY!  So Saturday was spent at home where we did absolutely nothing other than watch Frozen three times.  You think I'm lying, but I'm not.

Sunday was church, but then Monday we spent the whole day playing at my parents' house.  Lily also went with me to hang out with Ben at his office and meet some of his cool coworkers.  They played with my parents' neighbors and we all basked in the warm weather.  Did I mention that we've had a seriously cold winter here and then Mother Nature got the memo that it was spring break and made sure it was in the 80's all week?  Thanks for that, by the way!

Tuesday was our one chill, do-absolutely-nothing day.

Wednesday, Skyler had a friend come over for a play date while Ben took Lily skating for a date.

Thursday, Lily had a friend come over for a play date while Ben took Skyler skating for a date.

Friday, we gave them the option of going bowling or playing in the sprinkler.  Ben and I were both worn out at that point and we were pretty disgusting from the yard work we had been doing and so we put on our "whatever you guys want to do" faces, and prepared to go bowling.  But they chose the sprinkler and had a blast.  Then I played night games with Lily and Skyler while Ben set up the tent in the backyard.  I slept with them and it was great!  Until it got freezing cold aka 61 degrees.  The kids and I were all about to die from hypothermia when we went in at 6:45 this morning.  Ben just shook his head at us in disbelief that 61 degrees could be considered cold.

To top the list, we spent more than half of our week outside.  And it was extra special for the kids because they got to stay out until almost dark each night just riding their bikes and playing with neighbors.  There was a huge consumption of cotton candy, cookies, and other goodies this week.  It was a perfect week.  My goal was to have a fun filled week that wouldn't exhaust Lily for when she went back to school.

Now that we've had such a great week, I'm ready to bring on summer!