Ella's Oddities

If it weren't for their tantrums, I think two year-olds would be the funniest people on the planet.  Ella is no exception.  She is a crack-up.  Some of the things that Ella does just make me go, "Whaaaaa?" 

The girls have their own bathroom.  They're not old enough yet to utilize all the drawers and cabinets.  They have tons of space to spare.  Yet, this is where Ella is determined to store her toothbrush.  

Ella's biggest obsession (as far as possessions go) are popsicle sticks.  She calls them "keys" and has to take them absolutely everywhere.  She's been doing this for months and I'm wondering if it's ever going to fade away.  The longer this goes on the more I have my doubts.  Hopefully Ella's college roomies won't notice that she has to fall asleep with at least "5" (actually meaning 2) "keys" in her hands.

Sometimes those sticks are hard to hold because she has her "glubs" on.  She loves to go through her sock/underwear drawer and put socks on like gloves.  Or if she's downstairs she might find a stray sock previously worn by one of her older siblings.  Ella's not picky about trivial things like whether the sock is gross or not. 

Ella also loves anything princessy.  But when she's being a princess, she likes to cuss like a sailor.  Ella, until yesterday, could not pronounce "castle."  Instead, she pronounced it "a**hole."  As bad as it is, it always gives Ben and me a good laugh.

If it's anyone's turn for prayer other than Ella's, she gets upset.  When we tell her it's someone else's turn she'll just say, "Okay, I'll say it with you," and will then repeat it after them.  Ella gets to say every prayer this way.

In many of her prayers that she says without help she often says that she's thankful for nursery, which makes complete sense since she still puts up a fight to go in.  (Speaking of nursery, they let Thad come in early since Ben and I both teach.  Woohoo!!!  It's a day of celebration y'all!  No more babies to hold during the last 2 hours of church -- EVER!!!!)

Ella can count to 11 and name a few numbers by sight simply because she HAS to be the one to push the buttons on the microwave.  Ironically, whenever she counts she usually skips 4 but 4 is the number she remembers best on the microwave.  ???

Ella is a person who needs routines.  She gets very upset if any part of her routine is out of place.  Simply getting into the van is one of her problems.  Here is how Ella likes it to happen: 1) open van door, 2) climb in, 3) push door button to close it in my face, 4) climb into booster seat, 5) scream at me because I opened the door just a split-second before her bum was in the seat, 6) make me re-close the door until she's fully sitting down, 7) re-open door, 8) buckle her, 9) hand her a popsicle stick.  Every single time. 

Y'all Gonna Make Me Lose My Mind, Up in Here, Up in Here

Blowing me kisses or hitting himself in the face?  You decide.

 While I realize that for some people having a spotless house is the norm, I shamefully admit that I am not one of those people.  Not that that's any surprise to you since you've probably seen countless pictures of our messy house in other blog posts.  A few months ago I just felt heavy with the burden of it all and I realized that I was the only person in our house doing anything to clean up.  It made sense, though.  Two of our kids are really too young to do anything and the other two were only occasionally asked to help out.  Ben works all day and has mutual and temple appointments and if he ever wants free time, it's in those evening hours or on weekends (which is also his family time).  So it has been just me.  For years.  I'm surprised I didn't lose it earlier.  When I finally realized it, I sat down and talked with Ben and told him that we were going to have an FHE about chores.  But then other topics were more pressing FHE subjects and then the holidays kicked in and it kept being pushed back.  But at the beginning of the year it happened.

It was life changing I tell you!

The kids are expected to do 4 things each day without reminders: 1- brush teeth, 2 - make beds, 3 - keep the bonus room clean, and 4 - keep rooms clean.  If they do all four things all week, they get $1.  Any additional chores (sweeping, washing windows, cleaning bathrooms, dusting... all things they know how to do...) get additional compensation.

Ever since then it has made my load easier to bear and I've been able to do a better job myself since I'm trying to be a better example.

You wouldn't be able to tell from this picture that he has the flu.  If his nose didn't explode every time he sneezed (about every 5 seconds) I would love all these extra snuggles he's giving me.

Although yesterday he sneezed straight into my mouth.  So my prediction is that I will be getting the flu sometime in the next 24 hours.  Maybe Ben will be feeling better by then and I'll be the one quarantined instead?

Speaking of sickness, we haven't had all 6 of our family members healthy at the same time since before Halloween.  There have been many days when I think I could just sit down and cry from it.  I'm so sick of being sick.  But then I tell myself it really, truly could be worse and I try to be grateful.

But if we're not healthy when Becca and Preston are here during spring break...... so help me.

If I could describe Thad in one hyphenated word it would be "Mini-Ben."  He is so downright adorable and charming and oh so mischievous (or as Ben would pronounce it, mis-CHEEV-i-ous).  Every day I get Thad and Ella sippies.  He quickly abandons his and goes for Ella's as soon as she has her back turned.  Every. Single. Day.  

Since he has the flu, I told Ella she needed to be especially sneaky with her sippy.  I told her to hide it so that he didn't spread germs.  See her rain boot she's holding in that picture?  Well look even closer:

I can happily report that he didn't find it today, a first.

High five to Ella for her brilliance.

In other news, 8 out of the last 10 school days have been cancelled because of 4 snow/ice storms.  Remember how in my last post I talked about how much I loved all this time with my kids?  Scratch that.  This snow has got to go.  Cross stitching this would seem appropriate right now:

NC Snowpocolypse

The kids and I had crossed our fingers for weeks and it finally happened -- SNOW!

(And when I say that it snowed, what I really mean is that it snowed for 5 minutes and then turned into freezing rain for the next 12 hours.)

But that wasn't a problem at all.  We pulled out the sleds and were thrilled when we found that the solid ice was ideal for sledding.  We discovered that when we started at the top of our yard, it had the perfect decline for sledding all the way back to our property line.  A few times we had to break hard so we didn't fall into the creek back there!  The houses across the street from us also have seriously steep driveways -- so steep that we didn't buy them because we couldn't even drive our low-riding Camry up them without scraping the bottom the car.  But they're also ideal for sledding.  I helped Skyler and Aanya (Lily's friend and our neighbor) get over their fear of sledding.  I'd say it was a successful day.

Lily and Skyler were outside for 8 hours on Tuesday.  Two thumbs up from this mom!

The ice was the coolest texture!  It was like huge granules of sugar.

My little babies watching the bigger babies.

The next day the older three kids played a human bowling game that involved a sled and human pins.  They had a blast and didn't get hurt so I didn't stop them.

Take 2: Thursday we got another short snowstorm.  Lily spent half the day at Aanya's house and they spent the rest of the day here making cookies and playing in the snow as it fell.

The kids ended up having 4 days of school cancelled this week.  And while many parents get annoyed with it, I kept thinking it was such a gift.  It was so wonderful to have the magic of winter weather since we really only get it once or twice a year.  I was able to sled with the kids for hours and have some great bonding time.  Plus, we don't have any neighbors who go to Lily and Skyler's school.  Here we have the option to choose a year round or traditional calendar school.  We are the only ones around who have chosen traditional and so it is a rare treat when all the kids in the neighborhood are out to play at the same time.  This week has been a great time to relax and just have fun.

Valentines Day Fun

I love love love Valentines Day.  I love to use it as an opportunity to remind each other how much we love one another.  And also to be extremely cheesy.

The day before V-Day I took over Ben's facebook wall with valentines.  I think I posted 19 memes.  Here is a small taste of what he got:

Unfortunately for Ben, two days before V-Day he had a root canal.  He has been on some serious pain killers which make him snore like crazy which makes me not sleep.  :)  So he let me sleep in on Valentines Day and made this pink breakfast.  I, in turn, then let him go take a nice nap while the kids and I cleaned up the house like crazy to surprise him.  And those were our gifts to each other.

Ella was so excited that we had juice -- a rare treat.

Around lunch time I let the kids open their mailboxes.  They had been drawing each other pictures and putting them in each other's mailboxes for a couple of weeks.  I guess Lily must have been doing most of the giving because all she got was a lego car from Skyler (???) and a rock.  I laughed out loud and immediately thought of THIS.

Skyler was due to have a date with me soon and when I found out that Orange Leaf was doing buy one get one free frozen yogurt on Valentines Day, I decided that we would go!  $3 later and Skyler was a happy kid.

This is our 8th year doing fondue for dinner.  We dipped bread, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, and mushrooms this year.  Every year it's slightly different.  This year was the first year that our cheese turned into rubber.  Ha!  It was quite hilarious.

Every year we dip strawberries in chocolate, but this year Ben had the best idea yet: peanut butter rice krispies.  Oh they were SO GOOD!  I'm guessing that will be an annual tradition.

Today in Primary our music leader celebrated V-Day by wearing a giant heart and letting kids use blow darts (Nerf darts) to hit numbers on him.  He is the best music leader.  Plus any bishop when released who asks to be put in Primary is cool by me.

We had the best weekend.  Seriously, I loved it.  And weird story -- we've had such a boring winter here that I got a little gloomy about it the other day.  I felt like such a kid and actually asked for "just a little snow" in my personal prayers.  The next morning I woke up and found out that they had just put snow in the forecast and we should be getting some tomorrow.  That was one of the best Valentines of all!

Camp Out Fun

Back in the day, I used to be scared any time Ben slept away from home on camp outs.  I don't know why I was so paranoid, but I was.  I would barely sleep and by the time morning came, I was beyond exhausted.  But now that it's been a few years of this, I'm used to it.  So to make it easier on me, we typically have fun when Daddy is gone.  Dinner is something easy like pancakes and we usually eat it as a picnic in the living room while watching a movie.  

This last time Ben was on a camp out, it was Lily's turn to say family prayer.  One of the things she said she was thankful for was that Daddy was gone (because it meant having pancakes and watching a movie).  She said it in her personal prayers that night, too.  It makes you really understand what they really think of us.  Ha!

On Sunday Ben stayed home with sick Skyler.  They watched some church movies and then they drew some pictures.  Ben drew a picture of Jesus and Skyler decided he wanted to, as well.  I think his picture is amazing for a 5 year-old!  I'm constantly impressed with it.

Thaddeo wearing Skyler's t-ball helmet.  It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen, but he kept running away from me (probably thinking I was going to take the helmet away) so this is the best picture I was able to get.

I've noticed that sometimes it's easy for me to get caught up in things that don't matter.  A couple of weeks ago, the six of us were at Costco.  Since it was lunch time we grabbed hot dogs for the kids.  When we sat down to eat it was a little crazy as usual.  Ben gets all the food, drinks, silverware, and napkins while I watch the kids.  I had Thad in my lap and Ella to my side as I'm trying to cut it up and feed both of them.  Lily's missing a few teeth and so chewing is difficult so I actually had to cut up her hot dog as well.  All four stopped eating at different times so I'm trying to make sure that they all got even amounts of frozen yogurt that we were sharing.  I'm glad I decided not to eat there because I wouldn't have been able to while spoon feeding both the babies.  Anyway, I knew it must have all looked ridiculous to strangers.  But then a woman who was sitting near us asked me, "Are your children all so well-behaved all the time?"

It just surprised me.  But that moment made me realize that yes, my kids really are well-behaved.  They're super loud and sometimes fight, but other than that, they're pretty amazing and polite kids.  I've appreciated the fact that they are well behaved in church (well, Lily and Skyler are) and at school, but I never really thought of it beyond.

Oh those four cuties -- I think I'll keep them.

Melting

When "Shake It Off" first came out, Ella was hooked.  Listening to it would distract her from any tantrum and she would stop to shake it off.  My sister Becca asked for a movie of Ella dancing to it a while ago and I finally recorded it.  Having a smart dvd player has been so awesome!  I love being able to turn youtube on while I'm working out or turning on Taylor Swift when Ella is acting her age.  :)

I love this smile sooooo much.  Thad can often be mischievous, but when he's not being mischievous (all of it at Ella's cost) he's the mellowest kid I've ever met.  

A typical reaction from Ella when I ask her to smile.

Blowing kisses with one hand and doing something else entirely with the other.  :)

Ever since Lily was born people would tell me how cute she was, but I always thought she was pretty.  She just gets more gorgeous with age.  It just makes my heart ache.  I love this picture because it really shows it.  I love Skyler's sweet smile.  I have told him over and over that he's not allowed to lose any of his baby teeth because his smile is 100% perfect.  He unfortunately has other plans.  Luckily for me none of them are loose yet.  Small mommy victory.  Mwahaha!  I love Ella in this picture because she has an ongoing battle to carry as many toys as possible at once.  So her little pink picnic basket is stuffed with toys while she wears her blocks around her neck like a necklace and she carries Elmo.  She often wears her blocks proudly to church.  Is there anything cuter than a hilarious toddler?  I love Thad in this picture because, like I said earlier, he's just so mellow.  Lily held him like this for close to 5 minutes and he was just "whatever" the whole time.  They are all so perfect for me.

Ben and I agree that having them so close together in age was the best investment we ever made.  They make me melt.

Our Own Piece of Heaven

Lately, I have been watching my family grow and I am amazed at the wonderful spirits that Heavenly Father has entrusted to us.  Heather and I have been so blessed to have our 4 kids.  It seems like yesterday we were in the hospital with Lily and Ka-Boom!  We have 4 kids and Lily isn't so little. 

Now, I will never admit this to Heather, but it does pull my heart strings a little to have all of them growing up and I wish there was a pause button in life. Thankfully all of them still love to snuggle with me, give me kisses no mater where we are, and they still feel like I am superman.  But how much longer do I have until my sweet little cuddler Lily would rather read in her room? How long until my tender hearted macho man Skyler is hitting home runs? When will my not so perfect princess Ella is chasing boys instead of me or Thad, my protégé at pranking, be going out with his friends and think I am embarrassing?  When that day comes I hope that I can look back on today and remember the small things that make our simple life so sweet and so filled with love and meaning.


The other day I was talking to a friend about people who are always traveling or doing really cool stuff.  I admitted that I was a little envious.  My friend then echoed what Heather has said in the past, "What have they had to sacrifice to live the way they do?" 


I know that I feel like I sacrifice too much as it is already.  Trying to pay for a house and provide for my family takes a lot of work.  I know that I would find it very hard to sacrifice more for these extra things.  I need the little tickles that Thad gives me everyday or grumpy cheek squeeze kiss that Ella gives me.  I can't imagine going without tickle fights and kisses before bed each night with Skyler or being Lily's prayer buddy and listening to her faith filled prayers.  How could I give these moments ups?  For money? For stamps in a passport? For another night on the town? I don't think so. 

I have everything I need right here in my home.  My kids ARE growing up!  I can't stop it, but I can enjoy every single moment of it with my best friend.  There will be a time for traveling and doing cool stuff ... maybe. All I need right now is to sit back and soak up every little detail,  That way, when Heather and I are grey and can't remember where we put our teeth, we can remind each other of the wonderful lives we have had and that we have had our own little piece of heaven right here in our home.  After all, isn't that what we all want?