Sarah is 18 Months Old

Wow, it's hard to believe my baby is 18 months old already!  I always think of her as the baby and even feel like she's not very mature for her age, but then we do something like go to the park with some of Joseph's friends and I realize (as she's climbing up the stairs and sliding by herself and running around without a care about where I am) she's more developed than I realize.  In fact, just this morning as I was picking her up from the child watch at the gym the lady asked me how old she is.  When I said 18 months today her reply was, "I thought that's what I heard you tell someone.  She seems so mature and always plays with the older kids."  I guess that's what happens when you have a brother older, but not too much older than you. 

In January, I took Sarah to Oklahoma City for a hearing test since she still has never passed (You might remember that since she was a NICU baby she had to have her hearing tested at 6 and 12 months as well as a couple of times in between, but never passed so we had tubes put in in August when she was about 11 months old to help with the fluid build up in her ears.) Now she will acknowledge them when they talk to her and follow verbal commands, but refuses to acknowledge the beeps after the first couple of times.  We know she can hear now because her vocabulary has grown too much for her not to, but she is stubborn.  Luckily the people at the hearing place recognize this and haven't even suggested we take further steps with her ears. 

Speaking of her vocabulary, her favorite word are uh-uh and uh-hu so we're really working on getting her to say yes and no (she can say them, she just prefers the others).  She knows lots of animals (birds (especially ducks) are her favorite right now) including some animal sounds, body parts, clothing pieces, food items, and many basic words like thank you, more, blanket, out, go, up, and nap.  She has a super cute way of saying "There go" when she hands you something and often tries to say sentences that we can sometimes understand but most often we only pick up on the key words.

As I started looking for pictures for this post, I was surprised with how many I found because her new thing is charging me while repeatedly saying "uh-uh" when she sees me trying to take her picture (particularly with my phone).  The first few are from a day when I happened to take my good camera with me to the park when the weather was awesome (knowing I probably wouldn't get around to an actual 18 month shoot).  Luckily she was too busy eating and playing to worry about me taking pictures.

Her mannerisms crack me up because she puckers her lips a lot and walks with a leaned forward, head out stance often. 

This girl loves her accessories!  If it's a hat, purse, bracelet, hairbow, or shoes, Sarah willingly lets you put it on her and even requests it often like on this day when she wanted a hairbow. 

 

Here she is with her jacket, bracelet, purse, and car telling my "uh-uh" about taking her picture.  It does show off her recent addition of four molars, though. 



In keeping with the girlyness and loving accessories, Sarah is also fond of "Baby" and carries her around with her bottle and special little blanket great-grandma Jean made her.

It comes as no surprise that our fearless child loves swimming (and looks super cute in her ear plug head band thing :).

But what did we expect from the kid that picks the tallest slide on the playground to climb up on her own.

Sarah tries to do or say anything her brother does or says no matter if it's good or bad. 

Even though she tends to be a girly-girl, Sarah isn't above playing in the dirt.

She and her brother spend many hours playing in their sandbox and she can entertain herself with a gravel driveway. 

She's interested in so much more than she was even just a few months ago and I love watching the world through her eyes.

She has a smile that melts my heart (as well as her Daddy's and brother's), the only problem is that she knows it.

Sarah, I love you and your brother more than you can ever imagine!  You bring so much joy to our lives!  You are definitely one of the best surprises ever.

Great-Grandparents

Want to hear something amazing?  My kids are fortunate enough to have eight great-grandparents in their lives!  Eight!  Can you believe it!  I sat down to write this post fully intending to talk about how they don't know how truly awesome and rare it is to have that many great-grandparents, then it dawned on me that I also take it for granted.  So often I just think of them as my grandparents and imagine them as they were when I was growing up.  Isn't that how you think of your grandparents?  But then it dawned on me (during a conversation with my husband), that my parents are now the grandparents like I remember and my grandparents are now the great-grandparents.  Wow, talk about a reality check.  I have many friends who have multiple grandparents and even parents who are already deceased (trust me, I'm very familiar with the fact that death has no age requirements), it's just easy to forget that it could happen to you and go on living your life as if they'll always be there. 

Last weekend I realized that we had the opportunity to see six of the eight great-grandparents in a matter of days, so I set out on a mission to visit them all.

Our first set of visits came during my nephew's birthday party.  I didn't think to take pictures of the kids with each set of great-grandparents at the party, so you'll have to settle for these pictures I already had.

First up, Grandma Margie and Papa Don (my dad's parents).  I was saddened to realize this picture is a year old, we need to fix that.

Also at Bryar's party were Grandma Jean and Grandpa Dennis (my mom's parents).  This picture is also almost a year old, we'll have to fix that too.

Then, Grandma Bennett and Grandpa Bennett (Sam's maternal grandparents) were down visiting from Oregon, so we definitely had to take advantage of the opportunity to see them. They came to Stillwater to see us Monday evening, then the kids and I drove up to Sam's parents house to see them again before they headed out.

Our visit with Grandma Marjorie (my step-dad's mom) was a surprise for her.  It was a fun little stop on our way to my in-laws.

We even got to eat lunch with Grandpa Parks (Sam's paternal grandpa) on St. Patrick's Day rounding out the Tour de Great-Grandparents.

As we were driving down the road during our cross-Oklahoma adventure, Joseph asked me something about why he had so many grandmas (the grandpas go by a variety of names).  I simply responded "Because you have a bunch of people in your life that love you very much."  He took this answer to heart and even relayed  it to his dad at dinner that night.  Of course we talked about how grandmas are related and all that jazz, but his favorite part was simply that they love him. 

I was talking to Sam about how much the kids and I enjoyed visiting with all of their grandparents and great-grandparents over the last few days and we decided that many more day trips (and longer, especially for the out of state relatives) need to happen.  So, grandparents and great-grandparents, you heard it here, go ahead and hold me accountable, we will be visiting more this year.  We're all very lucky to have you in our lives and I want our kids to actually know you, not just know of you. 

The First Snowfall

It wasn't much, but we've had the first official snowfall of the year.  Joseph was one excited little boy!  He kept saying, " It really snowing! It really snowing!"  Of course, with that enthusiasm we couldn't say inside all day, so we all bundled up and headed outside.  The boys went out first, and by the time us girls made it out there most of the small amount of snow we did receive had been wiped away.  Joseph was also over the sled and instead wanted to try pulling Sarah.

Sarah loved the sled and was more than eager to be pulled around as long as we were all willing to pull her. 

Joseph preferred making (and throwing) snowballs

and catching snowflakes on his tongue.

The best part about the day was that both of the dogs wanted to join us outside and even felt well enough to play together.  Bella has pretty bad arthritis right now (she was even whimpering with pain as I tried to put her sweater on her), so this was a really big deal. 

Since the dogs were out and enjoying themselves, we decided to attempt a picture of me and all the kids.  That was a bit of a disaster.

So we ended up just taking a couple of me and the human kiddos.

Halloween 2014

Halloween has come and gone and now I'm sitting in our cozy living room while the kids and husband nap and snow falls outside and decided there is no time better than the present to write my Halloween blog post. 

A month or so before Halloween, Sam and I started talking about costume options for the kids.  We wanted something that allowed them to coordinate and they would be happy about.  After throwing around a few options, we settled on Cookie Monster and a cookie.  I knew I could make the costumes as long as I could find blue, scraggly fabric.  I went to both stores that carry fabric in Stillwater and, although they had scraggly material, nobody had blue.  I knew it was polyester, so it wouldn't dye very easily and decided to look online.  The blue scraggly fabric I found online was over $20 per yard plus shipping, so I decided to abandon my Cookie Monster dreams and move on to plan B (have I mentioned I'm sometimes a little cheap?).  My plan B was Charlie Brown and Linus since Sarah is very attached to her crocheted blankets right now, but Sam didn't like that idea since they don't watch Peanuts, so we brainstormed a little more and came up with Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat.  This was going to be perfect since Sarah could wear Joseph's monkey costume from last year and I thought I could make a Man in the Yellow Hat costume pretty easily.  The only problem was that Joseph was adamant that he would be Curious George and Sarah would be "Yellow Hat."  Hopefully this video uploads correctly so you can see what I was up against.

I began researching how to dye polyester fabric online and decided to give it a try.  I called JoAnn's to ask if they carried any polyester dye, and the guy that answered told me no, so I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a yard of the white scraggly fabric (because I didn't want to buy a lot of fabric if this wasn't going to work out) as well as some dye that the lady thought was my best bet.  An entire day spent stirring fabric in a dye bath later, I still had white fabric.  At this point, I was pretty much over the whole Cookie Monster thing, so I went to JoAnn's to buy material to make a yellow hat.  As I walked down the aisle to get my yellow dye (for the pants and shirt), I happened to see a selection of DyePoly (the stuff I read online was the best polyester dye) and low and behold they had one package of blue!  I snatched it up and headed home to try it out.  I had hoped to get two packages, but the label said it would dye two large shirts, so I thought it would be enough for 1 yard of fabric.  It was, kind of.  I spent another day stirring fabric in a dye bath with the end result being a lavender color.  Joseph was so excited about his soft cookie monster fabric that I had no choice but to persevere and finish this project.  We went back to JoAnn's to get a pattern only to find they didn't have the one I had planned on buying, so I decided to go with a dinosaur pattern and just omit the spikes, horns, and tail.  I also checked to see if they had received any more dye since I didn't think a yard of fabric would be enough, but they didn't.  Luckily, Joseph is a little on the short side, so I was able to tweak the pattern and have enough fabric.  All in all, I was happy with how my little lavender, curly cookie monster turned out.  And, better yet, Joseph loved it!

Sarah's costume was much easier.  It was pretty much two light brown circle pillows with dark brown "chocolate chip" appliques on it and straps to attach them in four places.  One of my favorite parts is the cookie bow.

The Tuesday before Halloween, we took the kids to the downtown trick or treat.  I had heard they had a costume contest, so of course we had to enter.  We weren't sure where they belonged since they should have been in different age divisions, so we decided Sarah was Joseph's accessory.  I wish I would have known they had a group division, but it's ok.  Joseph ended up winning "funniest costume" in the 2-3 year old class.  He proudly wore his medal around for the rest of the night.

This walking back to the car after a night of trick or treating picture might be one of my all time favorites even though it's blurry.

The next day, it was brought to my attention that the kids were on the front page of the O'Colly (OSU's newspaper).  I didn't realize they were THE front page.

Thursday night, after a short, random on the floor nap,

we decided to carve some pumpkins.  Since it was a little windy and chilly outside, we decided to do this in the garage.  The kids weren't too sure at first,

but Joseph quickly warmed up to it

and was eager to dig in and help

Sarah was more the I'll watch you guys do it type.

I attempted a long exposure picture since it was dark outside and I thought it would be cool with "pumpkin head" as Joseph named him (it was originally "fire head" but got changed), but Joseph did not understand the whole sit completely still part (this pic would be really, really dark under normal circumstances).

After we came back inside, I made the kids stand together so I could get a picture of the Halloween shirts we made this year.  I kind of like them a lot.

After Joseph walked away, Sarah went back and made noise until I took a picture of her by herself.  Isn't she getting big!

Halloween night, Sam went to Dallas to a friend's costume party (we had planned to go together, but due to a lack of sitter ended up doing things this way) while the kids and I went to our church's Harvest Carnival and hit up a couple of friends' houses.

After we put Sarah to bed (sister likes her sleep :), Joseph and I watched the Curious George Halloween movie.

At the party Sam went to, all the guys dressed as Will Ferrell characters.  Sam was Elf.  I'm pretty proud of myself for making this entire costume in a little over 6 hours (not counting the time spent gathering materials the day before)!  Wasn't the whole crew awesome!  I told Sam that if I spent the time and energy making this costume, he had to pose like this all night.

I failed and didn't get any good pictures of the kids before Halloween, I decided to dress them up the following Monday, and try to get some.  This is what it's like taking a picture of a 2 and 1 year old by yourself.

This was the best both of them together picture I could get... and neither of them are smiling.

The best way to get Joseph to sit still for a couple of seconds was to ask him what Cookie Monster does, to which he makes the appropriate sounds and actions,

then laughs.

I finally gave up and decided to just let them play and maybe get a few candid pictures.

Sarah was ok with this.

Joseph promptly told me, "No, I already did that." when I tried to take his picture.

So there you have it, Halloween 2014.  I'm sure Joseph will get a good laugh out of this costume someday.