Smarty Pants

After catching her for the fifth time playing in the dog food:

"Keep your hands out of the food!"

I turned back around ten seconds later:

Hands held behind her back, with her WHOLE face in the dog food.

Got me there kiddo.

Letters

Just in the last few days, Bear has been recognizing more and more letters. And it is just randomly. Not even letters we have been working on recently. So we busted out the Bob books and started working away at those. He is starting to sound out really simple words with very little help. Like Mat and sat. He won't be reading War and Peace any time soon, but I think it is a good start and I am so proud of him.
And then tonight him and I were sounding out words and she ran in from her bedroom and shouted, "A B C!" ran back into her room and started laughing. Has to keep up with her brother...
;)

This is not Lawanda's fault...

I keep telling myself that. My friend and fellow blogger Lawanda posted the other day and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I would post a hyper-doodly-giggawatts-thingama-jig here but I don't know how, so you can just follow the clicky to the right hand side to her blog.

I want more kids. Plain and simple. I had my heart set on eight of the little boogers a few years ago. I have learned is hard to just let something like that go once you have planned on it. And I don't understand. I wish that God would take away this burning desire and just let me be happy with the two babies I do have. But I want more. I want to have a house full of happy laughing kids (even though I know the reality is more like arguing, pinching, toy snatching, whiny kids.) But see? I have a sense of humor about it. Doesn't that make me a prime candidate for being mother of many? Sigh.

I come from a big family, and I love getting together with my family now that we are all grown up. It is loud and happy and fun.

I had the hardest time getting rid of baby clothes this last summer. I felt that if I did, I would be admitting that I am done. That there will be no more babies. And that hurts my heart. All of the baby paraphanelia is on the front porch waiting for me to make a decision about it.

I see brand new babies in town and my heart longs to be growing my own. I love being pregnant. Well with the exception of the last month when your ankles have become "cankles" and you have to pee every hour during the night and you toss and turn when you aren't peeing trying to get comfortable, and nothing fits you anymore and everything you eat causes you to have heart burn so badly that you buy stock in Tums and chug milk like it is going out of style. But other than that I love being pregnant. I have such easy pregnancies, this is what my body was built for. Baby growing and carrying. And I love breast feeding. Bear breast fed until he was 18 months, she is almost 18 months and shows no sign of stopping.

I just wish that I could get over the fact that this is it and I just need to be happy and thankful for what I have. And I am, I love these kiddos more than myself. And I thank God every day that he gave them to me to raise for Him. But I just can't seem to shake the "sad".

The Nursery

Well I guess I won't really be able to call it a nursery for very much longer. I always wanted to have a little girl, so that I could do a room just like this! Ha ha. Just kidding... kind of. I actually bought the bedding two days before I knew it was a girl officially. I found it on ebay and after months of hem hawing, I knew that this was what I wanted and I made the bid and I won! And then I found out it was a girl. Phew.

The only things in this room that were bought brand new are the crib, and the rocker and her bookshelf. Everything else was bought at garage sales, craigslist, or made by my daddy. He bought the dresser off craigslist and him and I stripped that thing down and refinished it. And the changing table which will one day convert into a desk, the base is to an old singer sewing machine that he had in his house as a kid. From scratch he built the top and lower shelf and even made matching bookshelves that I will eventually get hung on the wall. He is so wonderfully talented with his hands. I am so happy that he taught he how to do some of those things. There is something very theraputic about working with your hands like that and refinishing furniture. My mom made the beautiful blanket that is on the chair. Again, she is very talented in making beautiful blankets and hats for the kids. Something I do not have the patience for. :) On top of her book case is an old window that I won off of ebay almost five years ago. I never knew what to do with it, I mean I knew I wanted to make a picture frame out of it, but it just never really fit anywhere just right in my house. Until now. Now it is filled with her newborn pictures and looks like it was made for her room.

The painted lattice on one wall was an experiment gone bad. I had this grand picture in my head of having a lattice and then painting dainty flowers and vines up it. But once I got the paint on the wall, which to me looks a little Pepto Bismolly, I decided that I liked the original color of the room and that it goes quite nicely with it. So, just one more project added to my list. :)

Now to tackle Bears room. Just a few stars painted on the wall, painting a few pieces of furniture and I should be done. Yay!

Switched at birth

If our daughters had not been born 11 days apart, I would seriously wonder if I had Daphnes daughter living in my house.
Her name definition has the words 'neat and tidy' in it. And boy does she live up to those words. She cleans up after her brother. If she sees a random piece of paper on the floor, she will pick it up and put it neatly on the table. Or if there is a stray toy, she will put it in the toy box. She cleans up after me. Case in point. Today I got in the shower and left my clothes on the floor to be taken to the washing machine after I was done. That was too long for her. I got out of the shower and the clothes were gone. She had picked them up and put them in the dirty laundry basket for me. I then dropped a wash cloth on the floor to see what she would do. She picked it up and walked through the house to the washing machine and placed it in the basket.
She does not like drawers to be half opened or even cracked open. Those get promptly closed.
And she loves the shark vacuum. As soon as I let her down from her highchair, she runs to the shark to clean up the mess that was made during the meal.
My sweet clean baby.

Lead socks for Christmas.

This little girl has been on top of every horizontal surface in this house. We have been here for almost four days. She has been on the kitchen table, the counters, the stove (eek!), and the one that baffles me is her changing table. Her baby crib is right next to it, but it is still over a two foot climb up to the changing table. When I hear her call "MOM!" I know she has climbed up on something and has no idea how to get down.
I am seriously going to tie her to something, or fill her diaper with rocks. I don't mind that she never stops, she is always going. It is the climbing thing that just unnerves me. I am waiting for the day that I have to take her to the ER with a busted head or arm. Fortionatly she is a very graceful and effient climber.

Bittersweet

I think that is the word I am looking for. I can't really think of anything else to desribe how I feel right now.
I have lived with my parents for the last ten months. It has been a rough ten months. Not living with my parents, just life in general has been rough. But I have grown. I like to think I have overcome the challenge that was placed before me. I know that it is an on going battle, but I think I am through the worst of it. I survived. I know am a stronger person for it. I still have my battles, but I know that God would not give me anything that he cannot see me out of.
So back to my parents house. It has been wonderful having the support. Bear got his own room. Bug got her own closet. Ha ha. She slept in the walk in closet in my room in her crib. She started out sharing the room with me. But that got old real quick. She would wake up in the middle of the night and instead of soothing herself back to sleep she would see me ten feet away and want to party. So she got her own closet. I love that my kids got to grow closer to my parents and get to know them better. I love the relationship they have now with Nana and Poppop.
But the time has come for me to move back to my house. And even though the house was previously shared with the person that caused the afore mentioned sorrow, I am still ready to go back home. Little more than nine months ago, I could not drive by the house without bursting into tears. I dreaded going to the Island. And yesterday when I went and got the keys and officially took ownership of it again I was so scared that I would not be ready to face it. I was scared that everything I had worked so hard for over the last ten months would just come crashing down on me and I would just be back where I started. But after much prayer, the only thing I felt when I walked in that door yesterday with my kiddos was the wonderful sense of being home. No memories. No bad feelings. Just home. Mine and my kids home. The home that I get to start over in, the home I get to raise my babies in. I look forward to making new happy memories in it for many years to come.
The kids almost lost their minds yesterday when we walked through the door.
"Is this our house mommy?"
"Yes baby. We get to live her now."
And then he proceeded in running through the house with sister right behind him screaming about everything we had.
"Mommy! We have doors! We have lights! We have carpet! We have light switches. We have windows! We have closets! We have a bathroom! We have another bathroom! We have two bathrooms!"
You would think we had been living in a cardboard box the last ten months.
I had brought up toys for them to play with while I painted. They went untouched because the thrill of running like banshees through and empty house took over. They ran almost non stop for nine hours before I finally said enough. It is amazing the noise that two small children can make in an empty house. They explored every inch of that house. Kitchen cabinets included. They are still small enough they could fit in some of them. That made for a fun game of hide and seek.
I got Bears room done and had to stop at Bugs. I am not sure about the color yet. So I am going to wait until her bedding gets here and then make a decision. After I figure out how to get pictures off my cell, I will post them on here.