Elaina

 

Elaina had her 18 month well child appointment this week and is a growing girl! She is 34 inches tall and weighs 30 lbs. She is in the 98% for both and is the average size a of 2 year old. She is a big girl but healthy and happy and so much fun. 

In the top pictures we see her gangster/stripper side. She decided she didn't want to be dressed the other day and was successful at getting off her shirt but not so much with her jeans. 

She used to be attached to just one blanket but now she wants three! No kidding. One is not good enough. If she gets upset, tired or just needs to snuggle she get all three out of her crib or stands there and screams until someone else does if she can't reach them. Today she was also chewing on a teether because she has some teeth coming in so it was even more cute. I can't wait until it gets warmer and I can phase some of the blankets out of her crib. It does get to be a bit much. I love my girls!

Living the Life

We have been doing a whole lot of not much at our house lately. I started putting some pony tails in Elaina's hair and then tried to get her to sit still so I could get some pictures of them. Silly me! That girl has no time to sit still.

Keira had me build her bunk bed into a fort which we haven't done for awhile so she insisted that I take a picture of her with it. She also wanted me to get her brand new pajama pants in the picture. Yay for clearance racks!

I started babysitting a little 4 1/2 month old boy named Addai last week and we have been having a lot of fun with him. He is so tiny and sweet and loves to play with the girls. He thinks they are hilarious! I propped him up so he could play legos with them and he loved it and hung out there for the longest time.

Update: Keira is still going to Sunbeams by herself and LOVING it. That girl just needed more structure in her life I think. Nursery is too big of a free for all for her. Elaina has been going to nursery for the past couple of weeks by herself and doing so good too. We did get a little scared when we came out of Rick's setting apart yesterday (he is the new ward executive secretary) and someone told us that they had found Elaina wandering the hallways. She had escaped nursery! Scary! Thankfully they knew who she was and who she belonged to but they couldn't find us since we were in the bishop's office, so they took her to the primary president, who took her back to nursery. I am glad I didn't know she was missing until she had already been found again. That girl!

Sunbeams Building Space Needles

Keira and Elaina both love playing with legos. They have gotten legos for the past two Christmases and Grandma Marcia has tons of them too. They are always building things and Keira has gotten really creative. Today she brought this one to me and told me it was the Space Needle. Pretty close! I like how she added the flower on top to give it the look of the Space Needle. She has only seen it once in real life when we went and visited her Daddy at his office and she is fascinated with all of the big buildings of the city.  We will have to get rich one of these days and take her up in the Space Needle. She would love it.

On another note, Keira has officially gone to Sunbeams twice so far. As many people know, she hated going to nursery by herself. She didn't mind going to nursery but Rick usually had to go with her. We were afraid it would just carry on to Sunbeams but with a little bribery and blackmail she went last week all by herself. She had so much fun and was so excited, when she left church, that she had a crown to wear (handout from the lesson) and some goldfish to eat. On Sunday, I didn't even have to ask her if she wanted to go. She kept asking me all through Sacrament meeting if it was time for Sunbeams yet. Her teacher was sitting right behind us and I said as soon as her teacher left than we could go. You have never seen a kid bolt for the primary room as quickly as Keira went when her teacher got up. She sat down right in the front row and started talking to the Primary presidency (talking?, to adults? amazing) about how her teacher was on Facebook (I showed her that her teacher was on Facebook to get her excited for Sunbeams and it worked! That girl loves technology). Since I am the primary pianist, I get to watch her in singing time and sharing time and she loves it. She was singing along and participated when her name was drawn. I am so proud of her! I think she loves the structure more of Primary then she did with nursery. Here is hoping for a much smoother ride from now on. Elaina officially starts nursery at the end of the month so we are excited to hopefully be kid free during church. It will be nice.

Boxes, Dishes and Yogurt

I bought a glass dish online last week with some giftcards I got for Christmas. It came today. You see the dish. The next pictures are ALL of the packaging apparently required to ship it. A box within a box wrapped in paper and bubble wrap. I kid you not. At least the dish was intact.

I finally went grocery shopping this morning since we have been waiting for payday and the girls were so excited that I bought yogurt. It is one of their favorite treats by far. I like to buy the vanilla yogurt and then mash in thawed, frozen strawberries. So you can see that Elaina was enjoying it as much as she could. She was saying "Sheese" for the camera. It was too cute.

Happy 6th Anniversary!

Rick and I are celebrating our 6th anniversary today. The first picture is from our senior prom in May 2002. We were best friends at the time but look where that got us! ;) The second picture is from our wedding and the third was just taken a couple months ago. I also just wanted to prove that I HAVE dressed up for some major occasions but it may never happen again.

I am so happy that I married Rick. I am so happy that he decided to get involved with a mormon girl and then decide my religion wasn't as crazy as he though it was and learned for himself that it is the true church. I am so blessed to have the priesthood in my home. I am thankful that we were able to be sealed for time and all eternity a year after our marriage. I am so grateful that my girls were born in the covenant and (hopefully) have righteous parents to look up to. I am so grateful that Rick and I have such a long history together so we can make fun of each other for every dumb thing we did in high school. :) I look forward to all we have ahead of us, good and bad. I love you, Rick! Happy Anniversary!

Exercise and Style

Keira got this fun exercise and movement DVD from my mom for Christmas. We just opened it up today and this is what we got. Before I opened it, Keira ran in her room and got her winter coat headband and put it on her head. By herself. Where did she learn this? I have never worn anything like that and I can't think of anywhere she would have seen it. The rest of the outfit is also hers. She refuses to wear pants half of the time we are at home. She tends to go potty more by herself when she is just like this so I usually allow it. Needless to say, I couldn't stop laughing and when I took the picture she wouldn't look at me and told me to quit taking her picture. I think that might be her teenage self coming out because she knows that she is going to be majorly embarrassed by these pictures later in life. So funny. The DVD is a success though. She has done it twice today. Really good thing to have for us homebodies that forget to get exercise most days. Maybe she will have better habits than me.

Christmas Day with the Inmans

We had a great time on Christmas with the Inmans. We got to open MORE presents (Keira was just loving it!) and we helped Grandma and Grandpa open theirs. We got lots of fun things from Argentina from Aunt Andrea but the best present of all is that she is home. Rick did get a pretty cool hat though. Too bad those Argentinians are much smaller than these 6'4 Americans. Elaina looked darn cute in it.

After lots of food, fun and games, Keira got to help frost some gingerbread men that Aunt Andrea baked. Good thing we had lots of practice! The best part was eating all of the fun cookies.

We had a great Christmas and hope that everyone else did as well. Hopefully we all took time to remember the reason for the season.

Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!