Daddy Daughter Valentine's.

Chik-Fil-A did a formal Daddy Daughter Valentine's dinner Saturday night. It was complete with table clothes, candle light, paper menus, table side service, and of course a cow in which you could your picture taken with. As soon as I heard about it, I was so excited for Aaron to take Olivia. He thought it was kind of silly. Espcially since I wanted him to dress up, and Olivia also. And I was hoping he'd get her a coursage. He went along with getting dressed up, but refused on the flowery bracelt for a not-quite-2 year old. He somewhat skeptical of what the experience would entail, but came home saying it was very cute and he was glad he went. Olivia had a good time. She was so excited for her "date". She had fun getting dressed up, and kept saying, "No looking daddy!" Until she was ready, and she went running to him and said, "See, look, pretty!"

I made them pose for a picture before they left.Looks like she was enjoying herself.

Classy, no?

I've been updating a lot lately...

You may notice I go through spurts on this blog. Weeks at a time with no update, and then 3 in 2 days. Such is life. So I love this picture. I love Olivia's smiling face, as she's happily eating grapes from "the whole bag". Upon her insistence of course. I love how it pretty much sums up most of our day to day life. Every pot and pan has been emptied from the cabinet. There's stuff that needs to be swept off the floor. Abigail is usually looking more at me or Olivia, but she's usually planted somewhere that she can't get into any trouble. Oh the joy of the immobile stage! I love how you can see the plastic letter on the fridge. I don't know why that image just makes me feel so happy. Right now it's 11:30 and I should be sleeping, but it's so hard to sleep when you're pretty sure as soon as you're asleep a baby is going to wake you. Seriously, it's the worst. Okay I'm sure there are worse things, but when it comes to trying to sleep, not knowing how soon you will be woken up makes it so hard to sleep. I thought by now she would have already woken up, then I could lay her back down and at least know I would get 4 hours. In fact I'm debating, should I wake her up and feed her, then go to bed? But it's really only been 3 hours since she last ate, so she might not even be hungry. Gah. They really should come with instructions. I keep scrolling up to look at this picture again. Isn't Olivia's face just the best. She is so happy because I let her have the whole bag. And because I'm sitting on the floor eating grapes with her. And her sister loves her.

Tonight we went out for our Valentine's date. My friend Christie came over to watch the girls. I thought for sure Olivia would scream and cry when I told her I was going on a date with daddy and Christie was going to put her to bed. She just said, "Oh Christie Yaya bed? Okay, bye mommy! Hug! Kiss!" That was it. Christie said she didn't cry until after she was reading her some stories and singing to her, all of a sudden she burst into tears. Christie sang her some more songs and told her it was okay. Then she told her she needed to lay in her bed, and she (Christie) was going to take care of Abigail. Olivia said okay, then Christie heard her making noise in her room so she went in and Olivia had her church shoes on, and was piling up books. LOL So she told her she had to lay in bed. She asked Christie to stay. Christie told her she would come back and to wait for her in her bed. Olivia listened and Christie said she was asleep in like 5 minutes after that. I am usually really weird about other people putting my kids to bed. Probably because of how much I hated it when my mom wasn't there to put me to bed. It didn't happen very often, and the rare occassion my mom was out late I waited up for her. I just couldn't sleep until I knew she was home. I also had trouble sleeping if I knew she was asleep. There was something comforting in knowing she awake, taking care of everything, so I could sleep. If I was still awake when she went to bed I would freak out. I still make Aaron stay up later than me. In fact probably why I am still up rambling here is because Aaron fell asleep 40 minutes ago.

Well just one last random rambling. We'll see how long it goes. Today I have just been thinking a lot about the fact that we created people. Little people. I made them. I have literally just been marveling at this fact all day. Like this time last year Abigail was just this little embryo. And now, soley from material from my own body, my own flesh, she has become this little (and I use the word little very loosely here, since she's probably pushing 20lbs) person. Even after she was born, it is still my body that continues to give her life. And isn't it interesting that I couldn't have done it alone? I needed a husband to help me create this. God made us this way. To need each other. He could have done it differently, like worms or something, that just reproduce on their own... but he made us so that we need someone else to create life. It was just blowing my mind today. It's just such a simple truth, and yet so profound. We are not independent beings. We are interdependent on each other.

And then that got me thinking about how glad I am to be married to Aaron. Seriously, I couldn't imagine this life with anyone else. But that's a rambling for another post. I'm going to go try to feed and Abigail and then hopefully get at least 4 straight hours of sleep.

I love those plastic letters on my fridge.

Overheard on Huber St...

Okay so Olivia has been talking more and more every day. It's ridiculous things that are coming out of her mouth.

This morning she came into our room and stood by my bed saying, "Wake up, Mom. Wake up." When I didn't move she grabbed my arm and went, "Heeeave, ho! Heeeeve ho!" Seriously! I cracked up.

Also when we put her to bed she's been saying, "Yaya (Olivia speak for Olivia) can't sleep. Just can't sleep."

And last night she wanted me to stay with her. I told her no, I had to go feed Abigail, and she said, "Please, mama, just tonight." This kid is not even 2 yet!!

She also frequently says she's "scawed of monstaws". And she's started complimenting people. The other night she told her Aunt Molly, "Cute purse, Mowwy".

Okay glad I've got that written down now somewhere. I know there are more, I just can't think of. I'll have to write them down sooner.

Bathtime w/ cousins

These are from New Year's at the cabin in christopher creek. O was seriously in heaven, she thought taking a bath with her cousins was pretty much the best thing ever.

I love how in this last one, my identical twin neices are doing the exact same thing with the wash cloth, and Olivia is doing something completely different. I think these are pictures they will love to look at when they are older.

Disneyland!

We left Friday morning for Disneyland! I should probably blog about it later when the 6 hour drive from heck isn't so fresh in my mind. And the laptop is dying. So real quick.

Highlight from Friday has got to be the Mickeyhouse Clubhouse Playhouse, whatever it's called, disney live thing. Olivia loved it so much. I was crying watching her, just so happy. It was very cute.

Saturday... it was pouring rain when we woke up so we went and got all this rain gear at walmart. It didn't really rain much again the rest of the day LOL. Such is life. Anyway Sat we enjoyed lots of rides and very little lines. We did everything. It was great. Even went on Dumbo twice. Most of the rides that are indoors scared Olivia. She didn't cry, just clung to me, and showed no desire in doing the ride again. But dumbo she asked over and over. Same for the carasoul (don't know how to spell that one, lol). She even went on a roller coaster! I can't believe she's tall enough for some of that stuff already. She still loves the Tiki Room. Abigail actually seemed to enjoy that too. Abigial also really liked the Nemo ride. She was all smiles, and just fascinated. We ate at our favorite place in all of Disneyland, Goofy's Kitchen. It's expensive, but I think it's the best value in Disneyland. All you can eat! Food is sooooo delicious. And lots of time with the characters. Olivia even danced with Goofy. I'll post pictures to facebook and link it here later.

Okay so much for this being a short recap. But laptop really is about to die. Today we drove home, and it was rough. We had one hour of silence. Other than that, one of the two babies was crying pretty much the entire trip. So wonderful.

Abigail's 3 months.

Abigail is freaking huge. I think we've established that fact. She's also pretty stinkin cute. I am in looove with her. I swaddle her and put her in the cradle and she is asleep in minutes almost every time. Sometimes she wakes up and I don't even know it until I go check on her because she's just layin there, chillin. So low maintenance. Last night she started crying around 9:00, like hysterically crying. It was the first time she's done that in her life. Aaron and I were freaking out, like what's wrong with her! Oh my gosh... she's crying. Yeah she was just a little gassy, or something. It passed in 10 minutes or less. That was the first time she's done that in her life. Of course as I'm writing this bragging about her wonderfullness she's fussing away in her cradle. But I am so grateful for her smiles and giggles and just her existence. Today I was in the shower, and when I came out I found Abigail fussing in her cradle, Olivia rocking it gently and singing to her. Melt my heart!

..by the way, started locking O in her room and I've finally gotten 5 straight hours of sleep! Woohoo!

And I thought yesterday was bad...

Olivia sucks at going to bed. Bedtime around here is a nightmare. It's frustrating because she was such a good sleeper for such a long time. Even when we first switched to the toddler bed she did great. Now she wants us to stay with her until she's asleep. This can take an hour. I'm sorry but I'm not willing to sit there for an hour every night until she's asleep! So we decided to try the Supernanny technique of just taking her by the hand and bringing her back to her bed without saying anything. We did this over 20 times last night, for almost an hour, and we gave up before she did. I know it eventually would have worked, but I couldn't see an end in sight. I decided to switch to Supernanny's other sleep technique of gradual seperation. Where I stand in her room without touching her or anything, just standing there until she falls asleep. It took 40 minutes of me standing in her room until she was asleep. This was starting to happen for the THIRD time last night when I finally just said we need to just lock her in her room. Doing that, she was asleep in 10 minutes. I think that's what we are going to do. She is safe in there. She has a night light. I think it's the only way she'll learn. She's been absolutely miserable during the days because she's been up so much at night.

Wanna know what else happened yesterday? Olivia got a peice of crayon stuck up her nose. WAY up her nose. Like I told Aaron we were going to have to go to urgent care to get it out, and he wanted to try his way first. He put his mouth over her nose and sucked as hard as he could. Several times. Made her blow her nose a few times. Sucked some more. And you know what... out popped the crayon. Later that day we found her trying to stick another crayon up her nose. We are done with crayons.