Kid Conversation

Christmas Eve.  The Frog and Peach are having a sleep-over.

me:  So, kids.  Tomorrow is Christmas, which means I want to make sure you know what is going to happen...  What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
The Frog: OPEN PRESENTS!!
me: no.
The Frog: Open Jesus's present?
me: no.
...
me: nobody is to go downstairs until mommy and daddy are awake.  I want you both to go to the bathroom, and Peach, please put on underpants.  I will leave the iPad upstairs for you to watch movies in the morning until we wake up, ok?
Peach: But!!!  What if an ornament falls off the tree and breaks?!  Or if a stocking falls down?!
me: nobody is to go downstairs until mommy and daddy wake up!

Looking forward to sleeping in this Christmas.  :)

Merry Christmas everyone!

First Photo Booth!

Jay takes the kids to the movies a lot- usually the dollar movies, but sometimes if there's something new he really wants to see, he'll take them to the "real thing".  They have the ritual of sharing a small bag of popcorn and "playing" in the arcades after the show.

Well, I finally go to take the kids to a movie while Jay stayed home with the napping Hazel - we went to see Frozen - and when I saw the photo booth in the arcade, I knew....

PS Peach has always been quite fearless in movies, compared to The Frog, but she got scared during the previews and sat on my lap during the whole movie!  It was fun :)

Picture Catch-up...

I realized today, when scanning through our photos on the computer, trying to decide which one to make an ornament out of for Peach, that I have hardly any good photos of her lately!  She has been very camera shy/active (i.e. blurry!) in all my recent photos.  Also, I've been taking much fewer than usual...  Anyway, out of nowhere, my princess girl has suddenly wanted to start wearing her brother's clothes.  (try to ignore her peeking bum.  It can be hard keeping 3T pants on, but The Frog's 5T ones are impossible!)

 She even wore his pajamas to bed that night!

 Don't worry, though, she still has days of multitudes of princess tutus!

 I think I have a picture like this for all three kids at about this age:

 I make the babies wear these when I grind wheat.  That thing is super loud!

Ever since Auntie Eve has moved to Utah, we've seen a lot more of her and the cousins!  Usually, things are too crazy (or we're too busy chatting...) to get many pictures, but I just thought it was so cute seeing these two together, that I couldn't resist.  Hazel usually goes for the eyes, but little E is a good sport about it.

 Hazel absolutely LOVES playing peek-a-boo.  I don't think her siblings ever got this big of a kick out of it, but I'm known for having memory problems... My favorite thing about when she plays is that she considers this amount of face coverage to be hiding.

Adorable!  It's really really easy to tickle her into a giggle fit too.  Sometimes a picture just isn't enough...

And finally, I have this drawer of cookie cutters in my kitchen (that are almost all hand-me-downs) which is funny because I really hate making cut-out cookies.  **so tedious**  However, I've always been glad for it because it's been a favorite place for babies to go when I'm making dinner.

I'm getting really good an stepping over and around things while rushing around the kitchen :)  I wonder if I could put that on my resume...

Remembering warmer days...

It is SOOOOO COLDDDD!!!  I have a lot of catchup to do...  Looking at these pictures of playing in the leaves makes me remember the warmer, beautiful November we got this year!! I was pleasantly outside hanging Christmas lights on the house the weekend of Thanksgiving, and now the high lately is hovering around 10 F.

Enough weather.  This was Hazel's first leaf-playing experience.

 And this was her second.  Isn't she muy adorable?

I couldn't pick just one!

She kept finding apples on the ground from the tree... meanwhile I had to surreptitiously remove the wormier ones with ones of a pleasanter variety :)

Bedtime Songs

For awhile, at bedtime, instead of singing 2 songs to Peach, as usual, she has requested to sing to me the second song.  The first time she did it, I quickly realized it was a stalling technique...  She "sang" nonstop for about 5 minutes about everything and nothing.  Whenever she begins her song, it always starts out, "Houses everywhere..." and then she throws in everything she can see in the room, and other tidbits of information she picked up that day or sometime recently.

The tune is unrecognizable to me and there seems to be no real rhythm.  (either that, or the time signature changes frequently...)

It's cute all the same. :)

Peach has gone through quite a few phases with her bedtime song routine, and I thought it would be fun to record them.  Her requests, for a long, long time, used to always be ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star- I realized later that it was because her "blankie" has letters on one side and stars on the other.  After awhile, she would want to sing Twinkle Twinkle while I did the actions.  (didn't know there were actions?  that's because I made them up! :D)
Later, she started requesting Popcorn Popping and either ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle for the 2nd song.  Slowly, we started changing the words to Popcorn Popping and we had all kinds of things growing on our trees - pancakes flipping & eyeballs rolling are two that come to mind.  Then she always requested Kookaburra and the other song would change.

When I put Hazel down for a nap and I always sing the same 2 songs to her (I've discovered, if you always always sing the same songs before bed, it acts as a kind of sleepy trigger- a signal that it's time to go to sleep.  Never fails, when I start the routine she starts yawning!  Try it!) "Gunk, Gunk" which is a song I'm pretty sure my mom made up- because of the funny "gunk" noise, it gets babies' attention- but I have expanded it to many other animals (it's basically a song about the sounds different animals make.) The "gunk" is kind of a hard sound to describe... you're not really saying "gunk".  It's more of a deep clicking in the back of your throat... or something...  Anyway, the original verse is
gunk gunk
said the little green frog one day
gunk gunk
said the little green frog
gunk gunk
said the little green frog one day
and his eyes went
gunk gunk gunk

So I have added other verses with other sounds:
blub blub says the little blue fish, and his gills went...
ssss ssss says the little red snake, and his tongue went...
bzzz bzzzz says the bumble bee, and his wings went...
tick tock (really tongue clicking) says the little white clock, and his hands went...
cows, pigs, dogs, cats, ducks...

you could probably sing it indefinitely, but I usually just sing those first 5 rounds of it.

The other song is "Give, Said the Little Stream".  So there is a fun song and a quieter song.  Anyway.....

The other day, I think the monitor was one when I sang to Hazel, and Peach really really likes to pretend to be a baby lately...  So she's been requesting "Gunk, Gunk" now.  However, every single time I sing it she interrupts me and says, "mom, frogs don't say "gunk gunk", they say, "ribbit ribbit"!"  And I have to tell her that there are two kinds of frogs- some that say "ribbit" and some that say "gunk".  This one says "gunk".

I usually sing to Peach in her room first, and then sing to The Frog second.  He always asks me what Peach requested before choosing his songs, just in case she asked for something particularly silly so he can get that one too.

Some other bedtime favorites are:
The Baby Bumble Bee
I've Been Eaten by a Boa Constrictor
I Am A Child of God
I Love to See the Temple
How Much is that Doggy in the Window? (and more verses about a cat, fish and bird)
Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam (and it's counterpart- daddy wants me for a snowman)
A Child's Prayer
Families Can Be Together Forever
I'm Trying to be Like Jesus

What are your favorite bedtime songs?

Kid Conversation...ish

We had our ward primary program a couple of Sundays ago.  I don't remember it being like this for me, when I grew up, but in our ward, they always have the kids prepare their own part on a given topic.  For the youngest kids, they will ask them questions and write down their answers for them to share.  I think they asked The Frog what he know about prophets and this was his response:  (and what he shared in sacrament meeting from the pulpit)

"When it is conference time, the prophet speaks in a microphone.  Then, the electricity goes to our house.  We have a book about prophets.  I know who President Monson is, but I don't always know the other guys..."

Kid Conversation

Hazel has this habit of knocking half her food on the floor while she's eating and then being done (**clap clap**) right after I sat down just long enough to have a couple bites...

So I get her out, wash her hands, and set her down in the next room to play while we eat.

She then crawls in and eats the stuff she threw on the floor earlier.  (which hasn't been cleaned up because I'm desperately trying to eat my food before it's completely cold)

Do you remember this?  Okay good.  Enough back story.

The Frog was sitting by the front closet, putting his shoes on for preschool.  Hazel crawls over to him, clutching some floor-toast.

Hazel: (opens big) aaaaaahhhhhhhh aaaaaaahhhhhhhh
The Frog: (copying her)  aaaaaaahhhhhhhh  aaaaaaahhhhhhmfrg
The Frog: (laughing) Mom!  Hazel just fed me some toast!

Halloween!

I'm feeling a bit scroogey...  I didn't let Hazel go trick-or-treating this year because she had a cold.  But I was really excited about a bee costume a friend loaned to us, so I got her all dressed up long enough to take a picture and go visit said friends when it was still too light out to go trick-or-treating, but still after dinner.

It took her some time to get used to the hood...

I confess... I also didn't let Peach go trick-or-treating because she wouldn't take a nap that day, which was weird because she always takes a nap!  I told both of the older kids that if they wanted to go trick-or-treating, they both had to take a nap (because there was no way they were going to make their 7pm bedtime...) and The Frog took one no-questions-asked, whereas Peach, all of a sudden was adamant that she would rather stay up and play over trick-or-treating that night.  "I already had enough candy last night" she said.

ok...

And she didn't fuss about not going either.  weird.

So, The Frog and I embarked, pillow-case in hand, on our trick-or-treating adventure.

Much to my surprise, he wasn't planning to go to every house, as I always did as a kid.
me: "ok, so should we go to so-and-so's next?" (pointing next door)
The Frog: "nooooooo, I want to go to the blah's house." (someone several houses away... even though we know everyone between here and there.)

So, even though we walked by 30 or 40 houses, he only came home with about 6 pieces of candy.  and was perfectly contented.

wow.

And he ate all of it (minus 1 sucker and a few m&ms he shared with Peach) the next day.
which was fine with me.

Something else!! Every year before this one, I would buy the monster bag of candy from Costco and we would hardly put a dent in it.  This year, however, I decided to just get 3 bags (my 3 favorite fun-sized candy bars) and call it good.  And guess what... we ran out! I couldn't believe it!!  It's my fault for telling Jay to give everyone 2 and for eating 3 almond joys and a reese's earlier that day.... **blushing**  luckily, we only had to apologize to one family, but I still feel quite guilty about it.  I should have given them an apple or something.

Anyway, all-in-all, I felt this Halloween had all the benefits (costumes, excitement, candy) with very minimal costs (sleep-deprived, cranky children, too much candy)!  Woo hoo!

Ward Halloween Party

So as I've mentioned before, I'm in the Young Women's organization at my church, and every Halloween, the youth put on a Halloween party for the kids.  Unfortunately, it didn't start until 6:30, which is after Hazel's bed time AND she was sick (and really close to our other kids' bedtime, but we decided to be nice and let them go.  Just this once, mind you...) so she didn't get to go.  BUT I really wanted to have her try on the tinkerbell costume I made for Peach 2 years ago since the only thing I made this year was:

What, you didn't see that a.ma.zing. tiara on Peach's head?  That's right... my pipecleaner sculpting skills even surpassed my own expectations.  Turns out, it was actually a good idea (and not just a cheap, use-what-you-have-on-hand idea like I had intended) because the pipecleaner kind of acts like velcro and stays put on the head really well.  I'll have to store that little nugget away for future use.

Yes.  I gave in and bought a muscle suit for The Frog.  It was just THERE at Costco.  He was begging... I knew I could never make anything that awesome.  I knew I wasn't really going to have time to make anything this year and the price was right, so I totally gave in.  And it was worth it because The Frog pretty much lived in this costume for most of September and all of October.

Here's Peach in her self-designed princess costume.  (more on her extreme independence later...)

Hazel being cute in the Tinkerbell costume.

Hazel getting attacked by the Tinkerbell costume...

Look at these cute kids!

Peach ended up not making it to the toilet in her princess costume before the party, and had to change into something else.  Luckily, we just so happen to have about a billion tutu-ish skirts.  (how else would she be able to don 3 every day?)

Now we're actually at the party.  She wanted a spider on her cheek.  Looks a bit smudged already...  She spent most of her time sitting on one of our neighbors laps at the dig-through-the-hay booth and didn't get very much candy.  (and i'm glad)

Turns out, we had all the avengers there, in toddler form.  Awesome, eh?

The Frog loved the "ghost busters" booth, where they shot at stacked cups with nerf guns.

donut on a string.  classic.

Peach, hoarding her cupcake from the cakewalk.

I dressed up as Mario, but I forgot to take a picture of myself...  But you can probably imagine what I looked like if you just picture a face swap here.  (if only I knew how to use Photoshop, I could recreate it for you.)

We're not done with costumes and Halloween fun just yet...

Parent Conversation

MAN, I've been doing a terrible job at posting...  things have just become so busy and I've allowed myself to sleep in until the kids wake up to get over this darn cold, so I am just perpetually behind (says the laundry that sat unfolded in a bin for 4 days).  To give you a feel for how things are going around here, this little incident occurred yesterday:

Me: (on my way out the door for a Young Women leadership meeting)  Jay, can you just make peanut butter sandwiches for the kids for lunch?  I'll see you at church! Thanks! Bye!

Jay: (via text message 10 minutes later) we don't have any bread.

I can't believe I still haven't reported on Halloween...

Busy Busy!

Last week (the short version):

My week for Peach's preschool + drama at Jay's work + helping with the Halloween carnival at church + YW Presidency meeting + Halloween + Hazel is sick and then I got sick + Dine-O-Round at my house = no blog posts.

And I'm still tired from it all.  Will try to catch up this week.  I finally have something to write about!

Hazel Turned 1?!!

How did that happen?  For me, things have been so different with baby #3.  Every baby moment has been cherished and mourned, mourned because it lasts only a short time...  There is no doubt that this first year has felt faster than the first year of my first two.

She has done this on other occasions, but never so adamantly- the morning of her 1st birthday, she very pointedly refused to let me feed her oatmeal.  Not because she suddenly decided she doesn't enjoy it, but rather because she somehow knew this day was a milestone and she should now be old enough to rise above my services.  So, after my 5th or 6th struggle to remove the now slimy spoon from her monkey grip, I relented and started plopping it into what I hoped would be manageable heaps on her tray.  After I had finished eating, I could tell she finally realized that oatmeal is a bit of a challenge, when eaten sans spoon, and so I thought I would give it another try with the spoon.  Alas, she was not ready to give in so easily and took the spoon from me.  Luckily, we have a near infinite supply and I grabbed another.  She confiscated that with her free, slimy hand.  Seeing my opportunity, I have it one final shot, and she let me scoop the goop into her mouth.

How could I forget the "3rd-spoon's-the-charm" trick?

I'm feeling a bit guilty, it's obvious that the 3rd child is already getting less of a special treatment...  in iPhoto, I have smart photos of my favorite photos of the kids for each year.  The Frog has 326 photos, Peach has 243 and Hazel has 161.  The Frog had a massive pile of gifts for his 1st birthday, and I gave Hazel a couple of books (one of which hasn't arrived yet..) and 2 pairs of shoes.  I will say, though, The Frog only got a banana bread muffin w/ cream cheese frosting for his birthday (he had no sugar at ALL until his first birthday!) Whereas, I gave Hazel an extra big smash cake so we wouldn't be forced into eating cake all week.  (I feel like I still haven't recovered from our 3 birthdays in a row about a month ago.)

The cake, however was kind of pathetic.  I've decided to try and get rid of some of the boxed cakes I have around, and thought I'd do the cake mix+sour cream+instant pudding one (have you seen that? Makes the cake so moist!) but then when I went to the pantry, I sadly discovered that I only had pistachio pudding (for my St. Patrick's day cake...).  Well, I used it and it was kinda weird to have a green cake with chocolate frosting...

But I hope she knows we love her so much and are so grateful for the little ball of sunshine that she is!  I can't go anywhere without people commenting about how cute she is and getting a smile from her.

hasn't figured out blowing.  never fear, the siblings took care of it!

almost forgot to get a pic with our 1st birthday hat!

 We stripped her down before dessert, but she totally didn't need it!  She looked really quite clean afterward.

 And my mom thought we might even be able to salvage some of her cake!  (i didn't though... ew.)

 At first, we Hazel had absolutely no interest in her gifts, until her siblings started unwrapping them for her.  She caught on pretty quickly after that (and it was hard to get the siblings to stop "helping").

 I was really surprised by all the fighting that ensued over playing with baby toys...  I think I may start doing presents before dinner in the future.  Maybe at breakfast?  Just sometime not so close to bedtime.

Happy birthday Hazel!!  We sure love you!

PS THANK YOU for finally sleeping all night- your first night as a 1-year old!

Beginning Reading Games for the Car

I don't know about you, BUT driving around in the car can be SUCH a chore (especially when you have 3 carseats in the back of a Honda Civic, i.e. they can all whack touch each other...)  Lately, since we've been "trail-run-homeschooling", and I've been thinking a lot about how to teach kids to read, I've been trying out some car "games" to help our reading practice.  Probably most people already do stuff like this, but maaaybe there's a first-time mom out there that might find these useful.

Traditional Alphabet Game
I'm sure there isn't a person out there that doesn't know what this is... but JUST in case, all you do is try to find all the letters of the alphabet starting with letter A and making your way to Z.  Jay always plays it so that the letter can be anywhere in a word, but if you like more of a challenge, it can be fun to only allow it to be the first letter of a word.  I find this is a great way for kids to practice thinking about the letter order w/out singing the song every time, and it also just helps with seeing signs as something other than an unrecognizable foreign language.

Alphabet Game for Beginners
This is better for kids who are just learning their letters.  You can instead try to have them only point out every A they can see.  (You could even specify "Big A" or "little a").  Then you can move on to other letters as you see fit.  You could even, instead, help them get used to finding letters in their own name first.

Say It Fast
This is a game that helps for when kids start sounding out words themselves.  Something I've noticed with The Frog is he will sound out the whole word "caaaaaaaaataaaaaaaaapuuuuuuuuulllllllllllt" and get to the end, having no idea what he just said.  SO, this game is intended to help them get used to hearing a word said really slowly, and then registering what word it is.  For example, I would say,
"Mmmmmmaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnn.  Say it fast!" and the kids would yell, "MAN!"
"sssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.  Say It Fast!"
"SEAT!"
etc.  Obviously, you would start with short words (and maybe even try to think of words that might be encountered with the earliest reading) and once they get good, you can do long ones. (Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?)

You could also do themed words, like if you've been talking about ancient Egypt, do words like, "pyramid", "mummification", "Nile", etc.

The Rhyming Game
This is also great for kids because if they can recognize rhyming words, then when they have already read something like "hike", it will be easier to recognize "bike" later.  So, basically, you pick any word and get them to say things that rhyme with it.  I usually throw some out as well.  It's amazing how much car-time you can pass with this.

Sound it Out
This one, I admittedly haven't tried yet, but I just thought of it and I'd like to see how it goes.  Probably The Frog is the only one knowledgable enough for this one, but probably Peach would get the hang of it after listening to him do it.
It's a bit like the opposite of "Say It Fast".  The idea is to just pick a word, and then say it slowly together and try to figure out which letters are making all the sounds.
I do an exercise like this with The Frog everyday as part of out "trial-run-homeschooling"- we pick any old sentence (yesterday's was, "I have pen on my face.", because The Frog, unknowingly, did have pen on his face, and I thought it was funny :D) and try to sound out all the words.  The Frog will do his best to write them down on his own and then I'll go over it with him and write it all down correctly after.  Then we each circle our favorite letters (the ones that are written the best.) to help him pay more attention to his handwriting. So, anyway, I thought maybe we could try doing it all mentally in the car too!  We'll see :)

What are your favorite ways to pass the time in the car?

PS you don't have to be in the car to play these games.  in case that was unclear... :)

Shoes for Hazel

Hazel is nearing her 1st birthday, and with my older two kids, that was when I got them their first shoes.  Peach had an awesome pair of sneakers her nanny bought her, and I was excited to whip those little babies out for Hazel.  However, I was surprised to discover that they were gigantic on her!!  Peach is super hard to find shoes for because her feet are so narrow, and I just assumed her sister would benefit from the scouring we did for Peach, but turns out, though Hazel feels to me to be bigger in all other ways, her feet are much tinier.

I ended up getting these cutsie fake converses from old navy for really cheap.  They're really more like slippers (they're a bit fuzzy inside) which is really what I was going for, since she isn't really walking yet and I'll probably have to carry her around once she finally does, because it will be snowy, etc.

I tried to get a picture of her trying them on for the first time, but Peach was sort of stealing the stage.

She does seem to keep them on pretty well (for this first week she's been wearing them...)

Peach used to cheese it up whenever the camera came out, but lately, it's all crazy faces.

And I don't know where she learned this concept, but every so often, I'll catch her practicing her splits...  Maybe I'll get a ballerina in the family!! #yesplease!!

Kid Conversation

If "potty words" offend you, you may want to skip this one...  but I can't fault Peach because at our house, it's okay to use them when you're in the bathroom and she was, in fact, using the toilet during this conversation.

Actually, I was really excited because this is the first time Peach told us she needed to go #2 after putting on her diaper for the night (normally, she'll just go and then when I check on her before bed, her room smells and I have to wake her up and change her diaper...).  Milestone! :D

So, Peach is on the toilet, talking and talking and talking and she lets out a really really loud fart.  I tried my hardest to contain myself, but she was cracking up like crazy and I couldn't help but laugh with her.

me: I just want you to know that I'm laughing because you're laughing.  It's ok to fart on the toilet- that's the best place to do it!
Peach: or in your diaper.
           or on your blankie.

I will never look at her blankie the same way again...

Peach's Preschool - B Week day 2

Oddly, we only ended up having Peach and 1 other girl on Wednesday...

During our initial playtime (which was a bit longer than usual because so few people were there and I was kind of waiting to see if anyone else was coming...) we had Blocks, Babies, and a doctor kit out because the focus of our day was to be about Bodies.

During "Circle Time" we:
 started out by reading The Human Body: A First Discovery Book, a really awesome beginning illustration of our body parts I happened to find at a used book store. I love the clear pages with all the organs/systems printed on them so you can really see all the layers inside our bodies. I also love the numbers so that when your child points to some obscure body part and asks what it's called, you can act like you are "in the know". :) Then we read I Can Move, a great children's book (I think we inherited?) about bones. Finally, we very briefly flipped through Hear Your Heart, because I didn't anticipate how long the kids would want to spend on the first book.  I gave everyone a toilet paper tube to try listening to each others hearts through.
Then we sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" and "Do As I'm Doing" and took turns being the person we all followed.

Snack Time:
  Nothing special- pears and animal crackers.  I was planning a no carb snack, but since that girl was sick, I thought I'd take advantage and do something easier.

Physical Activity:
  We all had a Balloon and we tried keeping them up in the air using different Body parts.  And then we practiced throwing and catching with them.

Craft:
  I gave everyone a skeleton on a piece of paper and bowls of pasta and we glued on the pasta to look like a skeleton.  If I were more clever, I would have thought of something that starts with Bs, like beads or something...

Karen's Visit!!

These past few posts are so out of order.  which bothers me.  because I like chronology.  (and alphabetization.)  

But I'm trying not to let my need to be organized, get in the way of getting things done.  Being organized is supposed to help, right.

Obviously, I only mention this because I am bothered.

Anyway, last weekend, I had the privilege of hosting my besty from college!!  Karen!!!  We were so meant to meet up.  I can't believe how much we have in common (nerdy, mathy, ballet-loving... we even both have curly hair!), and she was a great influence on me in so many ways (I doubt I would have thought to study abroad without her putting the thought into my mind, and we got to live in Hungary together!).  Anyway, she has made the move to CA and now resides in the Googleverse there, which means it's convenient enough for her to make a quick weekend getaway to visit ME in Utah, without needing time off work!  It was so fun to see her!! (and maybe I'll sneak away next time :D)

As seems to be the custom lately, I got ZERO pictures of our shenanigans, but she took plenty of phone pics (and so did my kids...) and she was kind enough to share.  Here are a couple of my favs:

Despite having no kids of her own, she is better with kids than I am.  (Which, I guess, isn't saying much.... perhaps it would be better not to compare and just say, she is great with kids!) So much so that on Sunday night when we were putting Peach to bed, she told Karen that they could share a bed that night if she wanted to.  When Karen told her that she had to go home that night, Peach said she wanted a hug before she left and gave her a little kiss too!!  It was the cutest ever!

We had to make rolls while Karen was here.  (So I could show her what I've been "studying" since leaving school.  'Cause we are both nerdy that way and love to study.)  This is Peach making hers into a "puppy".

We did go out to dinner at a cool place on Saturday night - The Black Sheep Cafe, but mostly, we just lazed around while Karen was here.  We probably spent more time in our PJs than was proper, but we're just that close. :)

Thanks for coming Karen!!!  Next time, we can chill in the peace and quiet, by your pool and take a ballet class! :)