Snow, Snow & More Snow

Eastern Iowa has gotten pounded with snow and ice so far this winter. Every time you turn around it seems like we are awaiting yet another winter storm. I am a person that typically loves the snow, but that lasts for maybe the first two times it snows and that happened probably back in November! Now it's just getting old and it's not even January yet! Well two storms ago, we were lucky enough to get hit with 8 inches of snow and some of the deepest drifts that Josh and I have ever seen. Very easily we had numerous 3 - 4 foot drifts in our yard. Josh had a hard time even pulling Makenna around in the sled! I think Josh was secretly wishing he was still a kid so he could go outside and make a snow fort out of all the snow we have piled up everywhere! But I think desire died after he spent most of the morning shoveling away all of the nice deep drifts in our driveway ;)


This is what you could see from inside the house! The snow came up a half a foot to a foot on the windows next to our front door and went directly straight out from there... meaning that you couldn't see our front porch, steps, etc. The snow was that high by our front door that it reached up on to our windows!


The excitement of getting ready to go out into the snow! MarBear was mad that she didn't get to go.


Makenna all ready to go!


What Josh found when he opened our garage door...


Some pictures of the horrible drifts in our front yard...


Note that you can't even see the front porch or stairs.

Christmas 2007

Christmas 2007 was a lot of fun for us! We spent all of Christmas Eve day and Christmas Eve with Josh's family. The cousins all had so much fun playing together! It is quite the crowd (as there are now 8 kids!) and so much fun for everyone! We traveled home to Marion that night and for the first time ever woke up in our own home on Christmas morning! It was so much fun seeing the girls enjoy their gifts in our own home! Santa Claus brought the girls a kitchen and it was all set up in front of the Christmas tree! We got their darling reaction on camera :) So far I think Maryn has taken to the kitchen the most. She loves to bang on the pots and pans! Makenna was excited to see that there were only a few cookie crumbs left from the cookies she set out for Santa Claus. We also set out some carrots for the reindeer and Josh and I were trying to be clever and we threw a few pieces that looked nibbled up out on the front walk way to make it look like the reindeer had been standing there eating it. Well low and behold, we called Makenna over to the window on Christmas morning and all you could see were little bunny tracks leading up to the missing carrots! Oh well! After breakfast and opening gifts, we drove back up to Cedar Falls to spend Christmas afternoon with my parents and grandmas. Both girls actually took naps so it was a very relaxing afternoon :)

The girls really do like all of their gifts and seem to like each other's gifts too - makes that sharing thing really come into full swing! Makenna's only problem was when she opened up some Curious George underwear in her stocking. She noticed that they were size 6 (she currently wears 4) and she started crying and ran up to her room to save the rest of the underwear that she currently has because she thought I was going to make her give away her "Cinderellas" and "Ariels".

Here are the pictures and there are a LOT of them. I think I took almost 100 and that was with my camera battery dying on me on Christmas Eve :( So I really narrowed it down with just these few pics! My camera died before I could get some good pictures of the girls together in their beautiful Christmas dresses so I'm going to dress them up later this week and take some more. I'll post them later!

Our entire family either had a cold or was getting over a cold on Christmas... Makenna (who never takes naps anymore) was so tuckered out from all the festivities and her cold that she fell asleep in Peepie's lap for the 30 minutes we were there to get dressed for church.


Maryn loves sitting in the middle of Papa and Nana's coffee table!


Oops! Somebody left the refrigerator door open! Here comes our little scavenger!


Makenna opening gifts at Papa and Nana's - she loves her Barbie laptop!


It was kind of a late night on Christmas Eve and Maryn was getting fussy. For some reason sitting in the highchair and gnawing on an apple for 30 minutes seemed to do the trick!


Maryn and Daddy opening gifts at Papa and Nana's


What the girls came down to on Christmas morning!


Maryn loving her new kitchen!


Happy baby on Christmas morning!


Anytime you asked Makenna what she wanted for Christmas all you would get for a reply was "Cinderella stuff" Well Santa happily obliged and she got the Cinderella DVD, a Cinderella doll and some Cinderella play figurines. This little girl is in princess heaven!


Maryn and her new vacuum cleaner. Maryn is obsessed with my vacuum cleaner and wants to touch it and always checks on it in the closet. One day she even gave it a hug and kiss :) Well she finally got her own vacuum... too bad it already broke :(


The old and the new - duckie and the new Cinderella doll!


More playing with the new kitchen.


Look at those pink cheeks!


Maryn spent a good portion of the day showing off and being a ham at my parent's house :)


Cuddling with Peepie!


Another favorite activity over the holidays... climbing on all the boxes!


Serious Makenna picture


Makenna playing Whack-A-Mole at Poppy and Peepie's house - I think the adults liked this game just as much as the kids!


More of climbing on the boxes....

Decorating Christmas Cookies

This year my parents decided to take a day off of work and do something "Christmasy" together. Well they called me and asked if they could come down and frost and decorate Christmas cookies with the girls on their day off (and they brought the baked cookies with them so I didn't have to do anything - even better!). Fun was had by all! Makenna is improving in her decorating skills and has only dumped the container of colored sugar on the floor twice so far this season :) They decorated so many cookies that day but somehow most of them have magically disappeared! We have a few saved away for Santa, but I think I'm going to have to bake some more this weekend to get us through! You could say our family has a little bit of a sweet tooth!

Makenna and Poppy frosting and decorating cookies!


Makenna hard at work.


Maryn joining in on the cookie action!


Maryn's funny game - bending down and trying to lick the cookie on the table!


A finished product!


See that look in her eye - she knew she was up to mischief!


Content eating a cookie on Peepie's lap.

Changing So Fast

It seems like with kids, so much changes so fast. They are always moving on to the next thing. Which can be exciting, but also a little sad for the moms like me who like to hold on to their little babies. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for my girls to grow up and to see them develop and mature but it's hard to let go of some of those earlier days knowing that I will never get them back.

Maryn is now a pro walker! For well over a month now she has used no other method of transportation, only walking. Crawling is so not her style anymore :) She finds walking much more exciting. So exciting that she has taken it up a notch and is moving at faster and faster speeds with each day. Some days she gets moving so fast that if she ends up falling down it looks like she slid into a base in baseball! Can't blame the kid though... she just wants to keep up with her big sister (or run away from her!).

And I'm just starting to notice the beginning of a possible vocabulary boom for Maryn. I remember this with Makenna - all of a sudden they will acquire a huge amount of words in a short period of time and just wow the socks off me. Well I think Maryn is starting her first "boom" as I call it. Yesterday she said "ball" (sounded more like "ba") when she was pointing at her new Care Bear ball and then said "Bible" (sounded more like "biba") when I was reading our kids Bible to her last night.

And an amazing story displaying her already vast intelligence :) - yesterday she walked over to me and handed me her little magenta shoe. Not sure what she wanted me to do with it, so I undid the strap and handed it back to her (it's not unlike her to play with everyone's shoes in the house). Anyway, this was clearly not what she wanted because she immediately got huffy with me, threw the shoe, plopped her self on the ground and gave a very frustrated scream. I just shrugged my shoulders not knowing what she wanted but luckily she persevered. Within two minutes she was back at my side handing me the shoe once again, only this time she pointed down to her foot and very clearly said "foot" (sounded like "foo") in a very determined voice. This time I got it! She wanted that shoe on her foot and she walked around with one shoe on, one shoe off for probably an hour yesterday afternoon :) The huge smile on her face as I put the shoe on her foot let me know that I finally got it right!

And Makenna is not falling short at amazing us either. I think a few months ago I blogged about how proud she was of her ability to do puzzles. Well a very short time after that she moved from 24 piece puzzles to 100 piece puzzles! And don't think I'm some kind of pushy mom, it actually all happened by accident. I told her she could pick out another puzzle at the store one day as a reward for something and she wanted the Strawberry Shortcake puzzle. Well the only one they had had 100 pieces so we got it by default. I thought there was no way she would be able to do it because it said for ages 5+, but sure enough! Her ability to figure these puzzle pieces out, and at such a quick pace, absolutely amazes me. And I love puzzles too so this is one of my favorite activities to do with her :) Our favorite puzzles right now are Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears and Princesses. Imagine that!

I recently blogged about Makenna's interest in sounding letters and words out. Well that has developed into an interest in how to spell words and write. The other day she was busy writing her letters to Santa Claus. Josh was sitting by her on the couch and she asked him what comes after "R". Josh was doing something with Maryn at the time so he wasn't paying attention to what she was doing so he of course just answered "S" without thinking anything of it. He said she just gave him this funny look and walked up the stairs. Well next I find her upstairs in Maryn's bedroom staring at Maryn's name on her bedroom wall. She has her finger up in the air pointing to the letters. I ask her what she's doing and she says "Y-N Mommy! Y-N comes after the R in Maryn." I took her downstairs and sure enough she had signed Maryn's name on one of the letters to Santa! I about fell over! I couldn't believe that she had the ability to know how to spell most of her sister's name, write it down and then when she couldn't figure something out to have the problem solving skills to get the answer ;) Some days I am amazed that this child is only three.

Okay I think I'm done bragging about my kids for the day!

Santa Claus Visit

Yesterday we took the girls to visit Santa Claus in the mall. This was a much anticipated visit since we already tried to go once and he was on a break when we got there :( Makenna was crushed because we had of course built it up for her all day that day. She settled on writing him a letter that afternoon instead. So she was definitely ready to go and couldn't wait to tell Santa exactly what she wants for Christmas - Cinderella stuff! This was Maryn's first time on Santa's lap and she did extraordinarily well! I was afraid she'd look at his big white beard and scream but she just kept looking up at him in awe. Towards the end Josh said that she had a look in her eye like "Maybe I should be thinking about crying now?" But she never did. And of course Miss Makenna just marched right up there and hopped on his lap :)

The girls on Santa's lap... notice that Maryn doesn't take her eyes off him :)

Christmas Concerts

We were able to enjoy Makenna's first Christmas concerts this year, one for church and one for preschool. They were both so good and she did fantastic! Not one bit shy or nervous and she sang and did all the motions to the songs :) Plus she looked so beautiful! How grown up my baby has gotten! Enjoy the pictures!

Isn't she so beautiful?!! What a big girl in her Christmas dress!


The two and three year olds dress as angels for the Christmas program at church... I don't think you could find a more perfect angel!


Singing onstage at the church Christmas program (standing next to her friend Reece from preschool...yes, she is almost a whole head taller than him ;)


Walking in to the preschool Christmas program (she waved at everyone!)


Singing and ringing her bells at the preschool Christmas program.


Celebrating with cookies with her friend Emilee after the program.


Eating some birthday cake for baby Jesus!


Last Christmas program picture :)

Playing Dress Up

Playing dress up is an all-time favorite at our house, especially if it concerns Cinderella. Here are some cute pictures of the girls playing dress up a few weeks ago :)

Now who am I suppose to be again??? :)


Princess Cinderella in her yellow dress


Cinderella so proud of the fact that she now has a little fairy for a playmate :)


The rear view is just as cute!

Ear Infection

Some horrible form of a cold is going around our house right now and Maryn is the latest victim. The poor little girl's nose has turned into a faucet and she has coughing fits from all the crud stuck in her lungs. Luckily we already had an appointment scheduled this morning for her 15 month appointment so we were able to get right in. The poor baby's cold has turned into an ear infection. It is the first ear infection ever for our family so we're in unchartered waters. So far she's sleeping great... slept through the night last night and didn't get up until 7:40 this morning. And right now she is in the middle of a 2+ hour nap. Hopefully that will help her feel better. She's all loaded up on meds right now so I'm sure that wiped her out. I'm not sure what to expect or how she's going to act... she's not even really pulling at her ears and that's the main thing I was looking for. Luckily I think we caught it in the early stages before it got too bad.

As for other info from her appointment, I was right about her weight. She is still really little. I was hoping for above 20 lbs and I barely got it. When they set her on the scale it teetered around the 19 lbs around until finally settling in at 20 lbs 0 oz. I'll take it. At least we hit 20 lbs finally. Oh and she grew almost an inch (30 3/4 inches long) in the past 3 months. The doctor and I had a long talk about her size and the doctor isn't the least bit concerned. She said that Maryn continues to grow (even if it is only 1 lb/1 inch in 3 months) and is consistently in the same low percentage bracket (10-15 percentile). She said she would only be concerned if Maryn dropped off suddenly or didn't gain at all, neither of which has happened. Basically she just thinks that Maryn is going to be a littler person. This is such a switch for us as Makenna always gained at least 3 lbs at every appointment and was off the charts for percentages! I guess we are lucky to have one child at each end of the spectrum :)

Other things we discussed at her appointment - Maryn had a bad reaction to her first flu shot (red rash all over her body) so they didn't allow her to get the second dosage. Typically this means that a child is allergic to eggs if they react this way, but Maryn has never reacted to any other food (and I cook with eggs). So we decided we would just play it by ear next year and decide then if we would try another flu shot or not. Also, I had Dr. Sterling check out the concerning area in Maryn's mouth that was left behind after her Epstein Pearls faded away. It looks almost as if a tooth is going to break through way up high on her gum. The doctor assured me this is not the case - that it's not a tooth or bone up there. She believes it's just scar tissue left behind from her Epstein Pearls.

So with all that said, we have a lot to be thankful for. Despite a little virus and a few minor issues, Maryn is a perfectly healthy little girl! Thank God!

Mullet Baby!

Maybe it's not the nicest nickname, but we have endearingly started calling Maryn our mullet baby! Her hair is growing in the exact same pattern that Makenna's did at this age... there is a lot of longer hair in the back and it's staying short on top! Perfect for those that love a mullet! Ahhhh! Too bad we aren't living in the 70's anymore! I can't bring myself to cut the back though... we'll just have to wait it out and go through the mullet baby stage! Oh well. Mullet and all, she's still the cutest baby around :)

I had to add some pictures, but they don't really do the mullet justice. You can also see the barrette in her hair and this was the first time she ever wore a barrette!









She started blinking on purpose because the flash was too bright! Cheese!