Amelia

Oh Amelia. Amelia has been a lot challenging lately. I overheard someone else calling their 3 year old a threenager. It fits. Anyhow, who she is not literally driving me crazy and pushing all my buttons at one time, she is a hoot. Four examples:

1. As she surveys my outfit selections for the day, "mom, when will I be old enough to pick out my own clothes?"

"I'd say 5 or 6 years old, why?"

(Heavy sigh)

"Just wondering."


2. On the scale in my bathroom while I'm (trying) dressing for work.

"Mom! I'm 34.5 pounders! I pounded it right here on the scale. How many pounders are you? Come here and we'll find out if you pound it like me!"

3. On discussing her ballet class:

"When I go to ballet class, I am called a ballet-er."

"No, sweetie. I think it is called a ballerina."

(Eye roll from the threenager)

"No Mom. In my ballet class, it is called a ballet-er."

4. On being scared:

When you opened my door, you freaked me. Don't do that mom!"

"Okay love, did that freak you out?"

(Sigh+eye roll= 13 is going to be a hard year with this girl).

"No mom. It didn't freak me out. It just freaked me."

Sent from my iPhone

Christmas crafty!

The craftiness has started! Here are the advent calendars I am making for our family and a friend!

Eat cake!

Happy thanksgiving! We hope you ate some cake!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are enjoying being surrounded by family for thanksgiving this year! Happy thanksgiving from our littlest turkey!

Thanksgiving on the brain

We are at the transportation museum today enjoying an easy family say before the craziness of next week unfolds. Complex travel plans involving an infant across three states and 17+ hours of car travel call for something a little more running, playing, family fun oriented (to be clear, there will be a lot -A LOT of fun next weekend, but it's going to be a lot of work too).

I can tell the thanksgiving thought are already starting to creep in because I thought because I thought the sign below said that the compartments below we're equipped with gravy outlets. That would be convenient though, wouldn't it?

I love kindergarten

It is so much fun to have William writing ! I find all kinds of notes all over the house. See below:

1. This is William's plans for building a treehouse with his daddy. He made the plans all by himself and was genuinely confused when John didn't understand/seem excited about the plans (hint:bad timing and not explanation, just 5 year old boy overexcited)

2). This might be my favorite school paper to date. The assignment was to write 2-3 sentences about thanksgiving or family or turkeys. Parents were not to help with spelling or writing, just guide the kiddos with expressing ideas. Apparently, the lesson of the day was about exclamation points! William uses one! A! Lot!

The story says: who will carve the turkey? Maybe a t-Rex! He will use his claws! And then has a picture below to demonstrate how the t-Rex will carve the turkey.

Gemma tries a puff video

Gemma scoots!

Gemma is a scooter!  So cute!  Although, I am fairly certain this new skill is largely responsible for the lack of sleep over the last week.  She has already improved the skill since the video was taken on Tuesday night.

Overheard

I was in the kitchen when I hear the following conversation from the living room:

William: that is a great game!
Amelia: yeah!
William: you push Gemma over and I'll catch her.
Amelia: ok!
Gemma: big belly laugh
William: she loved when I caught her. Lets her back up again and you can push her!

Sent from my iPhone

Scoot, scoot

Gemma is officially army crawling around and making fast progress. This girl is determined to get around and check things out. I hopeful we will have a video for you in he next couple of days!

Sent from my iPhone

Wait, what?

On the way home from the store yesterday, William dropped this bomb:

"Mom, I don't think I believe in Santa Claus anymore."

Wait. What? When did that happen? Who helped you come up with that one? Where did that come from?

Sadly, after he dropped that bomb, he moved on to the next topic and refused to discuss this one again.

I am not opposed to giving up on Mr Claus. I'm just a little sad that it's happening so soon. And, Gemma hasn't even had a chance to start believing...

Sent from my iPhone

The current argument

At breakfast this morning:

William: no Amelia, those are called band AIDS.

Amelia: un uh. They are BAND aids.

William: band AIDS.

Amelia: BAND aids.

William: Mom! Tell Amelia is is BAND aids.

Mom: no. Just eat your breakfast.

Amelia: see William? I was right?

Mama: what?!!?!

Sent from my iPhone

Gemma is 5 months old!

Gemma is 5 months old today! She has brought a lot of laughter and smiles to our house this month as her little personality emerges!

Gemma is growing up so fast! He still fits into a few 6-9 month clothes and we wear mostly 9-12 month. However she does have a handful of 12-18 month clothes that fit. Keeping up with what fits the three growing kids at our house is a full time job these days. The box of clothes Gemma has now outgrown is quite impressive.

I'm still squeezing her into our last bag of size 2 diapers - which means extra laundry this week. The too small diapers don't hold as we'll as I know the size threes will.

Gemma is getting very close to being fully mobile. She is able to scoot a little and with great effort. She can make forward progress, but it still requires a great deal of effort on her part. She easily spins herself around on her belly (all the better to spread spit up around the place) to reach different toys and fun things like papers left on the ground. Daily I look around with growing concern about her safety...and remind those big kids to pick up the pieces that are small enough to fit in the baby's mouth.

Gemma is loving sitting up and has become quite stable. She loves to look at books and play with toys in this position as well as keep her eye on what the big kids are up to.

Gemma loves chewing on everything in sight. We will be starting solids in about 4 weeks- she works hard any time we're holding her to get food into her mouth, it will be fun to see how she actually likes it.

Gemma loves books and stuffed animals- particularly anything that has a tag on it. Why? No idea. She will work and work to spin a toy around to find the tag to chew upon.

In general, Gemma is a very happy girl and rolls with the craziness if our day to day life. She is full if smiles and giggles for everyone as long as you give her some time to warm up. Catch her by surprise or hold her too soon and there will be tears aplenty. Nothing that a few minutes with her mama can't fix. We recently discovered she hates being alone while she is awake. Apparently, she is surrounded by people most if the time and when she is alone, she gets a little sad. She and I were home alone and I stepped into the laundry room. Gemma squawked and I peeked around the corner. I went back to switching clothes over and she squawked again and then started to cry. As long as I am in sight? We are all good!



And lastly, I might actually cry when this hat doesn't fit her anymore.

Hard to believe...

It's hard to believe how much a baby grows in just 5 short months!

Photo1 Gemma's birthday
Photo2 Gemma today - 5 months old!

Look what I have!

Gemma has feet! They are so much fun to play with and chew on! The picture isn't great because she loves the dot pattern on the case of my phone. But, so adorable to watch her grab her feet!

Picture 2 here is from this morning. I was getting ready for work and Gemma was keeping me company in the bathroom (because she is safest with me!). Suddenly the light was just perfect and Gemma was so adorable I needed to take a picture. So, I ran around to make that happen instead of getting ready for work.

Amelia wore this same outfit when she was a baby along with this hat. I don't think the hat is going to fit for much longer, which makes me just a little sad...

Election 2012

We stayed up last night with the kids for awhile to watch the election returns come in. John printed each of the kids a US map to color in for each of the candidates. Amelia's candidates were pink-Obama and purple- Romney. She got quickly tired of waiting for the actual returns to come in and just colored the map to her liking. William chose orange for Romney and blue for Obama. He was very excited about the results and cheered every time a state was declared, regardless of candidate.

He started out the evening hoping Obama would win (why? I just like him mom) and then flipped to wishing Romney would win (why? Because he ha the most states colored when we turned the TV off.)

He made us promise to tell him the results right away in the morning. I will say his geography knowledge is pretty impressive. He was able to color in most of the states by himself without any help accurately locating them.

It's Monday!

Oh Monday....it was a long day. A very long day with a very long list of work to be done. Add in an extremely challenging 3 year old and a crabby (teething?) baby and it equals for a long day. At least these two adorable faces are smiling here, right?

Kindergarten fun!

It's been fun watching William's writing/spelling develop and evolve! Here are my two favorite words from this week: hows (house) and hammur (hammer). William is learning so much and we are pretty proud!

Gemma's first Halloween

Here is one of Gemma's Halloween costumes! She had a tinkerbell costume to match Amelia's and she wore it to a neighborhood Halloween party. However, it was in the low 50's temperature wise on Halloween we opted to put her in the zebra costume I got last year on clearance because it was much warmer!

My first Halloween!

Gemma's first Halloween!

Also: Gemma is not feeling cooperative about having her picture taken.

Black and orange

Amelia had black and orange day at preschool in Tuesday (I'm less than a week behind!)

She picked: black leggings with silver stars, an orange "ghouls just wanna have fun" shirt with a sparkly ghost, and orange ribbons in her hair,

Pre Halloween fun!

On Saturday, we were invited to a neighborhood Halloween party. So, the kids dressed up and off we went! We played games and chatted with friends.

Amelia wasn't loving the bigger kids in their scary costumes. At all. Her dace was so sad and she absolutely refused to leave my side. So, daddy took her home. Gemma and William enjoyed themselves very much. William even mustered up the courage to go through an extra spooky haunted house! I was pretty nervous, but it turned out okay!

William agreed to be a pirate and the girls were both tinkerbell. Somehow, Gemma didn't make it into any of my pictures on my phone from that day!

The heidtbrow

All the Heidts can do this THING with their eyebrows. I can't seem to do it. Gemma can. Outperformed by the baby ....

Hey guys!

What's up? Gemma has been working hard at sitting up for the last 2 weeks and she now has it mastered well enough to have me take pictures while she is doing it (and I'm not afraid of her sustaining a head injury)

She loves being upright and being able to see what is going on around her. She is so sweet and fun! How can you not love all the rolls on her legs, dimples on her arms, and those fat cheeks?

Mom's night

Snow White (Amelia) and I attended her presshool's Halloween themed mom's night last week. She and I danced, sang, played games, crafted, listened to stories and had a great time. My girl certainly loved the attention! She doesn't get to be center stage very often lately OR have one parent all to herself. Both of us enjoyed the night out very much!