Anniversary Celebration

This past week we spent 3 nights (4 days) in Christchurch with Marco's side of the family celebrating his parent's 40th wedding anniversary! Wow, 40 years... 

40 years is the same length of time that God had the Israelite's wander around in the desert before bringing them to the promised land. There are a few conclusions we can draw from this comparison.  

1) The Israelite's wore the same pair of shoes for those 40 years, surely I can keep the same spouse!

2) If I had to walk for 40 years, I'd probably be a lot skinnier. 

3) 40 years is a REALLY long time :)

So, we went down on Sunday morning and immediately my girls slotted in with their cousins, picking up where they'd left off 6 months ago (having a baby has meant we haven't gone down to see family as much as normal)

On the Monday, we all went to a wildlife center.  Morgan loved it! She got to feed the giraffes and while at first she was a bit timid, she warmed up quickly. 

 Unfortunately, Owen and Addison didn't get quite as close to the action as the others. This is them feeding the giraffes...

 Kelsey enjoyed herself if the animals stayed a safe distance and if Oma stayed close. Oma was very obliging!!

 Master Owen got quite the preferential treatment. This was his bed in our "house" for the week. There was a playpen for him to sleep in, but one of the sides didn't go up entirely and there was no mattress or blankets for it.. so.. the bed worked just as well.

 And of course, everyone had turns holding the newest family member, even if he did always have to have one eye on where his mama was. (Ok, I like it that he's a bit of a mama's boy. The girls have always preferred their daddy and now I finally have one that prefers me.)

 On Tuesday, the men folk took the older kids to the beach for the morning. Kelsey took a bit of an accidental swim! haha! But she was great about it and got up and started smiling right away. However, that ended that trip!! Meanwhile, the women & babies were having a lovely quiet time at one of the houses.. ahh, peace and quiet.

 We had 2 of our dinners catered while we were there so that it could be a holiday for all of us. Here's Kelsey chowing down on the dessert platter on the second night.. Mmmm!

We also taught the big kids a song to sing for Oma and Opa:

Congratulations on 40 years of marriage. May God bless you with many more.. 

2 months on..

Well.. Owen's getting SO old that I've decided to switch from weekly updates to monthly ones. This decision has nothing to do with how busy I am. None whatsoever. (insert sheepish grin here)

So, here we are with a 2 month old. And, he's doing great! We don't get weekly weigh ins anymore so I have no idea how much he weighs, but I can see evidence of constant growth - no worries with this kid!! 

He's starting to smile a LOT more. Which is lovely for his mommy. 

He's also starting to sleep a lot more. Which is even more lovely for his mommy. Last night, for example, he went 10 hours between feeds!! Woo hoo!! 

I love watching a sleeping baby. 

Owen still has a few "grumpy" periods - but I use that term loosely because after having 2 girls going through 3 year old hormone tantrums, NOTHING this baby does seems that bad. And, I know, the worst thing in the world is for someone to say to you, "you think THAT's bad, wait till they ..... " but honestly, a baby crying for a few hours is nothing compared to irrational 3/4 year old girls! Sheesh!
Anyway, typically, he's pretty fussy around dinner time - which is a bit unfortunate and difficult (especially when I'm solo parenting through the dinner hour) - but its still doable. And, if all else has failed, I chuck him in the bath - a nice warm bath. I made the mistake the other day of making it a bit on the cool side. Master Owen wouldn't have a bar of it. Fuss pot.

However, this blog wasn't supposed to be soley about Owen. It was supposed to be about our whole family and everything we do. So, let's not forget these 2 goons! 

Kelsey & Morgan are best of friends. 

Kelsey and Morgan are worst of enemies. 

Kelsey and Morgan are typical sisters. 

But they are definitely goons!! 

We just got all the bedrooms moved around last week, and now the girls are finally in single beds. (SOooo much easier for sheet changing!). The new room has lots more room for playing too. So, they're pretty excited about that. And, of course, they love sharing a room (not that they have a choice). 

Kelsey is 4 1/2. She is still highly emotional. We're praying this changes soon. Kelsey LOVES drawing & coloring. She spends hours every day at the chalk board or at the table just creating her little masterpieces. I love watching how her people drawings are constantly evolving over time. Just in the last week her people have stopped getting round circle noses and have started getting C's for noses.
When Kelsey's trying to pester her little sister (which is pretty much always), she'll tell her that's she's drawing a picture of Kelsey but not Morgan. Ugh.
But, in this picture she drew (from left to right): Daddy, Kelsey, Mommy, Morgan, Oma, (and bottom row) Opa and Owen. Grandma and Grandpa are on vacation (she said. I laughed). I'm not sure why only 2 people have fingers. Nor am I sure why Owen has no arms. 

Morgan is hilarious. I'm curious to see if this will change as its usually a last born trait, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't, she just seems to have a unique (and pretty cool) sense of humour. Just yesterday, I went into her room to wake her from a nap and I just paused to watch her for a minute. She's often difficult to tell if she's sleeping and just the day before I'd walked in and watched her fully talking in her sleep with her eyes open. So, on this day, I watched her for a minute and she was just lying there really still with her eyes opened but they didn't seem to be fixed on anything. So, very quietly, I whispered, "Are you awake?" There was no reaction from Morgan, but very slowly her eyes started to get wider. And, just as I was about to walk out of the room, her eyes got really wide and she shouts, "BOO!" and jumps up. I laughed. 

Morgan is, however, just starting to get highly emotional. She'll burst into tears at the slightest confrontation, or if her feelings are hurt in the least. I hope it is much more short lived than a certain older sister!! 

Morgan loves being the center of attention. She'll do anything to get her picture taken. She'll do anything for a laugh. I realized the other day that she only wants to hold Owen because she thinks I'll take a picture every time (which I pretty much do). 

And, last but not least, there's Piper. Piper had a big week this week. She got spayed. She was so completely docile (and drugged up) when I picked her up from the vet that she could barely walk the 2 blocks home and I was actually contemplating putting Piper int he pram (stroller) and carrying Owen the rest of the way!! Thankfully, it didn't come to that. However, I seized the opportunity for a picture while she was all drugged up and not moving much!! 

And then today when I was taking Owen's 2 month pictures, Piper wanted in on the action too!! At first she gingerly crept on to the blanket... 

but within seconds she was trying to completely cuddle up to Owen. Oh brother, what a suck!!

I had to answer a million and one questions from Kelsey in regards to Piper's operation. 

what's an operation?

Its where a doctor cuts you open and takes something out

what does Piper need out?

The doctor will take out the bits to make babies. 

Ooh, but babies are so cute. Why can't she have babies?

Its irresponsible pet ownership. 

Why?

Because there's too many puppies already and not enough good owners. 

But you're a good owner?

Yes, but we don't want anymore dogs. 

{insert new thought}Will Piper look different?

No, she'll just have a little line on her belly.

Why?

Because that's where the doctor went in to get her bits out. 

It seriously kept going. I'd like to wear one of those clicker counter things one day and count just how many questions I actually do get asked in a typical day. I just try to keep telling myself: It shows she has a brain. It shows she has a brain. 

Anyway, clocks go back an hour tonight.. let's pray the kids' clocks move back an hour too!! 

"Amazing Grace"

Ok, sometimes it takes longer to learn songs.. or rather, sometimes it takes longer for mom and dad to teach the songs. Yikes! I think we worked on this song (on and off) for 4 weeks.

Anyway, here's the girls singing "Amazing Grace"

Funny girls

So, Jeanette & I decided to teach the girls a bit of cooperation one day. Actually, we just needed a giggle, but either way, it was fun! 

Step 1: insert one girl into each leg hole. 

Step 2: smile for the camera

step 3: fall down and wave to the camera

step : RUN!! (well, try to anyway!)

Sorry, you'll have to tilt your head.. 

Obligatory Owen pictures

Ok, so here's some Owen pics from my phone from the first 2 weeks...

sleeping baby.. 

Morgan holding Owen

newborn pic :)

Kelsey holding Owen

Aww

Mommy & Owen self portrait

"Whiter than Snow"

Next song in the list: "Whiter than Snow" aka "Lord Jesus, I long to be Perfectly Whole".
We spent 2 weeks on this song, mostly due to being out and about on a lot of nights and interrupted family devotions.
And, this week, I thought I'd have both of them sing it together.. :)

"Holy, Holy, Holy"

The third song we taught the girls was "Holy, Holy, Holy" - well, at least the first verse. The whole point of teaching the kids these songs is so that when we do sing them in church, they'll be familiar and they can singalong if they want. And, if they want to sing the first verse 3 or 4 times over again.. well, I hope no one around them cares too much. (and frankly, if they do, they need to get over themselves - naturally, i say that in the most loving and compassionate way possible... )

Anyway, here's Morgan's rendition (please keep in mind that she's just turned 3. I think she's adorably cute.. even if the words aren't 100% right)

"Glory Be to the Father"

Continuing on with teaching the girls "church" songs, the second week, we taught them "Glory Be to the Father". 

Here's Morgy: (and yes, as usual, Kelsey interrupts her when its not perfect - we're working on it)

And, here's Kelsey: (one of these days, I'm going to tape her hands at her side.. )

2011 in Review

So, here we are the last day of 2011. What's all happened??

• We got pregnant with our 3rd baby
• We got a our Piper puppy!!
• Kelsey turned 4
• Morgan turned 3
• We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary
• Marco and I had our birthdays, but frankly, numbers don't matter.. :)
• We learned all about rugby at the 2011 Rugby World Cup
• Marco built a new deck on our house
• He also stripped, sanded and painted 2 sides of our house
• He started 2 bedrooms and a hallway renovation
• Kelsey started to read
• Kelsey got a new bike at the beginning of the year
• Morgan got a new bike at the end of the year
• Marco bought  4 vehicles and sold 5 (and looked at 4,692,231 covetously). 
• Kelsey learned to stay dry at night
• Morgan learned to stay dry during the day
• I stopped working. Again. 
• We went to Nelson 3 times, & Christchurch once (where we got a new neice/cousin!)
• Or, in summary: we got our socks blessed off! 

Here's my 2011 in pictures:

Here's our house renovations from 2011 in review:

So. I hope you too had a great 2011. And, I'm looking forward to all that 2012 is bringing, Lord willing. I'm looking forward to having a baby, a visit from my sister, and a trip to Canada. Kelsey is looking forward to starting "big" school. Morgan is looking forward to starting preschool. Marco is looking forward to finishing some renovations, having a baby (same one as I'm having), and buying and selling a few more cars!!

Morgan - 15 months

Well.. Morgan is 15 months old now. OK.. has been for a week or 2. She's fully done for her shots (until she's 4) and now that she's walking 90% of the time, i think its compeltely official - she's a Toddler!
We had her 15 mo plunket visit the other day (Plunket is the well-child nurses. You go there - or they come to you - at set intervals to make sure you don't have any questions and to make sure your kid is growing and developing normally). Anyway, she has 7 teeth (4 top, 3 bottom), with at least 2 more nearly through. She is 76 cm tall and weighs 10.24 kg. Hard to believe she started off at 3.5 kg and 51 cm!

Kelsey was along as well.. and thought it looked like fun to get weighed and measured - So, at 31 months she's 13.8 kg and 92 cm. At Kels's 15 mo check she was 10.12 kg and 77 cm - I guess they're WAY more similar than I thought. For some reason I think Morgan is a lot taller and skinnier than Kelsey.. but I guess not.
Morgan is also learning to talk. yesterday she said "Kelsey" for the first time. That was exciting. She loves saying, "Mommy" and "Bye bye" and she's said, "Amen" for ages.  but she refuses to say, "daddy" or "Gramma". She's quite stubborn!!

She also does whatever her big sister does. Lately its feels like I have twins around here. Whatever one does, the other imemdiately copies. One takes off her socks, the other socks are close behind. One starts screaming or shaking her head "no" - the other thinks its a fun game and is close behind. We certainly try to encourage their getting along, but some days.. well... they're a little too close for comfort!!

Morgan Walking

                      I did it!!

Well.. march 2010 was a big month at our house. the 8th of the month drew bright and sunny and started out as most days do. As the day progressed, I put the girls down for their afternoon sleep and went outside to help Marco with some gardening. After I'd been out there "working" for a few minutes, I decided that it must be getting time for the girls to get up soon. So I went inside to wait. Lo and behold Kelsey woke first (2 hours later) and Morgy soon after. We all went outside and had an ice cream cone on the front lawn (while daddy continued gardening). Kelsey managed to get hers down with limited mess so she stayed out with daddy. I took Morgy in to get cleaned up and washed off. So there I was, in the house, "watching" Morgan (while playing on the computer) when she just stood up and took a step. Because i was at the computer already (being the active and involved mummy that I am), I grabbed the camera and started shooting.



Now 2 weeks has passed.. she's finally taking a few more steps at a time. In fact just yesterday (24th) she'll now walk across the room to get to one of us. Her favourite trick is to walk a super long way to me or Marco and then walk right past and pretend like, "what, so I walk.. I wasn't ocming to you anyway!" And then she turns around wiht a big dumb grin on her face. Or she walks all the way to you and then starts playing peekaboo. Its SO funny!!

Suddenly now Morgan can reach things she never could before. She's such a little toddler. And Kelsey's loving that her little sister "walks". If hse's not imitating Morgy's "walking", she's grabbing Morgan by the wrist and saying, "Come On Morgy, you can do it!" and then dragging her across the room!!

Anyway, I'm super pleased that she's finally walking. I never worry about my kids walking late. Secretly, I prefer it in a lot of ways. But, with a trip next month, I was dreading being on an airplane with a crawler - there is NOTHING more disgusting than crawling up and down an airplane aisles - especially long-haul!!

Sign Language

OK.. I'm behind again. I'd like to blame Christmas and the holidays, but considering that we didn't do anything.. its hardly true. I'm just lazy :)

Anyway, I took the cutest (parental bias) video of Morgan the other day, and I wanted to try embedding a video so.. here it is:



We love sign language. Its REALLY easy to teach, the kids love it too, and their so proud of being able to say things when they're this little. I usually only teach a handful of words that I find most useful - so I'm not hard core like some baby sign language enthusiasts.. but, it still works for us.
Enjoy!

Morgan is 11 month's old today!!

Firstly, let me start off by saying that this morning a saw a mouse in my living room. So.. as I type, I'm bouncing my feet up and down to scare the little *&#^&^@%# away. So.. there may be more typing errors than usual. My apologies. I'm a huge wimp when it comes to varmint of almost any kind. I just don't see their point. Why can't they all go live in Australia? Thankfully, I understand - logically- that mice mean to do us no harm. So I had no problem leaving my 2 kids floudnering on the floor while I jumped up to the safety of my bed :) Anyway, I bought a mousetrap, set it up.. and hopefully its caught something before hubby gets home tomorrow night - and HE can empty it.
Anyway... today (25th of November) is Morgy's 11 month birthday. And .. I thought.. on both Kelsey & Morgan's monthly birthdays, I'd take the opporutnity to write about some of the things they've been up to this month.

Morgan is such a great kid right now. She's (generally) so incredibly happy and just pleasant to be around. She's quick to smile and absolutely adores her big sister and her daddy. Well, she adores me too, but she still expects me to be there, so I don't ever get to see her face light up the way it does for Kelsey and Marco.

At the beginning of this month, she'd just sit down where I put her, and play happily with a few toys that I would sprinkle around her for an hour or 2 at a time. However, now (at the end of the month), she barely ever just sits.. she immediately flips onto her tummy and rolls around on the ground. She's still not crawling (officially) but she surprises me every day by where she can end up without me noticing.  For the most part, she doesn't mean to go where she goes - she keeps wanting to go forward.. but can only manage to go backwards. But she has such an adaptable spirit that she's still happy with most places that she ends up. She does get a bit grumpy, however, when she backs herself into a corner, under the easel, or into the couch.. then we hear a little whine, and I go rescue her. Sweetie.
This month was also the month that she got the chicken pox. One Saturday I noticed little red dots on her and Kelsey. Within the day there were LOTS more. She was SO good about it though. Thankfully, she still takes 2 naps a day, so that helps. There was 1 night that she wasn't interested in sleeping. I think she was just TOO itchy. Poor thing. The next day she didn't want to nap either. But it was only 1 day of that, and then back to normal. Occassionally we'd see her rubbing her head, or wiggling on the ground to try to relieve the itch, but for the most part.. she just kept playing.

She is learning tonnes of new tricks. If I could think of more to teach her I'm sure she'd just lap them up. We started this month with the sign language training. As with Kelsey, I'll probably only teach her 4 or 5 useful ones, but I'm blown away by how quickly Mrogan is picking them up. After showing her the sing for milk just 2 or 3 times, she now does it on a regular basis. She's also just started doing the sign for All Done (we use that one after meals mostly, but occassionally on the playground as well). Now I'm working on teaching her the sign for "More" (more food, more toys, more kisses.. etc).
Speaking of food.. she's getting mostly people food now, and for the most part she's feeding herself. For breakfast she gets either weetbix or porridge (same as Kelsey). She's at 1 1/2 to 2 weet-bix already.  I've been trying to get her to eat sandwiches for lunch.. but she's just not that interested yet. So she usually only manages about 1/2 of one.. and that 1/2 I have to have cut up into very small little squares. How do you teach a kid that their teeth are for biting!?!For supper/dinner she's getting whatever we're having. Usually (becuase i"m hungry) I put some on her plate and let her go nuts on it - but it depends hwat we're having. Obvously, she'd need some help with something like mashed potatoes - or soup. I've completely forgotten about teaching Morgan to drink from a cup. Well, not forgotten.. but just procrastinated. And here we are, 1 month from supposedly being ready for cow's milk, and no cup insight. So yesterday, I gave her a cup with water in it. I'd tried those baby cups once or twice before - the ones iwth the no spill lids - but those are impossible for me to ddrink from - so no wonder she thought it was just a chew toy. Anyway, so I gave her a tupperare cup with sippy lid. She did great. Until I took my eyes off and she poured it all over her tray. But at least she got some water first.. we'll keep at it and hopefully she can start milk in another month!! Oh.. I can't wait to not have to buy formual anymore!!

Other tricks - She's been pretty good at waving bye-bye for a couple months already. She's really sweet. I always forget to tell her to say bye, but I always remind Kelsey, and there's Morgy waving both arms bye bye.. it looks so cute! I was on skype the toher day with my parents, and my mom was getting Kelsey to blow kisses.. so we started to teach Morgan that too.. it was So cute. So now if we tell her to blow kisses, she immediately puts her hand to her mouth, but similar to Kelsey at that age, she forgets to move it away again. Oh well.. one step at a time.She'll also nod "Yes". Not necessarily all the time, but we have a fun little thing we do here. When either girl wakes up from a nap or nighttime sleep, I ask - "Did you have a good sleep?" and they say "yes" ok, it doesn't sound like much, but these are the silly mudane things that makes up a family. Anyway, Morgy now nods Yes everytime I ask her.. its so cute. OK.. maybe I think everything she does is cute and sweet - except for trying to rip her bib off during dinner, or when she threw her plate of spaghetti on the floor last night (I knew I shouldn't have given her a plate), and throwing her head back unexpectedly while in the shower and banging it on the shower floor.. Hmm.. there are a few things she does that aren't so cute or sweet.. but she's still sweeet & cute.. and lovely.. and mine. well.. ours.
Anyway.. I should probably go get her up from her nap. I never quite know when she wakes up as she just lies there in her bed quietly. Maybe she knows that mommy needs this time.... oops, I told Kelsey we needed to go wake her up... she's gone to do that without me - ahh.. better run..