More Isaac words

It never ceases to amaze me how passionate Isaac is about trucks. Just this morning, he was singing "The wheels on the bus go round and round," then he paused and started again, "the wheels on the bus - and truck - go round and round!" Cheeky.

So I thought I would share a few more of his words related to trucks:

Cars say beep
Trucks say honk
Big trucks and semi's say maahp

For most people, if you hear a car's horn being used, one would say, "Oh, that car is honking." But not Isaac, being the foremost expert on these things. Cars aren't honking, they're horning. And trucks don't honk either, you can hearing them maahping. He would insist that honking isn't even a word. No mom, it's horning.

Isaac can turn almost anything into a truck or semi trailer with enough imagination. Last night, Isaac himself was a trailer (notice that he's holding on to the truck's trailer hitch?). And yes, he is wearing his clothes hamper.On our nearly weekly pilgrimage to IKEA, we found this little gem of a rug and knew that it would make Isaac happy. How happy, we couldn't have imagined, but needless to say, he has already been playing with it for hours on end. He'll line up all his trucks and drive them all around his little town. Oddly enough, one of the prominent buildings is a hotel, which is great because he is almost daily asking to go back to the hotel we stayed at in California last month. At least now his trucks can go to the hotel, even if he can't.I'm sure crazy about this fun little kid!

These are a few of my favorite things

For months now, I've been anticipating my first bath in my new, big bath tub, and tonight was the night to finally get to take that bath. And it was very nice. I have to admit, I have a weakness for baths and long showers and I take it very seriously. I suppose it dates back to my mission when we rarely had warm, running water and I had to "shower" with water heated over the stove then poured with a large yogurt cup. At the time it wasn't bad, but it did take time to prepare and wasn't quite the same as a traditional shower. On my way home from Romania, we spent a night in Vienna in a very nice hotel and I spent a great deal of my morning before flying home in a very hot, very fabulous shower. Since then, I make taking a shower a top priority of my day and can't function without at least a quick shower. So even though I quite love my shower, there are few things better than a hot soak in a bubble bath, especially when the bubbles are Strawberries and Champagne from VS. Ahhh, life is good.
After my fabulous bath, I dug through the garage to find a few of my crafting things so that I could finish a project that has been nagging at me for weeks and weeks now - ragged burp clothes. Charlotte, if you are reading this, please move past this paragraph, ok? Ok, now that she's not reading, I've been meaning to make her some little burp clothes for her new little baby, and tonight I was finally able to make them! I was so happy to be reunited with my dear friends Gingher and White again too. I sewed up a bunch of these little beauties but only ragged the few for Charlotte, the rest can wait for another night when my needs to craft are bursting through the seams - or when another friend has a baby. :) The reason I've been able to induldge tonight is because I actually finished my work this afternoon so I'm not up till midnight working away like a mad woman. It's great! Wednesdays are usually my lightest work load and it's so nice having a break.

I want to throw this pic on here too because I think it's so cute. These are my kiddos last Sunday, our first day at our new ward. While our experience at the new ward was strange, at least the kids looked adorable! (And Jarom looks pretty handsome too, if I do say so myself!) I tried taking a few pictures, but Emilie was chewing on Jarom's ties in all of them.
I should also brag about Emilie for a minute, and since it's my blog, I will. She had her 4 month check-up on Monday and is doing so well! She is 70% for weight, 85% for head, and well over 100% for length, what a big girl! Dr. Feindt was very impressed with her motor skill development and was so patient while Isaac talked her ears off with his thoughts on life in general. She also gave him a quick examine too since it would be grossly unfair to listen to Emilie's lungs and not his. Isaac got his flu shot while we were there and was so brave, he didn't even cry. Once the band-aid was on, he was fine. Then when it was Emilie's turn for her shots, and she of course screamed, Isaac was so concerned for his little sister that he actually got teared up worrying about what was happening to her!

I think I'm done soap boxing for one evening. I may even get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, wow! I'm still so relaxed from my bath, I could just float off to bed. I think I shall.

So much to do, so little time [free of needy children]

These last few weeks have gone by in such a blurr and I feel like we've hardly made a dent in our unpacking, but we are making progress and will some day be able to find everything again.

Matthew and Jenny blessed Michaela last week (and I forgot my camera, darn it! So I didn't get any pictures of her all dressed up so cute, but believe me, she looked pretty cute!), then afterwards people made their way west to our place for the afternoon, and someone took this pic of us while we were visiting. If you look closely, you'll see that both kids are sucking their thumbs, it was so nap time!
On Wednesday, I got together with Rachele and Heather to can pears (a first for me!). We worked for about 2 1/2 hours after the kids were asleep and bottled 8 quarts. It seemed like so much work for so little to show, especially since we split up the pears between us, but it was still fun. You'll notice we're holding bowls of colorful goodness. Well, canning pears is very messy, and a girl's gotta have her chocolate fix while gossiping and being a domestic sensation, so we put our M&M's in bowls so we could "sip" on them with our gooey hands. Fabulous!
The "fruit" of our labors... get it? Fruit? Canning? Uh.... yeah.
Last Saturday we had to get our car inspected (it was actually due at the end of August, but with the move, that just didn't happen), and the inspection place is in the same parking lot as the aquarium, so while they were working on our car, we took the kids to the aquarium. Isaac dashed through at his usual whirlwind pace, and Emilie liked seeing the colorful fish swimming around. She's noticing so much these days!
And here is the personification of guilt and stress... my garage. Some day, I keep thinking to myself, we may actually get to park inside of it and have it be organized and beautiful... a girl can dream.

Bestest Husband Ever

Jarom scored big time brownie points today with all the work he has done around the house! Today he:

• Changed Emilie's dresser into the changing table top (sounds like a trivial thing, but was actually quite the process)
  
• Put up the mosquito net in Emilie's room, as if her room isn't girlie girlie enough already
  
• Installed book shelf things in Isaac's room
• Installed a shelving unit in the laundry room making the space much more usable
• Put a tray under the washing machine
  
• Put in Gabby's cat door so she can go in and out of the basement at will (where her litter box is) so we don't have to keep the door open all the time
• Installed an automatic light timer for the outside lights
• Moved all the light switches that were upside-down to right-side up
• Put in a paper towel holder in the kitchen
  

Whew! That's a lot of things! This week he also put up most of the blinds in the house. Funny thing is, I was bugging him for over a week to put up the blinds in the office because at night it was really obvious because at least 10-15 houses could see right into the office, and with the lights on, I felt like I was on display. He kept saying that he would get to it. Well, Friday morning he was working from home and 10 minutes after starting to work, he put the blinds up. I guess if I am working, having blinds up is no big deal, but if he is working, then putting up the blinds gets top priority. Funny guy! :)

Here are a few pictures to show of Jarom's handy work:

The laundry room

Emilie's bed

The changing table/dresser

Isaac's book shelves

Remembering

So it's super late and I'm exhausted, but I was readying some of the comments from my last post with Emilie's pictures, so I thought I would show a picture of Isaac when he was about 4 months old and you can really see how much these little munchins look alike!This weekend I will get all the pics off my camera and tell you what's been going on in this crazy life of ours - not that's it's been anything horribly out of the ordinary, but still, you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't expecting utterly magnificent things to be shared... right? :)

Sweet baby

I had a lot of fun playing with my camera and Emilie this afternoon and I got some really sweet shots of my little baby girl. What a cutie, I can hardly stand it!!!

A Mommy Day

Do you ever have those days that are so quintessentially "mommy days?" Today was mine. Things started out fine, even got both kids bathed (a noteworthy event on its own accord), and we were downstairs eating our ultra health cocoa puffs for breakfast (at least we weren't drinking kool-aid with our cereal...), when Emilie started to fuss a little and squirm around - she was sitting on my lap at the time. I hadn't heard the usual warning popping and swooshing sounds, but I look down in time to see baby poop oozing out of her pants and onto my pants, then onto the chair. Mother instincts took over as I grabbed for some paper towels to sop up the offending ooze, then ran her upstairs to begin the cleaning process.

Not only did I have to change my entire outfit, and I mean everything, but her clothes were just caked in sludge. They are soaking in the sink right now, but I don't know if it's even worth trying to save them at this point. Emilie, like most babies, has had blow-outs before, but today's was truly one to behold. And of course this happened not fifteen minutes after her bath, but because the mess was so complete and magnificent, she got another bath.

So that was on one end of the mommy spectrum. The other end came while I was at the park with the kids and Isaac found a kid that he wanted to play with. He's such a happy, out-going kid who LOVES to play with kids. So he begins talking to this kid (actually, it started out mostly with him copying what the kid was saying, for some reason), then he turned towards me and showed the kid, that's my mommy! He was so proud to point me out and have that kid know that I was him mom and for some reason, it really surprised me! Sometimes I wonder if he really likes me on some days because I'm always after him for one thing or another, and I know that the day will come that he will vehemently deny my very existence while with his friends, but at least for now, he is happy that I'm his mom. Maybe because it's because I let him eat those darn cocoa puffs...

We've moved!

Each time we move (and we've moved six times in the last eight years!), I keep trying to burn into my mind how much I really don't like to move! I forget how much I begin to see all my stuff as junk and just want to throw all of it away, and I forget how hard it is to find things that are packed away in some box somewhere, but in the end, it's always worth it to have a new home and begin on a new life chapter. The last few days have been insane, to say the least. We had problems with the mortgage underwriters and getting the mortgage processed quickly, which delayed closing, but in the end we were able to get are keys and are now in the process of reclaiming our lives. My big thing that I can't find right now is my camera, so I wasn't able to take pictures of the move, although before I lost it, I got some cute pictures of Isaac loving the moving truck. (big shocker) And in case you were wondering, moving trucks have both Pought tires and Heim tires (see my earlier post about Isaac words). He was devastated when we had to return the truck.

Thanks to everyone who helped us move all our stuff, you guys ROCK!!!

We love our new house and all the extra space we now have! Isaac and Emilie seem to be adjusting well too, although the last few days have been so chaotic. I hope that this week will feel a little bit more normal as we get back into our routine. First on the list, groceries!!!