Grandma Allphin Came to Visit!

Jason's cousin was sealed in the temple last weekend by Jason's grandpa, who is the sealer in a temple in Washington. He drove to Texas picking up Jason's aunt and mom on his way. We were so excited to finally show his mom around our new home in Texas, and we were especially excited for her to see the kids. Madison was 2 months old the last time her Grandma Allphin saw her. We had a lot of fun with her! We went shopping, went on our walk, drove her to see Jason's work and some dream neighborhoods, and we did lots of playing with her.

(I know this is a horrible picture, but it's the only one I got with grandpa in it.)

Latest Adventures: J&K

For a while now, I have been making baby food. Jason bought me a Baby Bullet for Christmas and I have loved it. So every week or two I spend 2-3 hours making Madison's food. I make all her vegetables and some of her fruits (because I also feed her fresh bananas and applesauce from a jar). 

 Jason and I went to a work party at Speed Zone and had a blast! It was basically a free date. We had dinner there and were given a card that pretty much gave us access to anything and everything for 4 hours. Speed Zone has go-carts and drag racing, which are the main attractions, and then they have miniature golf and an indoor arcade. We spent all of our time with the go-carts until it started raining and they had to shut down the tracks.

On one particular track, I lucked out with a really fast go-cart and was able to speed past everyone. The feeling of speed, power, and wind whipping my face took me back to my years on jet skiis growing up. Jet skiing is one of my favorite things to do and I think I've convinced Jason that we HAVE to own some in the future.

We celebrated Jason's birthday over the weekend. We had our traditional pancake breakfast on Saturday morning with his mom, he opened presents and ate cupcakes Sunday, and we had his favorite dinner (homemade tacos) and watched a movie on Monday, his actual birth day. Do you like how almost all of that had to do with food? We were going to go play at a park on Sunday, but it rained that morning and was muddy.

Latest Adventures: Sisters

These girls are finally starting to play together on their own and it's sooo cute. They crawl around the house together, playing with toys. They also really like to crawl on and off of Callie's bed together. When Callie sees me playing with Madi, she frequently joins in on the fun. Lately, I have been prompting Madison to walk by standing her a couple feet away and letting her walk and then fall into my arms. Callie always wants to take turns and she mimics Madison's stumbles into my arms.

Callie is sharing her cous cous with Madison (and yes, they are making a huge mess). Callie loves sharing food with her little sister.

The other day, we were driving around with Jason's mom in the car (more on that good time later), so we moved Madi to the middle seat and I sat next to her. I was worried the girls would fight like they do sharing a shopping cart, but instead they enjoyed holding hands. It was so sweet.

Latest Adventures: Callie

This about sums up Callie's life:

Just kidding, but it does still consume our lives. I love how she still sits sideways on the potty and she's excited when she finds similar methods on potties away from home. She's really good about telling me she needs to go when we are away from home and she doesn't have accidents out of our house, but she also enjoys going on other potties. If we pass by one that she knows about, she suddenly has to go, but I can usually get her to wait when I know she just went 10 minutes ago. 

She is enjoying preschool. She has been going through this phase of being attached to me (probably because of Madison being attached to me), so she doesn't normally want to go and freaks out when I leave her there, but then she ends up having fun.

She is becoming more defiantindependent. Callie finds some interesting outfits to wear and changes throughout the day. She loves wearing mismatched shoes (she's currently wearing a white, dress shoe with a brown, casual sandal). She also doesn't like me doing her hair. She prefers it down and "loose". And yes, she usually has a baby in tow. As I typed that I looked over to see if that was the case at this moment in time. Sure enough, she's got Little Baby in her arm.

Callie got a hold of a permanent marker a couple weeks ago and went to town on her body and closet. The picture on the right is only a small sampling of the scribbling she did...I tried to clean it off but the paint in this apartment is so cheap it comes right off with any friction, so I decided colored walls was preferable to no paint.

Callie loves to copy "mommom" (I love that mommom is my current nickname). In the above photo, we were both working on our computers.

This morning I was playing my viola (which was exciting and only happens once in a blue moon these days), so Callie got out her "clarinet", which happens to also function as a violin (she insisted that it was a violin, not a viola--where did I go wrong?). Then she got out her bow (my bow hair tube from my case) and started playing her violin by blowing through the mouthpiece and bowing back and forth on the top. I was impressed! Now we just need to work on that bow hold...

So this brings me to her next thing. She has quite the imagination. Everyday objects convert into whatever she wants and everything now involves awesome sound effects. 

The entertainment center has a glass door covering some shelves. She uses it as her microwave to warm up food for her babies.

Her push and ride car is also her vacuum (she even makes the noises). 

When she nurses her babies, she now also pretends to move her imaginary undergarments as part of the process.

Various objects serve as her phone and camera (such as our little electronic solitaire game).

The walls, floors, and doors serve as her race track for her cars and the blinds are her parking garage.

She puts Little Baby in her little carseat, sets her on her push and ride car, and takes her to the store, the park, and preschool.

I wish I could remember more off the top of my head, but I'll have to add some more later as I remember them.

Here is Callie's personality in pictures.

"Don't take a picture of me" (shy)

Silly

"moooomm...don't make me smile. I don't want to smile."

Fighting the smile, but losing the fight

There's my happy girl!

Latest Adventures: Madison

As an attempt to do some catching up on my blog, here's my Latest Adventures series!

As you already know, Madison recently got her first teeth. Here she is completely miserable before they came through.

But now she's a happy girl again, and she quite likes her teeth. She's become very interested in my teeth as well and often hangs onto them while nursing (not always very comfortable for me, especially when her sharp little nails dig into my gums). We have had fun expanding her food selection to small pieces of table food. Just last night she got to eat rice and corn along with us.

Along with getting her first teeth, Madison's modes of transportation have evolved.

About a month ago, she started walking while pushing this car or our little stroller.

A couple weeks ago, she figured out how to crawl on her hands and feet to prevent sore knees on the hard floors.

Then, a week and a half ago, she took her first steps on her own!! We have not caught it on camera yet, but she's sure excited about it.

Madison also recently had her first bath in the big tub. As you can tell, she thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

She loved eating the bubbles.

Madison now knows some words as well. Mama, dada, hi, and bye.

She continues to be a mommy's girl. She is attached to my hip. The other night, I was trying to make dinner and she just wanted to be held, so I put her in a baby carrier. She was in h-e-a-v-e-n. She does not like being separated from me. She rarely goes to Daddy (or anyone) willingly and I usually have to be out of the room for it to be okay. On Tuesdays, I teach violin to a girl in our ward while her mom babysits the girls in Callie's room. As soon as this lady walks in the door, Madison starts screaming because she knows she's about to be taken away from mommy. The one nice thing is that as long as I cannot be seen or heard, she's perfectly fine with me gone.

In less than a month, she'll turn one. I can't believe she's already that old!

Look Who Finally Has Teeth!

Madison now has her two top, front teeth. After being beyond miserable for days, they finally started cutting through on Monday.

She beat Callie's record. Callie got her first tooth (also her top, front tooth) a week before she turned one and then the other top one came two weeks later.

I didn't anticipate this day coming while still nursing and the thought of nursing a baby with a tooth and all of the potential pain that entails scared me! It was uncomfortable and, at times, a little painful for the first few days, but we're good now and we haven't had any biting incidents...yet (fingers crossed).

Sisters Get-together

On Friday, I took the girls to my sister's house to play with all of their cousins, who were on Spring break. Callie was close to falling asleep on the drive over so she was very cranky once we got there. Madison wanted to nurse and Callie just wanted to be held. For the next hour I had Callie and Madison both wanting to be held, neither wanting to play or be held by anyone else. This has been happening a LOT lately. Madison is teething and mostly just wants me so she is extra clingy and Callie gets jealous and wants me to hold her. When I hold them both they usually start fighting, not wanting me to hold the other child. It makes going places very difficult and frustrating. I keep reminding myself that someday I'll miss them being so clingy.

We also went to the park with everyone for a picnic and play time. Callie was really excited about that and she finally left my side to go play. Madison even let Andrea hold her for a while. When we went back to Melissa's house all of the little ones, except for Callie, took a nap while the big kids played outside. Callie was in heaven playing alone with her cousins' play kitchen and babies.

My oldest niece, Abby, is 13 now. I can't believe it's been that long since that little 1.5-pound baby fought for her life in the NICU. Childhood is so short. I'm so glad that we live so close to my sisters. When I lived in Utah I was so sad to be too far away to go to things like baptisms and baby blessings, but now I'm finally close enough to be a part of those special occasions in my nieces' and nephew's lives and it makes me so excited! It always meant so much to me when my aunts and uncles were a part of those important points in my life and I really want to do that for my own nieces and nephew.

It's so amazing that we all live so close to each other. I wish that we took advantage of it more often. Here we all are at this time in our lives with young kids and living within minutes from each other,  yet it's so easy to just get caught up in our own lives and not take the time to get together as often as we could. Who knows how long it will last or if we will all ever even live in the same state again. Anyways, I'm going to try to be better about reaching out to them and getting together with them more frequently, because this time is precious and, in the words of my mom, will soon only be a memory.