It's Fun To Be 2

Happy Birthday Maysie! So Saturday was Maysie's Birthday and it was a jam-packed day. I didn't think that Maysie really knew what was going on much, but I was probably wrong like usual. She is way smarter than I thought. The first thing she said when she woke up was "Happy Birthday...2". Then when she was in the bathtub she kept singing Happy Birthday to herself. Apparently she has been around more birthday's than I am aware of cuz I definitely haven't been teaching her the Happy Birthday song yet. That afternoon, I had my sister-in-law's bridal shower that was like 4 hours long so Rob opted to take Maysie on a Daddy-Daughter-Date. I know totally cute huh. So they departed on there adventure around 10:30 in the morning. There 1st stop was to get some balloons since no birthday would be complete without balloons. Instead of just getting one balloon, he got 2 since, in his logic, it was her 2nd B-day, but my opinion is that he is just a succor for his daughter... normally what ever she wants, she gets from him. :)' There next stop was lunch at Taco Time to get one of Maysie's all time favorite meals, a crisp bean burrito. Then they came back home and watched hours of Strawberry Shortcake movies and played outside. When I got back from the shower, I hurried and fixed dinner so we could eat before the party started... Chicken nuggets here we come (another one of Maysie's all time favorite meals). When we were in the middle of dinner, our party-goer's aka family members started showing up. It was time for the party to begin. Maysie was so excited to finally be able to eat her cake that she had been eyeing all day and presents to boot!

She hit the mother-load on the presents... In this picture, we were telling her to just pose for the camera but she wanted to open the presents so she had to fold her arms for a few seconds so we could snap a picture or two, or three... :) I'm kinda thinking that this is an I'm annoyed, just let me start already look."

Finally she got the go-ahead and before we knew it, most of her presents were opened and there was wrapping paper every were. Actually, since I am an extra good present wrapper (I like ribbon - it just make the gift so much prettier :) ) my niece Ambree helped her open a few of them.

This was Maysie's 'big-gift' this year... Her very own scooter. Now she can play with all the neighbor kids since all of them ride their scooters all over the block and Maysie was always just sitting back watching them with envy.

It seemed like every time we tried to get a picture of Maysie, she would turn her head away or look down so after all of our attempts to get a picture of her with her cake, this is what we got. :)

This is a close up of her cake this year. I don't know why, but that is one of my most favorite things about a birthday... they have to have a creative cake. I let Maysie choose most of the stuff, like I had 4 cake ideas and she chose the final one then she chose the fact that this year, she had a chocolate fudge cake. I decided to do pink frosting since this is Maysie's favorite color. I think it turned out pretty cute although it was different than what I had envisioned it to be..

All in all, I think Maysie had a wonderful day, which is what really matters. It is so hard to think of my baby as growing up, but yet it is so exciting at the same time. So Happy Birthday to my darling, inquisitive, stubborn, adorable, independent, adventurous, loving little girl. I Love You!

Sleeping Beauty

I have discovered that my darling Maysie sleeps in the most unusual places... I'll let the pictures prove my point. :)

Ok, so almost every kid has a picture where they are sacked out in the high chair and she is no different. I don't think I would want to be her when she woke up cuz I am pretty sure she had a huge kink in her neck after this... Ouch. I am guessing she is about 9 months old in this picture.

This picture is classic. I took this last August so she would have been about 14 months old. Some how, she got tired when she was just sitting on the step so she just leaned back and went to sleep. Quite impressive that she could actually stay on the steps without sliding off them if I do say so myself.

This picture was taken a month or two ago. I had asked her to go put her shoes in the hallway by the back door where we keep our other shoes, and she never returned. After 10 minutes or so, I walked into the hallway and discovered her fast asleep while playing with my shoes. To her credit, she wasn't feeling the best because this is when she was cutting 4 more teeth.

And last but not least, I took this picture of her last night, when after a few hours of trying to get her to sleep I finally gave up and just went and worked on my Temple prep stuff, (My Bishop is having me do a home study Temple prep class instead of having one during Sunday School) When I came back upstairs, I found her asleep on the tote that I store all of my maternity clothes in that is in my bedroom. I am still wearing a couple of maternity pants since I only have a few pants that I can fit into comfortably since having Camden. Alot of my pants rub against my incision site and makes it uncomfortable... If only I could loose a few more lbs, I could store this tote in the basement once again, but I'll get there one day soon hopefully. :) I happen to think that this tote is the perfect size for Maysie's bed, as long as she doesn't roll over of course. :)

Sanity

Does anyone want to borrow my almost 2 year old for a week? Or maybe just a weekend? How about a day? Seriously, either she is going to make me go gray by the end of summer, or bald by Christmas with all of her antics lately. Her terrible two's are kickin' in and I am already goin' nuts. Technically, I still have 5 days till I can use the terrible two's can be used as an excuse but it's the only explanation I have that makes sense to me so that's what I am blaming it on. :) I have quickly discovered that I probably should have gotten the fridge without the water/ice dispenser since Maysie find this tool quite entertaining and/or amusing. On a good note, my kitchen floor gets mopped about 20 million times a day. And why should I even bother telling her something, cuz I am ignored every time or I get the word NO yelled at me. I have a feeling that this one is only going to get worse for the next 18 years or so.... And if she draws on her bed one more time!!! (yep, she sure thinks she is a Michelangelo in the making - pen ink and highlighters all over her bed and bedding). Not to mention, all my hard work making cute scrapbooks to preserve our families memories just to have every picture taken out of them and tossed on the floor and all of the page protectors ripped to shreads. Umm, yeah, I was so not a happy camper. And what's with this whole refusing to take a nap during the day??? Does she not understand the fact that Mommy needs some catch-up Zzzzz's and that is only obtained when all residents in our household that is 3 and under are fast asleep too. And not to mention it would probably make Maysie's sunny disposition much brighter if she would take a nap hence her more frequent moodiness and dramatics instead of her smiles and obedience. And another thing, why does she think it is so cool to take off her clothes from the waist down? This happens at least 4-5 time a day. Now don't let theses flaw's of hers fool ya, she can be so amazing some times too where I am so proud to be able to say I am her mother. Like when she lays next to Camden and sings to him, or when she says, "Tank-Too" when ever she gets handed something, or whenever she hands you something for that matter. And when she showers you with an over abundance of hugs and kisses when she is trying to settle down to go to bed. :) Yep, deep down inside of me, I LOVE this little girl. So on these days where I just want to pull my hair out, I just have to remember I just might have to invest in a wig or some hair dye soon, but it will all be worth it cuz I have a feeling that one day, she will be amazing and I will be nothing but proud of how she turned out and will be gloatin' the fact that I am indeed her Mother.

It's About Time

Yesterday, was a day that I was waiting for since right after I got married and moved into this house.... We finally replaced our kitchen counter tops... :) The last week Rob has been acting like a child waiting for Christmas morning to come. In fact yesterday morning, he was the one up at 5:00 am just to get started on some of the prep work that we knew the counter top people would have to do.... Like unscrew the support bars, etc... (You think if he couldn't sleep, he would at least give the baby his bottle and let me sleep, but of course, he was too busy prancin' around the kitchen so yours truly had to do it. :) ) Rob was right there ready to help with the demo, which reaffirms my point that he was like a kid a Christmas. I figured that it would probably be better to take the kids out for the day and get some errands/shopping done since according to the counter people it should only be 4-5 hours from start to finish. (Seriously, do you know how hard it was to find black church pants and a white shirt for Camden to wear for Johanna's wedding? Not an easy task since I need puny sizes. I know if I didn't start now, I probably wouldn't find it...) So, the kiddo's and I went and priced out the latest Temple fashions getup where my sister Diana so graciously met me at the store to offer suggestions and answer some of my question's about what is most necessary now, etc. So when I got done at that store, I called for an update on the kitchen. Yeah, they weren't very far yet. So I went to Burlington Coat Factory where they sometimes have dressy kid clothes in quest for this getup for Camden that he has to wear for the wedding. Lucky for me we found him a little black tux and even better, it just so happened to be the only one in his runt of a size. :) Now I can check that one off the list. While I was there, I found a cute little dress for Maysie. While we were going through her clothes searching for her black and pink dress for the wedding, I had her try on all of her dresses just like a human Barbie, and discovered that 2 out of her 4 dresses were no bueno - they were so short and definitely not so cute on as they were on the hanger- that's what I get for shopping at DI huh. (Fortunately, we already had a dress for her that would work great for the wedding, that is until Johanna called back and they decided that they were going to make all the little girls skirts instead of us getting them a dress) So since she has such a lack of Church clothes, I bought this adorable dress to add to her collection and better yet, I can give it to her on her birthday which is coming way to fast. So after wasting a bunch of time at Burlington, I called Rob again for another report... And the verdict was still the same... They still had a long time to go. So I decided to go to lunch at Arctic Circle where we enjoyed ok food, but yummy ice cream creations and where we all nearly escaped being squished like a bug by a big ol' guy who wasn't paying attention and tripped over Maysie who was standing right next to me who basically knocked Maysie to the floor and would have if I wasn't holding her hand, and in his pathetic attempts to stay standing grabbed onto the car seat which was around my arm all I could think of keep my arm locked into place so the car seat doesn't give and he wouldn't slip and punch Camden in the chest or I would drop Camden to the floor and to hold on tight to Maysie. We were lucky that no one was hurt and all that was ruined was Maysie's drink which she was done with anyways. After lunch, I called again thinking that they should at least be done getting the old counters off by now since it had already been 5 hours since I left, but they were only 1/2 done chiseling away at that stubborn tile. So I decided to head back to my neck of the woods and hit Wally World to get a spray bottle for some cleaner that comes in concentrate. Well, $60.00 later, and another 2 hours wasted, I called Rob again and they ran into some problems when they were taking the back splash off and ended up ripping the drywall off along with the tile. They were trying to figure out what to do so his words of advice was to not come home yet, since things were bound to get messier. Since it was not late afternoon, my in-laws were done with there annual free-fishing day excursion and I could waste my time at my MIL's house and Maysie could play with my nieces and nephew. It worked out great since by this time, my feet had about had it and I was sick of loitering at various retail stores wasting money (To my defence, I feel like Rob shouldn't get mad at me for spending way more money than previously planned since I had to linger away from home for way longer than expected...) :) Finally, at 9:00 at night, I called Rob and just told him that I needed to come home because the kids needed to get in bed. They were just about done so it worked out good. So the last granite guy left about 5 minutes to 10:00 and our 4-5 hour kitchen makeover turned into about 12 1/2 hours. Even though it took way longer than expected, it is well worth it and I just love the way it turned out, except maybe for the funky window seals that were thrown in. That might just take a while to get used to. And the plus side, I get to paint lot sooner than what Rob wanted to. He wanted to wait until at least the fall to paint the majority of the house but I wanted to have it done by Camden's baby blessing which is on the 4th of July. Since some of the walls got pretty nicked up in the process, Rob agrees that we should do it much sooner now. :)

So here are the before and after pics that I promised my mom that I would post so she could see.

Before:

After: