The Fourth

Happy Fourth! We drove to Utah last Wednesday (me alone driving the girls, please pat me on the back). On Thursday we played at home. I was looking at the city's website that afternoon and saw that the Children's parade was that afternoon at 6:30! I have so many fond memories of decorating bikes and doing that parade with all the neighborhood kids so I thought we could try it with Willa.

It was last minute, but we got a trike decorated and got down there. Willa loved it. There were lots of kids and a fire engine led the parade. Of course at the end they had Paces Dairy Ann Astro Bars for all the kids, just like when I was a kid. I love small town celebrations!

She was very excited about the Popsicle and while she was riding she sang, "Riding my bike is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do..."

Ryan flew in that evening and the next morning we ran the fun run. Longest fun run in Utah - 35 years! It would have been my dad's 35th year to run it, but he opted out this year in order to play his bagpipe in the parade!! A man who is slave to his traditions is not living. Ryan ran from the house to the race to warm up. He was running and some man working on his lawn said, "Oh, did the race start?" Ryan said no and asked for directions to the start. The man told him and then offered to drive him there! So friendly, I love Centerville! Ryan got first in his age group and I got 201 of the women :). NH met us there and raced too. I love the Centerville fun run!

Later we went to the parade and it was awesome. Our neighbors walked as father and son with the veterans, which was cool. Of course, we were so proud of my dad for learning the bagpipe in the last few years and working hard enough to be able to march in the parade! It was one of the better Centerville parades in recent history.

The differences between my two darling girls was starkly shown at the parade. Willa sat nervously on her dad's lap observing. It was only the very end of the parade when she was comfortable enough to try for a little candy. June, on the other hand, squealed, squeaked, and shouted with joy. From the start she was waving and clapping and pointing and flapping her arms with excitement. She was adorable and soooo thrilled. She has such exuberance for life, it is fun and tiring.

Hands out shyly for candy.

Mid clap

Can you find him?

Grandma gave her three dollars for the carnival!

That evening we went to my dad's office to light fireworks, since we aren't allowed to set anything off up on the hill. My friend Alyson, her new husband, and her family joined us. It was such a pleasant evening except for two overly tired girls! We had homemade ice cream, had snacks, and just enjoyed sitting in the nice evening weather and chatting. Since our families grew up together it was just comfortable and fun to be with her parents and to have her little brother and his wife with us.

Thalmans Arrive!

I haven't mentioned it until now because details weren't solid and I didn't want to look the fool if things didn't work out.

However, all of our wildest dreams have come true and the Thalmans decided to leave Houston and move to Las Vegas! Huzzah! It happened very quickly and I didn't want to announce the good news until they were absolutely, physically here. I was scared that something would fall through and they wouldn't end up coming. Thankfully they made it. They are living about thirty minutes away, but it doesn't feel so far! We played together for two glorious play dates before I left for Utah and we're planning for many more fun times.

The very day that Kim called to tell me they were moving, I was praying about finding more friends for Willa. We still need to get some friends near home, but it is just so good to have them back.

He's funny, isn't he!

These videos are a few months old, but I wanted to show them. Willa is pretty shy until someone takes time to play with her on her level. Luckily, age three seems to agree with Uncle Brandon. She used to completely ignore Brandon - probably because he would embarrass her by saying, "Hi Willa, are you going to talk to me?!!!" When he started playing, things became much more friendly.

My favorite thing about one of the videos is that she turns to me and says, "He's funny, isn't he!" It's a perfect summation of Brandon. When we visited California, all the children surrounded Brandon the entire time and he had enough energy to keep them busy! 

This picture is unrelated, but I just came across it. What happened to my babies? This was only a year ago! Willa seemed so old when we had June, but she was really just another baby.

Nothing too exciting is going on, but a good update is always in order. Some kind of cold front moved in and we've been enjoying low 90's this whole week. Who knew that 95 degrees could feel so comfortable? Actually, I've been aware for the past few years that I'm becoming very acclimatized to hot weather.

When I used to run in Houston in the summer, I remember one morning realizing that it was so hot and humid, but that it wasn't really bothering me. Now, there were a lot of trees and lots of clouds in Houston. Whenever the direct sun hit me, you'd better believe it bothered me, but as long as it was partially blocked, I felt okay.

There are not so many trees and no clouds in Las Vegas. Ryan and I say that no matter what direction you are facing, it feels like the sun in always in your eyes. I've even started running with sunglasses on, which I've never done before. The bright, hot sun is definitely a challenge when it is hot outside. I've gotten a headache from just walking outside to the mailbox while wearing sunglasses one hot and bright afternoon! I'm trying to be really mindful of the girls on days like that. I always keep a hat in the car for June and have started putting it on just for quick trips from the parked car into the grocery store and things like that.

We ordered Willa some prescription children's Raybans from our great optical shop in Houston. Unfortunately, when they got here they were HUGE on her. She just has a tiny, tiny face and head. They didn't stay on at all. I called about returning them and the store said that I could return them, but I should try taking her to a local optical shop to get them fitted here. We went yesterday and I was SO pleased. Her purple glasses have been loose for quite a while so it was good to get those tightened up. They would slide down just to the degree that she was always peering over them. Now they are tightened back up and fit perfectly. The guy worked really hard bending the sunglasses. They're not perfect and still big around the nose, but they stay on and should work. They have a lifetime warranty, so I'm planning to use them for MANY summers here and just get the lenses replaced as her prescription changes. It was a good trip and good to find a nice local optical shop for our future eye wear needs.

June and Willa have become great playmates when the timing and the mood is right. Willa has been very good! She enjoys being silly and being laughed at, and when she acts silly then June laughs abundantly and it pleases Willa a lot. They've bathed together now three times and love to run and wrestle each other on the couch. Willa did tell me, however, that "Rapunzel doesn't like June." I think this roughly translates to, "Under no circumstances should June ever play with my Rapunzel doll."

June loves playing so much that I have taken to feeding her in the bathtub some nights because she will not sit still in her highchair at dinner time! At least this way it washes off and she's confined to one place. Even when we're all at the table, she screams to get out because she likes to climb back and forth from Ryan's lap to mine while we eat. It's become a game for her. So bathtub dinner is a little yuck and crazy, but not as crazy as her waking me up because she's hungry at midnight. She did that two nights ago and it was definitely her "hunger" scream. I let it go for 30 minutes, then got her up and fed her quite a bit of yogurt and cheerios. I was pretty annoyed with her, but after she ate and got cuddly, I rocked in and she snuggled into me. I just had to be grateful for her and for the sweet moments to rock her and smell her sweet smell and for the chance to be a mother. Sure, I would love a better sleeper, but I want to focus on being grateful to have her at all. We are really blessed in our little lives right now and I'm just trying to enjoy the calm right now.

All June

June hit the fifteen month mark on June 5th. She is a hilarious and spunky little baby and constantly makes us laugh or groan.

As of this morning, has gone one week without nursing. I think this is it. I think we are through. Even though I have been ready to be done for a while, it is still making me quite sad. I stopped her evening feeding two weeks ago. She protested a little, but not too much. I think she would still willingly nurse at night if I sat down with her, but she doesn't cry when I put her right down to bed.

Since I was down to only one morning feeding, my milk supply dropped even further. She was starting to get frustrated because some mornings she really wasn't getting much. Ryan happened to be home in the morning so he got her up and fed her while I hid elsewhere in the house for six mornings in a row. After she's eaten, when I come out she doesn't whine to nurse. However, I got her out of bed today because I wanted to let Ryan sleep in for Father's Day. June howled and screamed and tantrumed and refused food for nearly 45 minutes! Several times she was full on, face down, laying on the floor, kicking and screaming, tantrumming. I probably would have given in, except that it had been almost a week and I was pretty certain that no milk would come out.

So, there I am. Happy, but right now feeling sad. I just feel badly that she can't have her comfort and something she wants. I don't want her to be confused. I also want to keep her small and cuddle her as long as possible! But really, it was wearing on me because she has been so attached and it was hard to leave her for anything. It's also frustrating for me when I don't have enough milk because I want her to have enough when she's struggling to get it. I hope that being completely weaned will help her eat and maybe sleep better since she won't be holding back at dinnertime in anticipation of nursing that night.

June is such an outgoing personality. She loves to be where the party is and often tries to finish eating early if she can see other playing and fun things going on while she's in her high chair. She has been experimenting with sounds and words and a few days ago said, "Nana! Nana!" and pointed at the banana. She was extremely pleased with herself for coming up with the word.

With each milestone she gets funnier and more clever and is really quite the ham. Unfortunately, the opposite emotions are expressed in larger increments as well. I really don't know what I'm going to do when she hits the terrible twos! She is so expressive that she constantly makes me laugh. She just started getting interested in reading books. Instead of passively letting me read, she gets very animated. If a book has a mirror, she likes to wave to herself and say, "hiii" and then she laughs and laughs. If it is a touch-and-feel book, she loves to wave hi to the animal and pet it and rub it on her face. I put on a Baby Einstein for her today to see if she would be interested. Not only was she interested, but she was constantly laughing out loud at everything that was going on. She's so different than Willa, who was/is always very cautious and rarely showed a lot of emotion in the beginning.

June, unfortunately, has found more freedom and more trouble with walking. The more she can do, the more she wants to do. Instead of passively sharing a toy or letting another child take the toy like Willa did, June is the big bully who tries to take the toys away from other kids, push other kids' hands off the toy, push Willa off of mommy or daddy's lap, and HOWL if she is thwarted in her aims. We met my parents and Curt and Jen in St. George on Friday for the day. The kids played in the water and in some fountains. The fountain water would occasionally go off and she got very angry and had lots of gestures and grunts to show me that the water was off and that she was NOT happy about it.

She just keeps surprising me with how outgoing she is compared to Willa. She experiments with words and gestures and picks things up quickly. If I start singing to her while I change her diaper, she immediately starts the hand gestures for Itsy Bitsy Spider because that's her favorite song. Today, we were singing If You're Happy and You Know It and after just one time, the song came on again (on Pandora) and she started doing the actions and clapping her hands like crazy. She says, hi, bye, dada, mama, Lala (Willa), cheese, 'nana, woof, and who knows what else. Willa wasn't saying that much at two. She definitely knows the word for outside, because if I ask if she wants to go outside, she makes a beeline for the back door.

Sisters playing on the couch.

 At the St. George Children's Museum - a GREAT museum for such a little place and only run on donations. I'm using this picture to show her being naughty and taking the steering wheel away from Willa.

Naughty June, trying to climb out.

 "I absolutely MUST feed myself!!!"

 There's that cute smile that reminds me why we keep her around.

 Chocolate granola bar face and a front facing carseat!

Humor me with a few more...

I knew I'd forget something in the last post. I want to add it here just for my own memory.

I love to see Willa working to figure out the world. She loves asking, "What's the smell?" - sometimes it's June's poopy diaper, sometimes it's toothpaste when she kisses Ryan good-bye to work. She asks about sounds too, even if she knows what it is. She likes the pleasure of asking and having me repeat an expected answer. Maybe it's a little comforting to know that the world is starting to make sense.

She likes this Fisher-Price Christmas book and we read it OFTEN. She kept pointing the the earmuffs on the kids and asked what they were. I explained that they were called earmuffs and that they keep ears warm when it is cold. A few weeks later, I got out her panda bear headphones for our trip to California. She hasn't seen them in a while and when I got them out she immediately called them her earmuffs. I feel like I get to catch glimpses of her little mind trying to logically figure names of things and to apply what she is learning to the real world. I haven't had the heart to correct her on the "earmuffs" versus "earphones" it's just so sweet.

A few times Ryan and I will say something and she'll say, "Huh?" We will repeat it a few times and finally she will say, "I don't know dat word means." I love that she can pinpoint and then articulate what she is not understanding. It's not the whole sentence, it's a new vocabulary word.

Today was our third swim lesson at our new swim place. It's an amazing place and the teachers are first rate but she cried through the first two lessons even though she is pretty comfortable in the water and was already doing a lot of what they were teaching. Finally, today I prepped her for a long time and threatened that she wouldn't get ice cream if she cried (there is a McDonalds in the same parking center, so I have been driving through and getting her a cone on the way home to sweeten the trauma of it all). She was almost inconsolably crying while we got her ready at home -hyperventilating, etc. We sang Primary songs, we talked about happy memories, we talked about what was scaring her, but still she cried and even asked for a hug.

We got to lessons and she cried as we walked in and as the lesson started, but finally she started to relax. By the end of the lesson she was finally smiling the first smiles of the entire three lessons. She couldn't stop talking about it all the way home and during lunch. It's interesting to see my cautious girl take on the big world and I'm so happy when she is able to process it all and have positive experiences.

All Willa

I don't want to forget Willa's stage right now and the funny things she does.

An oft repeated phrase is "How am I ever to...?"  For example, "How am I ever to put my clothes on?" It's so funny and sounds so formal. I have no idea where she picked it up.

Yesterday, she was giving Ryan a big hug and said, "You're such a big girl daddy." I think she picked up the phrase "big girl" because I hug her and tell her that she is a big girl. So, daddy must be a "big girl daddy" if he is being good.

She also tells me that she is a "little big kid" and then she runs over to stand next to me so she can measure herself and says, "Nope, not as big as mommy yet, I still little." Ryan was reading her a book about giving up your pacifier and she responded that she wasn't as big as mommy, so she could still keep her pacifier.

She loves to wear headbands on Sunday and for some reason, thinks that a headband is a Sunday prerequisite. We haven't ever had a lot of headbands and the ones we had were kind of broken. I finally went to Target the other day specifically to buy some new ones and also to get her some bigger hair elastics since the plastic ones aren't cutting it anymore. It's strange for me to have to make shopping goals and trips like that. She really did need them!

She HATES to wear anything with buttons, even if the buttons are in the back and she can't feel or see them, she still has a fit about putting it on. Usually, I have to bribe her with candy if I really want her to wear something. She also mainly only likes to wear soft knit fabrics, no poplin or crisp cotton. I looked all around and found some soft knit rompers from Gap for the summer months. I bought them without realizing that they had three buttons on the shoulder!!! It's an ordeal if I want her to wear them. I went to Target this week and they had a few knit rompers with no buttons. I showed them to her and asked if she wanted one print and she said no. We looked at two other prints and she said yes. So, we got two of those and she put them on without complaint, except the straps of one of the rompers hits the wrong place on her shoulder so now she doesn't want to wear it. She's finicky!

I know if I bought all character clothes that she would wear them all without complaint, but I just don't want to. I'm also trying to buy her a little more durable clothes instead of just Target. I can really tell the nicer clothes that have been handed down from Claire to Willa to June. Some of them still look really great, so stretching, no fading, no fabric pills. I'd like to buy Willa similar high quality items so that they'll still look good for June.

Willa finally likes taking a shower and is getting braver in all areas of life. I ordered her some prescription sunglasses from the same place where we got her first pair of glasses in Houston. We got her some sweet Wayfarers. Unfortunately, they are pretty big on her. I'm disappointed because that place is usually so good. I thought they would have checked her past measurements with the Raybans and known if they would have fit or not. The good news is that they are quality and have a lifetime warranty. So, we will have MANY years of these sunglasses and can easily replace the lenses if her prescription changes. It's just so darn bright  in Las Vegas!

 Willa goes potty before her nap and likes to leave her pants off while she naps. So she either naps in a t-shirt and underwear, or just underwear if she was wearing a romper. The other afternoon she went to get dressed after playing in the kiddie pool. Since getting her clothed is usually a huge battle, I decided to let this one go. If you can't tell from the blurry picture, she put the romper on first and then pulled up her underpants on top.

 She has been a lot friendlier with June. Sometimes in the afternoons or mornings, she will play and be silly with her. Here, she wanted to sit in the same chair. She has even voluntarily bathed with June twice! After some June time, she usually needs her space to decompress and often asks me to take June to the other room.

 Yesterday she started holding June's hand and walking with her. Here is a picture from this morning. Note the nightgown and church shoes. I have a couple of videos of them walking together, but only a mother would be interested. Also, it's a bit terrifying to have them walk together because Willa walks a little faster and tries to pull June up by the hand if June falls. We're moments away from nursemaid elbow.