loungewear at its finest

I have been known to coordinate my children's clothes. I have also been known to coordinate their pajamas. Perhaps there is a recovery program I should join-- it's slightly excessive, I know. But really, if you could wake up to this in the morning, wouldn't you do it too?


I mean, seriously.


And since we're posting about pjs, let me throw these in here, too. Just a few cute pictures of my Pea baby one morning fresh out of bed. There are very few things in this world that are more fun (or cute) than babies in the morning.



Let's finish this loungewear post off with photographic evidence of my son's addiction to basketball shorts. Every single time we go to the mall he thinks he needs a new pair. And if we happen to be shopping with my mother and there are basketball shorts on sale, he usually gets some. You might think that this is totally overkill, but you don't know how often my son wears basketball shorts. He happily lets me pick out his clothes for when we leave the house, but as soon as we return home his first order of business is to rush to his room, rip off his pants, and put on some basketball shorts. So he wears at least one pair a day. If we leave the house multiple time he wears multiple pairs. Really. We had fun trying to fit them all on his little body :).


When he tried to walk he tipped over-- that is what the second picture is. (Didn't want anyone thinking I was trying to put my 3 year old in some seductive topless pose :).)

my 11 month-old pea

I'm feeling extra tender for my baby girl tonight (perhaps because she has had a fever of 102* today and has been so cuddly and patient and sweet despite it). I know I say it constantly, but I truly feel such deep gratitude to be a mama to this little 11 month old wonder. As I rock her before bed each night and say a prayer, that is typically the only thing I can think to say: I am so, incredibly grateful for this precious chubby body to cradle in my arms, for the way that she needs me, for how much she fills me. Taking care of her is loving her, and it is never a burden. I pray that I will always live to meet her (and her brother's) needs.



She is all kinds of trouble these days, crawling like a crazy person at super speed. She is especially fond of crawling into the bathroom and breaking off little pieces of toilet paper to eat, and she has some serious radar for finding small choking hazards to put in her mouth. I don't ever remember George doing that, and it keeps me on my toes for sure. At her 9 month doctor appointment I specifically asked her pediatrician about the Heimlich Maneuver vs. back blows for a baby of that age who is choking because it is something that I have been worried about-- she seriously puts small things in her mouth all the time (it's back blows, by the way, until she is one). I mean, I am not planning on her choking (and I really do try to make sure there are not choking hazards within her reach), but better to know just in case, right?



Her first word was "Da Da," at a little over 9 months. She babbled "da da da" and "ma ma ma" a lot before that, but that was when she started to say it associated with her daddy. He would come in the room and she would grin from ear to ear and, in her high little voice, say, "Da Da!" A few weeks after that she started saying "Mama" legitimately, and she has now added "num num" (for food), and "na na na na" (while furiously shaking her head back and forth for "no no no") to her vocabulary. My favorite thing she says is a very breathy "Hhhiiiiiiiii." We say hi back and forth to each other a million times a day because I love it so much.



She also loves to click her tongue (first picture above and below), and it is my favorite when I can hear her in the other room just happily clicking away. My aunt Kim taught her "peek-a-boo" a while back, and while she sometimes does the typical two-handed eye cover, she often likes to cover both her eyes with only one hand, right in the middle of her face, and I love it. She also does pattycake, waves bye bye, and dances on command. One of her cutest tricks is something she does with my dad every time he holds her. He started having her give him a high five and then bump foreheads whenever he would pick her up, and now, as soon as she is in his arms, she puts her hand up to slap his and then promptly leans in to bump her forehead to his. It is seriously darling.



Pearlie has been pulling herself up to standing and cruising around furniture for awhile now (maybe a month or two), but has just recently begun flirting with standing alone. She loves to let go and balance, and is getting really good at it. This morning she stood up from sitting, without the help of furniture or anything, for the first time. She was so proud of herself. She tried it once and fell down immediately, and then tried it again and stood there for about 10 seconds with her arms out to her sides to steady herself. She was looking at me with a big grin like she knew she was pretty awesome.



The other day she was playing with my mom's phone and put it up to her ear like she was talking on it. It was so cute to me because I had no clue that she would know to do that. And yesterday she found a brush on the bathroom floor and put it up to her hair and moved it around. That surprised me too, because I have never brushed her hair before. Babies don't miss anything, I tell you what.



Georgie refers to himself as her "bruh bruh" and really wants her to learn to say that. We are working on it, I keep telling him, but he doesn't think she is catching on quickly enough :). She loves her brother, though. She is happy in her carseat as long as she can see him, and they are constantly playing a game where they take turns wildly shaking their heads back and forth against their carseats. They think it is hysterical, and I do too, unless I am wanting Pearl to fall asleep. Then the humor wears off pretty quickly and I wish for a barricade between them that is sightproof (not a word?) and soundproof. I owe a separate blog dedicated to their blossoming relationship, so I won't write much more here, but it is so soul-warming to watch your children love each other. More on that (and on Georgie-- he is every bit as delightful as she is) soon.

blue eyed valentine

Pretty happy she's mine.






I get the comment, "Oh, isn't she just a little Gerber baby?" all the time. I get why people say it (I think it is the combination of her round cheeks, wide eyes, and dark hair), but this picture really makes me see the "Gerber" look that she has. I took it at a weird angle, but if you tilt your head a bit you can kinda get the idea :).


This first photo was an attempt to photograph her shiny new tooth, but it was still so tiny that you can't really see it.


Here you can sort of see it. Bottom right. I took these pictures about two weeks ago, and they are already way old news. A couple days after this photo was taken she had the other bottom tooth poking through, and a couple days after that, her top right one as well. She waited awhile to get teeth (10 months), but when she did, she didn't mess around. George actually did the exact same thing, and I hope all of my children get those same genes. It is so nice to keep those gummy, baby mouths for as long as possible, in my opinion :). I'll have to get some current photos of my three-toothed wonder-- she totally looks like a hillbilly with that one top tooth.




At what age do baby girls start playing with baby dolls? I want her to love her baby, but so far she only likes holding her for about 10 seconds before she gets bored. She will give her hugs and kisses, but only because I tell her to. I am hoping that I am not raising a cold-hearted daughter that has zero mothering instincts :). She is probably still too little to really "get" the whole baby doll thing yet, I guess.


Something she does love? Opening up her drawers and emptying them, one article of clothing at a time.


Seriously, she could entertain herself for hours with this.


I decided I didn't want the entire drawer emptied, so I sat her down. She screamed (first photo). Then she reached over and got one of her shirts, which for some reason made her stop crying (second photo). Maybe she thought that holding the shirt meant that she would get to go throw the rest of them out of her drawer?


When I made the mistake of taking the shirt away so I could fold it any put it back, she did this again. Baby Girl has got some attitude and definitely lets me know what she thinks about things. I can't get over how much fun it is to watch unique personalities develop in these little people that are mine. George was (is) my mellow, cautious, gentle boy. I have so loved his easy-to-please demeanor. And now I have Pearl. Before she came along I would have thought that I would have always chosen to have an easygoing child over a little spitfire (if we could choose those things, obviously). Oh how she has changed my mind! I seriously adore that she is a little feisty, that she knows what she wants, that she is determined. I love that she has a little sass and spice. Really. She is all kinds of sweet and easy as well, but she can definitely hold her own too, and I love that. She's gonna need all that fire one day :).


George was in the room with us "reading" a book while I was taking these pictures. This book has a CD that goes along with it that reads the stories and George follows along and looks at the pictures. He LOVES this, and I think it is brilliant for times when I can't sit down and read with him. Anyway, Pearl likes the book, too, and I am constantly having to move her away so she doesn't rip all the pages in her zeal to see what her brother is doing (there have already been two casualties). It will be a fun day when she will just sit nicely next to George and "read" with him. For now, George and I are left trying to keep her away. I love these pictures because they show how gentle George (usually) is with his Penguin. She reaches, he, without bothering to look up and see what is happening, knows to just calmly move her hand away.


This happens over and over and I call her name to try to get her to come over to me.


There is no distracting this baby from getting what she wants. She goes for it again.


In a moment of brilliance, George moves the book higher and rests his leg out on his sister to keep her at a safe distance.


Love these little readers.


And lastly, in case you needed more proof that our Pear girl delights in emptying drawers, here you go. This time it was George's underwear bin that she got ahold of, and oh how happy she was. Until I found her :).

stripes

Yes, that is my son eating an ice cream sandwich for breakfast. Let me tell you why. A few months ago a very nice old lady in our ward dropped off a package of ice cream sandwiches at our house. We must not like them that much because the poor things are still languishing in our freezer. Anyway, the other morning George ran out into the kitchen to meet John when he came in from his early morning job, and G must've spotted the box in the freezer. When George came back into the bedroom he asked me if he could have an ice cream sandwich, and had clearly been sent in by his daddy to see if that was okay. Well I don't like to ALWAYS be the one to say no to things like ice cream sandwiches for breakfast, so I told him to go back and ask daddy, thinking that John would say no, of course. Ha. A few minutes later G came bounding back in the room with an ice cream sandwich in tow, happily chomping off bite after bite. Since my kiddos happened to be wearing coordinating jammies that morning I had wanted to snap a few pictures of them, but I had not planned for ice cream sandwiches to be involved. Oh well. When I asked John why he thought it had been a good idea for our son to eat ice cream for breakfast he looked at me like I was the biggest party pooper in the world and said, "It's just like eating cereal for breakfast except the milk is frozen." Oh, silly me, of course it is, we'll have ice cream sandwiches for breakfast from now on.

Maybe try to look past the ice cream sandwich and just see a brother and sister in matching pjs, mmmkay?

Once the ice cream was gone G moved on to trains and was kind enough to let his sister observe. As long as she didn't grab the tracks :).

She didn't seem to mind not getting a turn. But check out the sweet, happy face she got when she grabbed a spare piece of track to play with.

What she was really after was a train. Blast those short little arms!

I so love that Pea is getting big enough to be entertained by her brother for decent stretches of time. Giving George a little friend is the best parenting decision we've made yet :).

Her activity of choice may have been sucking on the trains, while his was playing with them, but they were doing it together, and this whole sibling thing is truly so much more dreamy and joyful than I could have ever known.

Oh my firstborn. He is still such a treasure and delight to me. Such a precious soul this little boy has, and I am so grateful that he came first to pave the way for the ones that will come after.

on solid ground

Someone please tell me that time doesn't actually go faster with each subsequent child. Because really, I swear my little Pear was a newborn yesterday, and here we are now, teetering on the verge of 6 months. SIX! I do not know when that happened and I have loved it all so much, but time is just slipping through my fingers and I can't believe how fast her first 1/2 year of life has gone. There are so many priceless moments in these stages, so many things I want to remember. She is the rolliest, chubbiest little ball of girly squish I have ever seen. I can't go anywhere without people commenting about those two things-- #1) her feminine, pretty features and face, and #2) how chubby she is. I get the comment, "She sure isn't starving, is she?" all of the time. Really, I am not sure a rounder baby exists.

Speaking of chub, this age brings along with it the rite of passage of starting solid foods. We have slowly dipped our toes (or tongues, I suppose) into this new pool over the past couple of months, and it is becoming more and more apparent that this little baby does NOT want to be left out of the culinary delights that the rest of her family gets to enjoy. She reaches for everything we eat and gets all squealy and offended if she is not offered a fair portion. It is pretty entertaining.

We started out with rice cereal, of course, about a month ago. I came home from a run on a Saturday morning to John and George making some pancakes for breakfast. I had purchased some rice cereal about a month prior, thinking I would introduce it to her around 4 months, but just never did. So that Saturday, with the boys making us breakfast, I decided it was time for us girls to get busy giving Pearlie her first taste of solids.

Of course as soon as Georgie heard what was going down he had to be front and center, wanting to give his little sister her first bite. This picture is blurry, but I love it because it is the only one we got of baby girl anticipating her first taste from her brother's eager hand.


Love Georgie's hand holding the spoon and Pearl's anxious little tongue.


She wasn't totally sure she was a fan at first. (Completely unrelated, but on my mind: I swear I don't look quite this freckly in person. I was shocked when I saw this!)


But she got a few good bites and swallows in. It was a good start, for sure.


I took these pictures of Pearl on my lap after she ate, not realizing how much I would love the picture of our family life feeling that I would get when I look at them. I love so much that you can see George in the background on the counter with his daddy's cowboy hat on, bruises covering his legs, the mess of magnetic letters peppering our fridge, and John over by the stove cooking breakfast. Just a little glimpse of a Saturday morning in our house, and that makes me happy.


A few weeks later (can you tell that I am not really in any hurry to push solid foods?) she got some more yummy goodness. This time in the form of applesauce, and she was definitely a fan, but she might have liked holding and chewing on the spoon as much as the actual food.


And then finally, this last week I let her try a little rice rusk. This was a hit. She loved being able to hold it in her hands and gnaw at it with those wet little gums. Oh, is there anything not to love about a six month old baby?!


Her tongue kills me.


Love the way she lights up and laughs at her funny brother. Also love that her thighs are so chubby that she could arch and arch all she wants, but she will never be able to squeeze them out of her Bumbo.


After she was sufficiently covered in rice goo she got to hop in the tub with her brother. These pictures are just fresh out of my camera, totally unedited, and I adore everything about them because it is just a pure image of my precious children. Seeing these two together makes me want to have about 10 more kids just to give them more of each other. Seriously.