Summer. So far. Except for the beginning.

We've had a lot going on here lately and it's kept us very, very busy and our hands have been very, very full...but we feel so blessed.  We have had more visitors and family to see this summer than I feel like we've had the whole time we've lived in this house and it has been an answer to prayer...such a blessing!  We had my parents stay with us the beginning of July, and then, as we've shown on our blog, we've spent quite a bit of time with my cousin Tyler and his family.  In addition, the girlfriend of our friend, Jeff (who is now our friend, too!) stayed with us for a few days while she was taking a study course in Baltimore to prepare for a nursing exam.  She was nice enough to watch the kids while we went out to eat...and we had so much fun talking to and getting to know her.  My niece, Rachel and her husband and baby all had a layover recently at BWI, so I went out to spend a half hour with them in the airport so I could meet baby Audrey and see them. And then to top it off, my niece, Sara stayed with us this weekend on her way out to a three week trip to Italy (pictures to come).  How full life feels when it is filled with people :)

We also invested in some canning supplies and had some fun this week picking peaches and canning them with a friend in the ward (again, blog post to come).  We enjoyed it so much that when Sara was with us, we went back and picked blackberries and canned a bunch of blackberry jam.  I've never felt more domestic in my life...especially since I made homemade bread to go with the jam. Super satisfying.  Makes me want to live on a farm...for like three days.  Then I'd need a rest.

In addition to having so many visitors we also received some exciting news early in June...we are expecting baby number three in February.  Again, we couldn't feel more blessed.  I've felt more sick with this one, and as always, tired, tired, tired, tired, but as of the last few days I have had more energy and less sickness so here's to hoping memories of the first trimester are in the process of being left far behind!

Something that has been weighing a TON on my mind is the fact that I haven't done any description of Leah and Dallin at their current ages...and if I don't write it, I'll lose it.  I think I've already forgotten quite a bit.  But before I let more time go by, here's what I've got.

TWO YEAR OLD LEAH

Leah turned two and about a week afterward, I thought I was in for it and that I wouldn't survive this new age.  She had a week of crazy intense tantrums and making no sense, not responding to any type of reasoning (which she normally does well with), and forget about naps and bedtime.  Things felt turned upside down...but then she pretty much got over it and things feel much better again.  She still is having a harder time with bed time and sometimes nap time, but things keep improving as long as we keep boundaries firm.  

Aside from those harder moments, Leah is such a bundle of creative, joyful energy.  She continues to love her baby dolls and learns better every day how to take care of them.  She will often be in one room and suddenly look at me and say, "Oh!  Bubby sigh!" (translation: baby is crying!) and then she'll run into the other room and bring back the baby, cradling and shushing it the whole way.  Her latest thing with the baby is changing its diapers (she says the word "change", leaving out the vowels and the "n" sound, if that make sense at all). And it cracks me up when she's wrapping the baby in a blanket to go somewhere...she carefully lays it on the floor, places the blanket across the whole baby, covering the head, and then picks it up with the blanket basically suffocating that baby's face.  We'll have to help her learn to not do that with any real babies.  

She LOVES books.  She and I usually read 25-30 minutes together every night (and she would keep going if I'd let her).  Quite often throughout the day, she will disappear for a little bit and I will find her cuddled up in her room reading books, sometimes on her rocking chair, sometimes just relaxing on the floor (one time I found her chilling on her back with her legs crossed as she looked at books - she looked so grown up!).

Leah has also found that her bottle and container opening skills have opened up a new world of possibilities and I desperately need to rearrange things in my bathroom cupboard so that lotions, nail polish, cleaners, make up, etc. are out of reach.  She loves putting lotion on herself, but she has also tried applying mascara:

The most unfortunate thing she recently got into was a bottle of red nail polish, which she applied to the ottoman in her room, as well as the floor. I tried applying every trick I could find on the internet, but that red nail polish is determined to stay.  Sigh.

Leah loves to help with everything she can.  She is still working on putting on her own clothes.  She has gotten much better at putting on pants and shorts (though she sometimes still gets both legs in the same leg hole), and she usually gets shirts on the right way.  She also loves sweeping and cleaning whatever I am doing.  She has her own little broom that she gets out when I am sweeping and it often turns into a little hockey game as I try to protect my dust pile from her scattering sweeps.

It has been raining a lot recently, and she recently "discovered" rain (it wasn't the first time she was in it, but it was the first time recently that she really noticed it) when we were leaving a friend's house and it was raining outside.  She walked out in it and immediately cried out, "Aaaagh!" and covered her head with her hands.  She LOVED it!  She now constantly looks outside to see if it is "meeming" (raining).

She calls most insects a "zhzhz".  At first I was frustrated with this, because it seemed nonsensical and I've been trying to encourage Leah more with her speech and pronunciation, but it didn't take long to figure out that she was making her bee sound...and the bee was the only insect she knew up to that point.  She now will call bees by name and flies, too, but her first instinct is to say "zhzh" when she sees them.  When we were picking peaches, huge flies kept landing on her and she was quite disturbed by this and kept calling out, "zhzhzh! zhzh!".  Then she'd grimace and a huge shudder would shake her whole body.  Guess she acquired her mom's fear of insects.

She continues to love singing, music and dancing.  Her favorite app on the ipad/iphone is one of children's songs set to slide shows.  I will often hear her singing small portions of "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam", "I Am a Child of God" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to herself (it is the same portion of each song that she sings over and over).  There's also another song that she often sings to herself...it always sounds the same, so I can tell it's the same song, but I can't figure out what it is.  She has cute little hand motions with it, though.

She is Dallin's greatest friend and comfort....along with his greatest grievance.  She is sometimes over anxious to help him with his bottle or something else, and he doesn't always like it (the independence is coming out in him, big time!).  But even though they have their trying sibling moments, they mostly enjoy one another and make each other laugh all the time.  My favorite sound in the world is hearing these two little kiddos giggling together.  They're learning a lot about sharing and taking turns (sometimes Leah surprises me with how patient and sharing she is with Dallin...though she certainly has her other moments, too!).  

 

Playing nicely together (I don't want to pretend it always happens like this, but the majority of the time, they do well together).

They also know how to get in trouble together...particularly where water in the bathroom is concerned!

Reading with Dad

 I meant to also include an update on Dallin, but it's getting late...so we'll stick to Leah for now!  We love our spunky, energetic, fun-loving, creative, sweet, happy girl.  She is a joy and a blessing to our family!