Funny girl

Apple is a riot.  She makes us all laugh all the time.  We other day, we had some soda, which we never have.  Of course, she wanted some since everyone else had something other than water, which is usually what we drink.  So we gave her some.  I should've taken a picture, but, like normal, I didn't think of it at the time.  Maybe someday I'll do better at grabbing the camera.  She drank a little of it, paused drank some more.  She seemed to be okay with it, but she didn't have very much.  Then she took another sip, and said, "Nasty!"  Then proceeded to drink some more.  I asked her why she was drinking it if it was nasty, and she said, "I don't know!"  And proceeded to finish it off.  It was hilarious.  We were all there at the table, and were all laughing so hard for a bit.  The look on her face was perfect. Like I said, wish I had a picture, but she was just so composed in her emphatic response to soda.  She certainly didn't seem to mind the soda, the way she downed it.  We don't let her have it often though, because she turns into a live wire when she gets soda or highly sugary desserts.  I know a lot of people think sugar doesn't affect us all that much, but it is very clear when it's not part of their daily diet and then they get some.  Wow, she gets crazy when she's sugared up.  So, we avoid it most of the time for her.  We rather like her more calm behavior.  :) Although, it is pretty funny when the sugar hits and she turns into the super active, spinning, crazy toddler who all of the sudden is showing off!  At least she'll still sleep, even when she has dessert.

Another thing she said the other day that cracked us up, I asked her how her nap was when she got up.  She walked into the kitchen and said, "Good. I slept for 3 weeks!"  That must have been a great nap.  The funny thing was a few minutes later, she said something to some else about having slept 14 minutes.  Guess she's working on understanding how time works!


We are sure glad we have her, life would be so boring without her!  Love you Apple!

Favorite words of Apple

This girl has quite the personality, and the words to go with it!  She is so talkative, it is so much fun to hear what new things she like to say.  Here are some personal favorites, maybe I can get her to say them on camera sometime so I can hear it forever!  But, you know babies, they don't usually perform when you want them too.

I's sleeping!! translation: I am sleeping, leave me alone!  She says it very emphatically.  She says this whenever she wants people to go away, she never says it when she's actually going to sleep.

Careful of Ice! She says this one pretty clearly, and I can't figure out how to write it the way she says it, but it's winter right now, and we have a lot of ice on our driveway, so at some point in the last few weeks, she heard someone say to be careful on the ice as they were going out the door.  Now, whenever anyone goes out the door, and she sees them doing it, she shouts at them, Careful of Ice! She pretty much shouts most of what she says, she's quite loud that way.

Com down! translation: Calm down! She likes to say this to her cousin who is a month older than her when he's busy running laps around our house, and she's standing on a chair, trying to be his mother.  Super cute.

Nose a Running!  She really hates a runny nose, so if it gets going, she will shriek this at you, and you better wipe that nose pretty quickly, or she'll take matters into her own hands, or sleeve, or whatever is closest.  The other thing that she usually says right after this is: I cryin.  Meaning, my nose is running because I've been crying.  Smart little lady.  Of course, she only says this when she's been crying, otherwise, it's just nose a running.

Bum medicine..like it...nope!  So, recently we had a issue where I couldn't get her to eat and drink enough fiber full foods apparently.  She got very uncomfortable let's just say, so that we had to take some measures to get things working properly.  Now, pretty much every diaper change we get this comment.  Her way of saying, she really didn't like that situation.

I guess I should publish this..I started writing it months ago, sigh..oh well.  I'm glad I did, I had already forgotten some of these! She is so much fun and quite the talker.  What a doll.

The latest favorite of mine is how she says her name.  Oweeva- so, so cute.

She also is 2 and going through the extreme clingy stage.  She literally will sit on me all -day- long, if I would let her.  She alternates sitting on me, next to me, or clinging to my leg.  She is usually reading a book, or wanting one read to her, and she will throw the book at you to get your attention if you don't respond fast enough.  I don't even know why I keep toys around, as she really thinks books are toys.  I should just pack them all up for grandkids or something.

 She says, No, don't go! while chasing me down if she even thinks that I'm leaving the house.  She is also very polite in her tantrums, there are always sobbing pleases in her sentences when she isn't getting what she wants.  It's a good thing that I'm old and more patient now though, otherwise, I think I would go crazy with all of this stuff, good thing she's the baby.  :)

As I put her to bed tonight she said, 3 little monkeys jumping on the bed....after a bit of singing that song, she said, Squirrel (used her real name of course) monkey and Nutmeg monkey too! With a big grin.  Then she decided mommy was a monkey too!

She likes to call everything silly goose lately, too.  Nutmeg was cutting a box down for garbage, and she looked at her and said, "Nutmeg what you doing? Silly Goose."

I'm glad we have her, she's keeping us young.  :)

Treehouse Museum! What fun!!

Last week we went to the Treehouse Museum.  It is geared to mostly younger kids, but our older ones found things they liked as well.  We were supposed to go with all of Mr. T's family who are in town visiting or just live nearby, but his parents ended up sick, so the thing was cancelled.  But, we had already bought our vouchers a month or more earlier when we found a deal on line for half price, so we decided to go ahead and go anyway.  Here are some pictures of the fun we had that day! Apple was so much fun, I love the joy and magic that little ones bring to everything they experience.

She didn't know quite what to think of all the dolls.  And the fact that she couldn't touch any of them made it so that it wasn't as fun as she'd have liked. 

She LOVED to gather all the 'horses' and thought it was great that she could carry them.  

Here she is gathering the horses.

A great team building activity that required many hands to make it work!

Fabulous building and bonding time with dad!  Love it! Mr. T loved all the planks to build with. 

And dad wasn't the only one loving the planks.  Dad went for height, Ginga' went for style!

This is the drawing station.  They were creating their own eggs.

It's a bit bigger and almost done...

getting closer...

Finished!  Wait til you see what happens next...

What baby can resist a tower?  Especially when her favorite game is, Timber?

She thought this horse was so cool..and she loved the hat too! 

It's not very often we can capture such a great smile on her! She was in heaven on this horse, obviously.  Isn't she adorable? Love this picture!

It was a fun day which we ended by having lunch at Tony's Pizza, which is a place Mr. T used to go get pizza when he was little.  The kids thought it was a bit strange to actually be able to go in and sit and order a pizza, instead of having it delivered.  :)  Over the summer we had reading goals, and we said that if everyone met their reading goal, then we would do something fun as a family.  We decided that this would be it, it was a fun time together. 

The many faces of Apple

What a whole lot of fun this little girl is.  She cracks us up daily.  She talks up a storm, which is so nice since I haven't had a baby do that since Ginga was a baby, the other three took their own sweet time developing their languages skills.  She will pretty much attempt any word you ask her too, unless there is a stranger watching, then she plays mute.  Here are a few of our favorite looks from her.

 Here's a close up of that funny scowl that Rock taught her how to do. She will go from big smiley face to scowl in a second, just because she thinks it funny.

Here is the scowl in a variety of phases.  It's been really hard to capture this look, but it's so funny that I am glad I did, great to remember.

Super happy baby!

She likes sour cream, sometimes. 

She loves to wear an old necklace of mine as a crown.  It's been officially added to the play items of the house.  So cute.

Here she is becoming a concert pianist. 

Van update, clingy babies, Articles of Faith, Sweet squirrel-isms

Sienna update:  We took it to a transmission place, they ran a bunch of tests on it, and it would seem that a good flush and refill has fixed the transmission problems.  Hmm. I hope so.  That was much less expensive than a whole new transmission.  :) It just makes me wonder about the multiple mechanics who said that there was a problem with it.  It's been a couple weeks now, and it seems to be running well. So, I guess we will just keep an eye on it.   Mr. T says I'm hypersensitive though to it now because I get nervous about any little out of the normal movement that it makes.  :)  I've recently come to grips with the fact that I really like being comfortable and having a nice predictable life, so cars that malfunction, sort of stress me out.  More on all that in another post though.

Lately, Apple has been so clingy.  She is just fine if I sit down and don't move from that spot.  (Real practical, I know.) She will then go and play, and wander all over the house, but as soon as she returns to find me somewhere other than she left me, she flips out, comes and finds me, and then won't let go of my legs.  Ah...I'd almost forgotten how annoying that can be.  I kept thinking that maybe this time, I'd get a baby that didn't do that.  I have friends with babies that never seem to get clingy, they just wander around in their happy go lucky way's, and my friends get to do whatever it is they need to do at that moment.  I'm sure that it's not always that way, but it seems that way to me.  It has made me wonder why is it that these precious little souls of mine, (and yes, all 5 of them have been this way for a period of their lives) are like this.  Is it really just them, or have I created it somehow in the way that I mother?  I guess I'll tell myself that it's them, and they needed a mom like me to coddle and love them through it, since I don't know how to be a different kind of mom.  :) So, in the meantime, I will just ignore whatever it is I think I need to do, and hold her, and sit in one place, (with a book in hand of course!) and help her feel secure in her growing up time.  I know all to well how fast she won't want me anyway.  She is such a fun baby, and growing so fast, the fancy meals, and areas of my house that really need my attention will just have to wait.

I recently discovered on some other lady's blog, this awesome DVD/CD.

Here's a link too.  Zack and Zoey explore the Articles of Faith  I decided to get it for Squirrel, because she has been dying to learn them all, and those of us around here just sometimes get a bit tired of trying to keep up with her need to be 10.  :)  (She wants to do everything that Nutmeg does, it's just not fair that she can't yet. )  Anyway, I thought, she's a visual learner, and although I don't love my kids to watch a lot of TV, a DVD about this can't be a real problem, and then we will also have something else that is Sunday appropriate as well.  Win-win.  Now I know that the church has the official songs, but the really cool thing about this DVD is that it helps the children learn what they actually mean, not just learning the rote memory of them.  That is what did it for me, that she could memorize them, AND know what they mean.  Plus, they are really pretty catchy tunes.  She memorized #4 in just a few days. (She's already learned the first three, and wanted to pass off the fourth one in primary last week, she did!)  We keep the CD in the car, so she can listen to it there.  Anyway, we like it.

Yesterday, we went to the May birthday party with Mr. T's siblings.  It was so fun to see all of them.  It isn't very often that all six of them and their families are together, but they were all there this time, love it!  Anyway, we were all outside eating dinner, and I turned around to look at what Squirrel was doing, and I saw her sitting on the swing, swinging; when all of the sudden she gets this thoughtful look on her face, and quickly bows her head and folds her arms.  Obviously, she was saying a prayer, but then just a moment later she opens her eyes and starts swinging again.  Then, just a second later, she repeats the whole thing.  It was so cute.  I wish I had a picture, but of course, things like that happen so quickly.  I asked her a little bit later what she was doing, just to see what she would say, and she said, "I was saying a prayer to Heavenly Father, because I wanted to talk to him, and the only way that we can talk to him is when we pray, and you said that I could say a prayer anytime I wanted to, so I did, because I wanted to talk to Heavenly Father."  It was the sweetest little statement of faith.  I just love my little ones, they are so sweet, and grow up far to quickly.  

Toy obsession

She's rather crazy about this toy. The funny thing, is that she likes it when you clap and cheer for her. If you say "Yea." she will often move over to the spinning toy and start spinning it for you.  Unfortunately I had a better video, but due to my lack of tech skill, I can't seem to get it to you tube from my google plus account, so that I can upload it to the blog.  So if you are friends with me on Google + then go check it out.  It's a much better take on her obsession.   I have found that as soon as I take a video, I have to upload it to you tube before my phone does an instant up load to google plus.  Whatever works I guess. :)  Sorry about the shaky-ness in this video, I was trying to clap and get her to go into her zone.  Oh well.  You get the idea. 

Funny sounds

Apple is so funny.  It's fun to remember all the different funny things babies do as they are learning about what their bodies can do.  She has taken to doing this funny thing with her mouth when she's particularly happy.  It's like she's trying to blow through her teeth, only she doesn't have any.  So she puts her gums together and sort of does this Darth Vader thing.  But much cuter.  Also, I think I fixed my youtube problem, so the videos should work now.  If they still don't work, let me know.  Sorry if the video is a bit shaky, she was trying to help me.  :) Anyway, this one's for you Grandma and Grandpa!  (You guys are getting to see so much more of our life here since this blog, lucky you!  Love you guys. :)

Croup

Apple officially has croup.  I can't believe that none of the children have ever had croup. Crazy.  Tuesday night she was wheezing something awful, so I took her to the after hours clinic to see if there was anything to help her.  They said it was good I'd brought her because the fix is pretty easy, but she was pretty restricted and could have been dangerous to her.  (I can't even say it out loud, or written what could have happened!)  They gave her a shot of steroid and she is doing much better.  She still barks like a dog, but that's okay.  She's dealing with it pretty well, just lots of holding.  Her voice is pretty funny though.  I did a quick recording of it.  Here it is:

She is very gravely and deep, kind of cute, but sad at the same time.  All the kids have this junk.  Ginga's fever has broken, and is doing better, so it looks like we have another week of this garbage.  I'm grateful for modern medicine.  Listening to the children barking away, it reminds me of Anne of Green Gables when Diana's little sister gets the croup and nearly dies.  Anne helps nurse her through the night and saves her life.  So glad that we have other things to help us get through it.  I'm not very good at 'up all night'. :)

Adorable sisters

Apple absolutely adores Nutmeg.  They have so much fun together.  Here Nutmeg is dressing Apple up in her hat and scarf, and apparently she is loving it!

Christmas 2012

What a beautiful day we have had. It was a smaller Christmas, and very low key, just the way I have come to love it. In days gone by I would have spent a lot more, and gotten caught up in all the latest and greatest. I am glad that I have gotten past that in my old age. :) As our family has grown, I have found that we really don't need a lot of things. I am glad that I can say that for our family, less is best. Each of the kids got something that they were excited about, and they got some things that they needed. Everyone is happy with the day, and it feels so great to focus more on the real meaning of Christmas, rather than what all the companies want us to focus on. My father in law made the comment after all the gifts were open, "Well, Walmart didn't make any money on you guys this year, did they?" That is mostly true, although I did shop there a little bit, since I had gift cards. Mostly food type stuff though.  Here are a few highlights:

Ginga' received a Kindle Paper white.  He loves reading, and lately he, Rock, and I are all trying to read the same thing, so the Kindle has become a very useful item in our home.  He also got that bottle of green hot sauce that is sitting on the desk behind him.  He loved that.  If you notice, his pj's have hot chilies and hot sauce on them.  The more spice the better, in his book.

 Rock keep asking for night vision goggles.  Yes, he always seems to want things that are a bit off the beaten path.  Well, we looked at them, but decided that they cost WAY to much, and the long term usage of them would be rather short.  We figured that the novelty would wear off pretty quickly.  So, Mr. T (aka the Genius) found instructions on line on how to build your own night vision goggles.  So, for a fraction of the cost, we bought him the components to build his own.  Watching him open his gifts was hilarious, since he couldn't really figure out what all these strange looking parts were for.  It isn't easy to stump him, so it was pretty fun.  I'll have to check back after he makes them and let you all know how they worked out.  The upside to this is: when the night vision gets boring, he can take it apart and use the parts for other things.  At least that is what Mr. T tells me, don't ask me, I'm not the tech master. 

Last year Nutmeg got a violin for Christmas.  Then she grew, a lot.  So much so, that she needed to go up to the full size violin.  So for Christmas number 2: she got another violin.  That's okay though, she was excited for it to be more comfortable.  It already sounds so much better than the smaller one.  She just couldn't get her fingers in the right places anymore.  She also got another crochet book, this one: 

 and is already planning which animals to make first.  

This is a super fun project that I did for the girls for Christmas.  This is the process of dying play silks.  You use kool aid.  It smelled really good.  I felt so strange buying all the kool aid for it though, since we don't drink it here.  These two pictures are about all I have of the process, after I cleaned off my black hand, I wished I had gotten a picture of that too!  Oh well.  The silks start off white, then you mix different kool aid packets together to make different colors.  Here's a link to the one I used:  http://www.gerberadesigns.com/triedandtrue/?p=390

Here are the girls, loving their new play silks.  Seriously, hours of fun here.  I can't wait to see what else they will come up with.  I also made hankerchief sized ones for them to use to dress their dolls and stuffed animals and whatever else they can think of to do with them.  Say good bye to all those dress ups!  Woo hoo!! 

Apple didn't really need anything.  I mean really, baby number five.  With two older sisters.  She got a few teethers, like the one she's chewing on, and clothes.  Since I thought we were done after Squirrel, I had gotten rid of most of the baby stuff.  Oops.  :)  

 We also got a family pass to the zoo.  I couldn't decide how to 'wrap' that one up, so I put a bunch of their stuffed animals and animal figures around under the tree, and told them that they all had something in common.  They couldn't figure it out.  Some of the guesses were great though.  Here's a few I remember:  Rock guessed, "I know, they are all vertebrates!"  Well, yes, they were, however not the answer I was looking for.  Nutmeg guessed, "They are all God's creations!"  She is so sweet, true statement though.  We finally had to tell them.  They just couldn't get it.  But they are excited to go.  The first thing Ginga' said after that was, "We have to go with the Halls', they have a pass too."  Why, yes, they do.  I'm sure we will do that.  Their aunt has one as well, so I'm sure we will go with them as well.  So, if any of our other good homeschooling friends have passes, let us know.  It would be fun to meet up there.

I am so grateful for my family, the gospel and all that I have been given.  I am so blessed.  What a wonderful day.  Mr. T and I didn't do much for each other, we got shoes.  We both needed them.  He got rechargeable batteries, and I am a proud owner of a food steamer.  My old one broke a few years ago, and I am excited to have one again.  I received a wonderful Christmas email from my dear friend in Hungary, and it just finished my morning off wonderfully.  I am so blessed to have wonderful friends.  I am excited for the upcoming year to see the growth that will come from my children.  I love homeschooling for many reasons, but that is one of them.  I get to be with them so much that I see how they are growing and learning.  Fabulous.

So Sweet!

Isn't she a doll?  This is her favorite thing to do.  She loves to stand in her crib, and cruise from one end to the other.  She also likes the thrill of letting go of the side, then quickly grabbing it before she falls over.  Sometimes she makes it, and other times, not so much.  She has a great pair of lungs though to let us know that she has a problem.  However, she doesn't think that crawling or rolling over is such a great idea.  She just lays on her back like a beached whale, (but on the wrong side) and hollers.  I suppose at some point she will decide that she wants to be mobile, but in the meantime, I'm okay with knowing where she is, and that she can't get into things just yet.