Happy Birthday to You!

In true Jamie style, I am "fashionably" late writing about my daughter's one year birthday.  Actually, those that know me know that there's really nothing fashionable about me, but it sounded good.  Anyway, we had two birthdays a couple weeks back.  And of course Daddy was out of town for both of them.  We started off with our sweetest dog ever Quique who turned 6.  Honestly she is one of the loves of my life.  I get so sad with each birthday because I know she's a dog, but I honestly cannot imagine my life without this pup.  She means so much to me!  So here is my darling Quique curled up on her favorite chair which is currently in storage because it was apparently detracting from selling our house.  She is curled up with a stuffed animal that Taylor had been playing with for the two or so hours before and now she finally got her turn.  Could she be any cuter?

Then comes to another love of my life.  Sweet, sweet Hannah.  My mom laughs at me because I think there were times when I was pregnant (my memory is fuzzy now) when I told her that I couldn't imagine loving another child as much as I love Taylor.  It was just over a year ago when I held that sweet precious baby in my arms and I think all of those fears were a distant memory within an instant.  She is so sweet and so precious and her smile will just light me up when I am really having a rough day.  And as much as I love my darling Taylor those rough days are a plenty.  It's just this beautiful sweet soul wrapped into this tiny body with the most beautiful blue eyes that just pierce right through you and let you know that it's all going to be okay.

Since Daddy was out of town, we decided to do a girl's night to dinner to a place the girl's love that Daddy doesn't which is Summerhay's Fish 'n Chips.  Tay and Hannah both love Halibut and Dustin is not a big fan of fried fish so it was perfect for Hannah's birthday dinner.

I almost got emotional at dinner because everyone was behaving and we were having so much fun.  We missed having Dustin, but it was a nice evening to just bond with my girls.

And even when Taylor and I were both finished eating, Hannah wasn't.  I tell Dustin that Hannah is definitely a mixture of our gene pools because the girl LOVES food and would seriously just keep on eating all day.  She's not loving fruit for the last couple of days so I think it's a phase, but besides that I really haven't found something that she doesn't like.  She out-eats Tay all of the time.  And even Tay is a pretty good eater depending on the day.

Once Daddy was back in town, we did a little birthday dinner at Grandma TT and Papa's house.  Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we did a little Mexican Feast Cafe Rio style.  I also made these cute double decker Taco Cupcakes that Liz sent me the idea for.  They were so cute and a perfect addition.  Of course I completely forgot to take a picture of the food!  But here's the cake and Hannah with her Grandma TT.

Here she is enjoying her cake wearing the same birthday crown Tay wore on her first birthday.

Here's Tay on her 1st B'day.  Which is funny because I swear Hannah eats more than Tay did...

I had to sneak a pic with my messy face little girl.

Hannah really is such a happy girl.  She is not your normal little girl.  She doesn't crawl and at the rate she's going, she probably won't walk until she's 18 months old, but she's completely content.  She just scoots around on her behind and she's actually become quite quick.  She is enamored with her sister and it's like she wants to be just like her.  Hopefully she won't inherit all of her personality traits. :)  But I must say that I couldn't ask for a better big sister for Hannah.  Taylor loves that girl so much and just wants to play with her all day.  I know that we will have our rough days in the future (I have a sister

She has become quite the daddy's girl and will just squeeze him and give him the biggest hugs.  When you ask for a kiss, you will get a nice open mouth, wet one right on the lips.  In the last week she has become obsessed with dolls and the maternal, nurturing instincts have kicked in.  And yet last night when Tay was trying to take her sippy cup, one of her blood curdling screams came out as she for all purposes said "No Way, Jose".  So there may in fact be some feistiness in this one too.  I was giving her a bath last week and then holding her afterwards just squeezing her, never wanting her to grow up.  I just love her so much right now and think she's just about as perfect as you can get or maybe I just know what's in store in the months ahead and I just want to keep her at this age forever.  Happy Birthday, Hannah!  To our second little miracle that we love more than she will ever know!

Easter

I love Easter! Especially when the weather is as beautiful as it was last weekend. It makes me feel like I'm home in Cali. It's the beginning of Spring which is just the feeling of new beginnings everywhere and of course the end of winter, which is my very favorite. And then most importantly the religious aspect, but I won't go into that here. Anyway, I just love love love Easter and this time of year!

This year Taylor was so excited about getting an Easter dress. I'm carrying on the tradition of my parents and getting the girls a new Easter dress every year. For some reason, she was set on a blue Easter dress until we found her pink one. Once we found hers, we needed to get one for Hannah and she felt Hannah should have an orange one. Not sure where she became so particular about the colors, but she seemed to be okay with Hannah's purple one.

Then Saturday night came the dying Easter eggs. Why do I like to do this again? I swear it just stressed me out? For some reason I bought one package that was a painting one, don't know what I was thinking with that, but it was disastrous and seriously just made me want to yell and scream (which I barely refrained myself from doing). Next year I'm just sticking with the ones that you drop in the dye and that's that. We're not getting fancy. The other kind was still getting all over our hands when Taylor was hunting for them the next morning. What was I thinking?

But Taylor LOVED Easter this year. The bad parent that I am used her dress and dying Easter eggs as a bargaining chip for the week because it worked. But she loved Easter. We talked to her about why we celebrate Easter and she really seemed to enjoy it all this year. It really is so much fun when you can truly start to enjoy the holidays with your kids and see them through the eyes of your kids.

Hannah's latest tricks:

She loves to dance every time we say "Hannah Banana"

She refuses to crawl. My dad calls her scooter because she scoots around on her behind. Is this stubborn child #2? I'll show videos of those another time...

Here are some pics that our darling neighbor, Hannah, who lives down the street took. She was so sweet to come over after church on Sunday to take these. Even more sweet to endure our family when Taylor informed her "My daddy has a p...s" you can fill in the blanks, I'm sure. I don't need the wrong hits on this blog, if you know what I mean. :)

Sisterly Love

The Fam, minus Quique, although she is walking around at our feet. :)

Gotta love those chapped lips she's sporting, along with some attitude...

My sweet baby girl

Bedtime

Bedtime can seriously be considered a joke at times in our house. I will admit sometimes things are as smooth as silk, some times things go okay and some times it's an absolute zoo like last night. It definitely doesn't help that the girls share a room, that takes a little more thought into the whole timing issue of things. I will say that as much as I can complain about it at times; Tay really is a good sport about the whole thing at 3 years old. She could be a terror as she is about some things, but when it comes to sharing a room with her sister she can handle it pretty darn good. Actually when it comes to virtually anything with her sister, she is pretty amazing. Everything else is a whole other story.

It's nice when Dustin is around (which really is most of the time) because he'll take one and I'll take the other. He tends to take Tay and I take Hannah. It's funny because I think we each think we drew the better straw so it all works. It's usually Tay down first and then Hannah down second, but Tay isn't always asleep when Hannah comes in and sometimes Hannah still needs to be rocked to sleep because I can't allow Hannah to cry herself to sleep when Tay is in there so in the last few weeks, Taylor has now insisted on being rocked after I put Hannah down. There are some nights when I curse it, but I do love snuggling with her and whispering sweet nothings in her ear. I thing I may break down and cry when she tells me she's a big girl and doesn't want to be rocked any more so I probably shouldn't ever curse those nights when I'm "not in the mood".

Here's a picture of her after she insisted on dressing herself:

There was another incident a few weeks back when Tay just couldn't calm herself down. Hannah had been down for about an hour our two and Tay had been coming out of her room constantly and we had kept putting her back down. Then it had been a little while and I thought that Tay was finally down until I heard Hannah crying and in the back of my head I knew what had happened, but my eyes had to see it to believe it. Tay had pulled one of her favorite daily activities, crawling into Hannah's crib! I was furious and explained to her how dangerous it was to do that at night. I honestly don't know how long she had been in there!

Then there was last night. Another night when Tay is running over the whole house with Dustin trailing behind. First reading with her, dancing with her, doing anything, but one of those nights when she has no desire to go to bed. It was a day I had had my fill of her and so when I put Hannah down and then she woke up crying and Tay wouldn't go down, then that was just it, I was done. So after multiple attempts of putting both Hannah and Tay down, I just put each of them in their beds/crib and shut the door. At first there was silence which made me know there was something up. Then there was laughing and talking back and forth. As mad as I was I couldn't help but laugh, but I just let it go and eventually, the two of them talked themselves to sleep. Dustin did go back and check to make sure Tay wasn't in the crib. It was a lot cuter thinking back on it today then it was last night.

And then there was last week. One of our favorite babysitters Annie was watching the girls while Dustin and I went to a dinner for Dustin's work. Annie apparently does a much better job putting the girls down than I do, because she never seems to have any problems. Anyway, Annie was asking if she could sing Taylor a song. Taylor's reply was "No, I sing you a song". Annie was so smart to record it and this was the song that she sang.

Memo (New)

Dustin has ingrained the Utah fight song into his daughter's brain so apparently when she doesn't know how to end a song, she'll just go with what she knows and end it like the Utah fight song, hence the "Go Utes" at the end.

I haven't forgotten about my other daughter, Hannah. She is 10 months and still refuses to crawl. She was up on her knees a couple of months ago and now won't even do that. She kind of just scoots around on her bottom if you even call it that. She is absolutely adorable and the sweetest thing and the best baby! Except for the fact she is not a good napper, but there are worse things. She is already a daddy's girl! She lights up when he walks in the room or when she sees him in the morning. I swear she is saying Dada to him, but nothing that even remotely sounds like Mama. Welcome to the world of motherhood of two girls!

Skiing

My parents started me in ski school when I was a little kid. Although I don't remember my own experience that well, we do have the video to back up Ashley's freak out experience when she had had enough and threw her skis on the ground and she huffed off in the middle of her ski school experience up at Alpine Meadows in Lake Tahoe. Although we would ski from time to time when we came out to visit while I was growing up, I can honestly say that I have never skied since moving out here over 13 years ago.

I think Dustin has been counting down the minutes as to when he could take Taylor for the first time although both of us knowing it could really go either way with her. She tends to be either hot or cold with things. For over a year he has been pointing to the mountains and showing her youtube videos and talking to her about how he is going to take her skiing. It has gotten to the point that whenever Taylor sees the mountains, especially snow in the mountains, she talks about skiing in the mountains with daddy. Well, on Saturday, he finally got his shot! There's been a few times he had contemplated it, but we both felt it was best to at least take control over those things that we could. In other words, take her up on a day when the sun was shining, she was in a good mood, etc. Beyond that, it was out of our control.

Dustin took her on Saturday morning to go rent the skis and that of course started with a meltdown. She didn't want to take off her princess boots to put on the ski boots. (I have a whole other blog post dedicated to the beauty of Taylor at age 3 right now...) Bribing didn't calm her down as it usually tends not to do, so he pulled out the phone and turned on a video of people skiing. She loved it and was then inspired to try on some ski boots. Way to go daddy!

The other enticement for skiing was that she was meeting two of her cousins, Tate and Bryson, up there, Two of her favorite things in this world are her cousins and her friends so she was all about going skiing when she knew that they were going too. I didn't go to see her ski. Hannah and I stayed behind, but apparently she loved it!

Tay with her cousins - Tate and Bryson

I guess her favorite part was when she went up on the lift (the little lift) with her daddy and then went down the hill with him in between his legs. I guess we always knew we had a little daredevil on our hands. Below is just a little video on one of the flatter parts. But I must say, I was a proud mama! One thing I have learned with Taylor is to expect the unexpected... When I am expecting her to behave, she doesn't. And I never expected this on her first day!

(If you listen really close, Taylor says "don't watch me"... that's my girl. Attitude and all! :)

Halloween, etc.

Yes, Thanksgiving is tomorrow which is why I at least need to do a little Halloween wrap up before the remaining holidays came and went. I swear the holidays just get better and better as Tay gets older. When we carved pumpkins this year, Taylor wanted to have a happy one and a bad one so here they are...

It was like she had to pay hommage to the pumpkins everytime she walked into the house. Too cute for words.

At preschool, Taylor and her little class sang a couple of songs. It was so cute. It's been so fun to see how much she loves school and her teacher.

A few months back Dustin brought home the Wizard of Oz for Tay to watch. I was like there is no way that you are showing that movie to our two year old, she will have nightmares for weeks! He insisted so I told him that when she's up in the middle of the night, it's his problem, not mine. He agreed. Of course, I was completely wrong. She absolutely LOVED the movie! At first her favorite was the "green witch", but then Dorothy won out which is why SHE decided to be Dorothy for Halloween. Since she was torn and really loved the "green witch", I told her I would be that. Dustin jokingly asked her what he should be and she said the Tin Man. So it was then that the Tate family took on the Wizard of Oz...