Whirlwind Rhen

One day I decided to follow Rhen around with the camera to see how many messes she can make in a small amount of time.

She started under the sink - we try to keep her out of the cupboards with hairties on the handles.

Obviously she has found a way around it and can squeeze her little self in between.

Reaching inside to pull out all the cleaning supplies.

Moving onto the diaper bag.

Found some food mom.

Then to the toy bin.

Next the pans.

She pulled the pans out and then cried because they landed on her feet.

She ended her whirlwind mess making with the appliance cupboard.

I figured I better stop her when she got to the chopper - that was a little too scary for me to watch.

Believe it or not, this trip of hers only took about 10 minutes. This girl makes me tired.

I love sugar!

Who doesn't love licking the beaters?

The day with the neighbor boys

Josh watched our cute neighbor boys one day last week and Rease had such a fun time with them. They played and played and took a trip to the park and played and played some more.

Josh and I bought a few random umbrellas a few years ago in St. George when we were there for marathon weekend and it was pouring - they were the only umbrellas left in the store and we grabbed what was there. One of them happened to be a Little Mermaid umbrella and Rease has been begging us to let her use it for weeks now. She finally got her chance this rainy day.

So glad we have fun neighbors for Rease to play with!

Breaking free

Rhen plays this little game with the doors in our house. She'll crawl into our bedroom and shut the door then squeeze her little fingers in between the crack and open it back up, etc. ect. Once in a while the door shuts all the way and she can't open it without help. When that happens she stands up against the door and pounds on it over and over until once of us opens the door for her. Then it starts all over again.
She tries to do the same thing with the front door but can't quite reach the door handle so she then goes right into the pounding.

Cute little thing in her diaper just trying to get out.

Got my hat on...

Rease felt like she needed to wear her hat one rainy day when she was going outside to play - this is the hat she chose. Why not?

Hello?

Rhen has learned to do all sorts of grown up stuff - she eats grown up food, she goes up and down the stairs (sometimes down doesn't end up so good) and she talks on the phone. 11 months old and she can do it all!

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!

We sent the girls on a scavenger hunt Valentines morning to find their presents...

Rease had fun and kept saying "where's the next glue (clue)?" Their Valentines presents were coloring and reading books.

Then we made heart-shaped pancakes and wrote pancake words. The R is for Rease and Rhen.

Ever since then Rease has asked for heart-shaped pancakes. Next year we'll do it again!

Our life

I feel like I have been out of the blogging world lately and wanted to have a catch-up day. Life in our house has been busy and crazy. Josh is in his last few months of school and is working so hard at getting through these last 3 classes. He is still home with the girls during the day and is also on the job hunt. I know he gets overwhelmed with all he has going on, but boy do we love and appreciate all he does for us. I am still working and am so grateful to be able to work as much as I do. I was filling in for a girl on maternity leave at an office in American Fork in December and January. The office was great and I was glad to have a steady office to be at for a couple of months. I am back to temping almost every day which is good and bad. Good because the temp agency keeps me busy almost everyday but bad because it's like my first day on the job everyday that I go to a new office. All in all, we are so glad to have the work we have. I work at my dads office one day a week too which is a nice break from the crazy other days that I sometimes have.

This past week has been a hard one for us. At 13 weeks pregnant I found out that our baby had stopped developing at 8 1/2 weeks and had no heartbeat. We opted for the d&c and I went in Monday morning for surgery. Everything went good and luckily I have felt great physically since then. Emotionally though this has been hard on me - I can imagine it's hard for anyone who has a miscarriage. I have felt a lot of strength from my good husband and my sweet girls and I am coming around. I've found since this happened is that all I want to do is spend time with my family and cherish the moments that we have together as the girls grow up. We have great people around us and have had a lot of love and support come our way this week. This is hard for me even as I write but couldn't pass up the chance to say thank you and we love you to the amazing people in our life.

Rease is 2 1/2, talkative, loving and very sweet. She has recently started saying to Josh "Daddy you are a great dad." She is also a very sweet older sister to Rhen. She loves kissing her, holding her hand and just playing with her all day long. She's not perfect though and spends her fair share of time in "timeout." She thinks she's very grown up and tells me "I can do it myself." Her favorite movie right now is "Monsters Inc" but that could change at any moment. She wears size 4T clothes and size 8 shoes. My favorite features on her - her 2 front teeth are a little longer than the others and we lovingly call them her "buckers." She also has a mole just off her nose by her right eye that I think is darling. Josh loves tucking Rease into her bed and has taught her to love a few of the blankets we have. 1st blanket - her turquoise one that she has had since she was little and has slept with for a year straight. This is the "soft blanket." 2nd blanket - a huge king size cream blanket that I love cuddling up with is the "super soft blanket." I think her turquoise one was in the wash when Josh introduced this blanket to her and since then has asked to sleep with the "super soft blanket." 3rd blanket - our newest favorite brown blanket we just got for Christmas is the "super duper soft blanket." If I were to describe this blanket those are exactly the words I would use. It is super duper soft and I love it. Rease shortens the name and just calls it the "duper soft blanket." You would think she would get confused but she knows exactly which one is which and asks for each of them by name. Most nights she sleeps with the "super soft blanket" and when she goes the Grammies she takes the "soft blanket." The "duper soft blanket" is used mainly when she watches a movie on the couch downstairs. We love this girl!

Rhen is a love. She loves to smile, laugh, mimic and get into everything. There aren't many moments that make her cry - when he bottle is gone and she's still hungry or if she's really tired she will start to whimper. She has blonde whispy hair that looked like it would be stick straight but has recently started curling on the end. She still has only 2 bottom teeth but that doesn't slow her down from eating anything she wants. I started giving her chocolate milk and teaching her how to drink from a sippy cup - the chocolate milk seems to help teach her since she'll do anything she can to get it out of there. She will be 1 in a month and is wearing 18-24 month clothes. Rhen is so tall and skinny (and even more skinny now since she was sick for a week and lost some weight.) She has the biggest bluest eyes. She has started saying a few words and my favorite is when she sees me and says "mama" or sees Josh and says "dada." Crazy how she knows the difference. The one word I would use to describe Rhen is "Smiley."

I love our girls and I love my sweet husband. Life is good to us and we are happy being together.

Uh-oh

I could tell Rhen was into something because I hadn't heard from her for a couple of minutes. She had a trail of star stickers behind her and a pile of them all around her and in her mouth.

She can now say "uh-oh" when she knows she's in trouble.

Then she handed the bag back to me when she knew she was in trouble.

I fell...

We were taking cookies to some friends on Sunday night. Rease's job was to grab the plate of cookies and take them to the car. All of a sudden this is how she ended up. I asked her what happened and she said "I just fell with the cookies!"

She's funny because she always seems to be falling down. I think that she doesn't pay attention to what she's doing or where she's at. She is constantly running in and out of our room and will occasionally run right into the doorjam and fall flat on the floor. She's never hurt, just clumsy.

Sick Girl

Rhen was sick last week - poor sweet thing. We were at grandma's house one night while Josh was at school and she started throwing up and wouldn't stop. Even when there was nothing left to throw up she kept trying and a little bit of saliva would drip out. She was on pedialite for the next 3 days and just didn't feel good. All she wanted to do was drink and sleep. I could tell she wasn't well because as soon as she was done drinking she would pop her thumb in her mouth and snuggle up to anyone or anything - 2 things that are so unlike her. She is not and has never been much of a snuggler (I took advantage of these sick days and snuggled my heart out with her) and she never sucks on her thumb unless she is going to sleep. So she slept a lot for the next 3 days and worked the bug out of her. This is just how she looked while she was sick - not much energy and just wanted to sleep.

Shopping

Rease has become quite the shopper. Smiths has tiny carts that Rease loves shopping with and loves to fill it with all kinds of stuff. She looks so grown up...

She found this newspaper and promptly picked it up and put it in her cart. She looked at me and said "mommy look I got my coupons!" That was a proud moment for me - already a coupon shopper!

Josh went shopping with her last week and filled her cart up with her favorite yogurts. A nice lady came up to them and said that Rease looked like she was being such a good helper and deserved a dollar - then she handed both Rease and Rhen a dollar bill! How nice! She said she loves rewarding kids that are good helpers. Rease's shopping skills are already paying off!

Date night at the mall

Last weekend we decided to do something fun and cheap with the girls so we went to dinner with a giftcard we had and then took them to the mall to play at the playland. Rease begged us to let her ride in the car so we let Rhen get in with her. It was a little tricky to keep Rhen standing up because the car was rocking back and forth but they loved it.

And on our way out we had to ride the "horsies." Since our trip to Disneyland this fall, Rease always wants to ride the carousel whenever she sees one.

Overall we had a really fun, cheap night with our girls

First steps

For the past couple of weeks Rhen has taken a few steps on her own here and there. She can stand up all day long but when it comes to actually walking, she chickens out and flops to her hands and knees. Just yesterday though I saw her standing up against the chair and all of a sudden she turned around and walked away like it was no big deal. She took about 20 steps before she finally fell. Good for you girlfriend!