Monday, March 31, 2014

Abbie at 3

Abbie is 3 years old! Where did my toddler go?
She did a really good job cooperating at the target portrait studio to get her 3 year old pictures taken. I have included my favorites.
  • Sleeping: Abbie is still a great sleeper. She goes down around 8 and wakes up a little before 7. She knows she is not supposed to come wake Brandon up before 7. So if she is up before 7 then she plays in her room. Sometimes she will come in early and proclaim it 7 even though its not.  Naps are sometimes a struggle. We go through phases. Sometimes she is great at taking a nap everyday. And sometimes after I put her down I will then hear a noise, either playing or reading, and it becomes only a rest day. When she does take a nap its usually about 2 hours. 
  • Social: She is not very social. She would prefer to play by herself, or with princesses than to play with other kids. We do have a play date weekly with Gracie, and most of the time they will play together. She does like to play with mommy, and daddy.

  • Potty-training: Still completely potty trained during day and hardly ever has accidents. Finally back to wearing underwear during naps and most of the time stays dry. She still wears diapers during the night.
  •  Temperament: She is a really sweet and caring. She is really good to Luke, and usually helpful when I ask. She is very obedient and responds well to rules.  Even though she is a good girl, we still have whiny moments, tantrums, and drama.
  • Language: She has always been advanced in her talking and expressing of emotions. She speaks in complete sentences, sometimes even paragraphs. She is able to describe things really well. She has a very wide vocabulary and uses big words like: actually, understand, usually, complete. 
  • Favorite foods: anything sweet :)  She also loves chicken nuggets, fries, noodles, MILK, cheese, ham, carrots, oranges, pepperonis, cucumbers
  • Favorite movie: Frozen
  • Favorite color: still pink
  • Favorite songs: Do you want to build a snowman?  and Let it go from Frozen. She also likes Beautiful (One Direction) and Taylor Swift and Imagine Dragons.
 

  • Favorite pretend play : Princesses and Dress up.  She is very organized in the way that she plays. Lately the princesses (all her little characters- about 20) do everything in a line. Whenever they go somewhere they have to line up, usually the same order every time. (It can take forever). The nice thing about this is that she doesn't need or necessarily want anyone else to play. Whenever she plays dress up she will go to her 'dressing room', change, and then come out and dance, and repeat.
  • Favorite activities: riding bikes, going to the park, playing board/card games with her own made up rules, playing games on the tablet, watching shows, shopping, reading books.

  • As stated earlier she is very organized and has a certain way of doing things. For example bedtime (if we suggest to do things out of order, she will say something like 'we usually do ___ next'):
    • go potty
    • get out choices of jammies, choose one, put them on
    • pray
    • read scriptures with mommy
    • read book with daddy while eating bedtime snack

 

We are so lucky to have this sweet girl in our family!




Wednesday, March 26, 2014

8 months

Lucas is now 8 months old! 
* Loves food! He will eat anything! He especially loves eating our table food. 
* Has 2 bottom teeth (those were not fun to get)
* Loud noises (aka vacuum) freak him out
* He is totally a binky boy! He loves it!
* He is crawling all over the place. He can even go upstairs. It's so hard to keep the floor clean, and you know he loves eating every little tiny piece of something that he finds while crawling around. 
* He always wants to 'play' with whatever Abbie is playing. This can be really frustrating to her.
* He can also pull himself to standing and sort of walk along while holding on. His favorite place to stand up is of course at the very dangerous railing and gate.
* He is wearing mostly 6-9 month clothing. Although because his waist is so skinny, he does have a few 3-6 month pairs of pants that he wears. 
* He is such a calm, happy guy. We sure love him!


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

tubing

Last Friday we went snow tubing at Soldier Hollow. Grandma Karen hung out with Lukey while Brandon, Abbie, me, Travis, Jayden, and Breanna had fun tubing down the giant hills. Abbie liked it and went down 3 times before she had had enough. Then we were able to go 3 more times without her. It really was a lot of fun!
 

Thursday, March 13, 2014

birthday celebrations

We did a lot of celebrating for Abbie's 3rd Birthday.

 A few days before her birthday, we had a mini friend party. They decorated princess crowns, played and had cupcakes. Gracie, Kyle, and Emily came.


The day before her birthday Lucas helped me do a few last minute errands, while Abbie played at Gracie's house.

Abbie woke up to balloons and a banner in her room

We let her open 2 of her presents first thing in the morning. 


And we had a special birthday breakfast- donuts, milk, and apple slices.

I also fixed her pretty the night before while she was sleeping with grandma ellie's help. At first she thought the new purple 'fuzzies' were ugly. But now she likes them.




We went to the zoo with my mom, dad, and Amanda. It was really fun.


Afterwards we went to lunch at Cantina. Abbie's kids meal came with ice cream, but we told her it was special for her birthday ;)

Then we went to grandma ellie's house to decorate her Frozen birthday cake.

After Brandon got home from work, we went to dinner at Chick-fil-a.  Then we let her open her last 2 birthday presents.


Saturday, the day after her birthday, we invited all the family over for a little birthday party. We had cake, and ice cream. 


Abbie opened up a lot of cool presents. She is so lucky that so many people love her and spoil her.

On Sunday, we had dinner at grandma ellie's house, played Frozen Bingo, and had Olaf cupcakes.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Crawling

Lucas has been sort of crawling since the beginning of March. He would move his knees forward and maybe one hand.  He finally figured it out last weekend and now is a pro.

This first video is from last Thursday, when he really first started crawling. You can see he is still a little shaky.


This video is from Sunday.

He loves being able to get to whatever has caught his interest. Now he can bee-line across a whole room pretty quickly. Abbie is quickly learning that she has to be careful with her stuff or else Lukey will get it and 'slime-er it'. And I have to be more on top of keep the floors clean.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

yard work

The weather has been amazing lately! So, working in the yard was a perfect Saturday morning activity. We are taking the grass out of the area right next to the porch (will eventually become a garden) and transplanting it to other areas where there is yucky grass or no grass. And by we, I of course mean Brandon, with Abbie's 'help'.



Abbie was riding her bike before this which is why she is wearing a helmet. Not because yard work is dangerous. :)

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Feb random

Meeting grandma ellie for lunch one day

At burger king. Abbie can now do the whole play thing without help.


(Notice our new to us couch. Its from grandpa Nielsen)

Bachelor treats. Abbie didn't mind helping herself to them :)

Sibling love on one of many Costco shopping trips. Love the carts with 2 seats.

Our little princess. She sometimes asks me to take a pictures of her when she plays dress-up.

Abbie absolutely loves these little princesses. I think they are having a picnic in this picture.


Playing little chef, but looks more like a pioneer :)

We finally set up this ball pit that Lucas got for Christmas. Both kiddos like to play with it.

Um, hello. I guess sitting on top of the toy bins is a good place to snack.

Abbie spent her dollar from great grandma on this painting set. She loved it.

  
Matching shirts from Heather

Lucas figured out how to go from a laying down position to sitting and vice versa. Yup, we lowered crib after this incident.

cheesy smile :)

Love these cuties!