Happy birthday two you!

Two years ago right now, I was sitting up in bed, trying to flex my toes.  They were starting to regain feeling, but were tingly, and my legs heavy.

Two years ago right now, I was frustrated at my inability to clear my throat, due to a lack of functional abdominal muscles.

Two years ago right now, the spinal from my C-section was wearing off.

Two years ago right now, I was holding my new baby, loving on her, and loving her name.

Two years ago right now, I was trying to help Robyn nurse for the first time.

Two years ago, my Robyn was born.

I remember how gentle Julie was, when she came to the hospital to visit.  I remember that she wasn't afraid, even though I was still hooked up to an IV (nervous yes, but not afraid).  I remember that she was so interested in her new baby sister, and not at all jealous.  I remember how loving she was toward her, right from the start.  I remember that Robyn gave Julie a gift, and Julie promptly shared said gift with Robyn, selflessly.

The things I know now are different.

My heart melts when I hear Robyn say, "I love you!"

I giggle a little when Robyn runs, because she crosses one foot directly in front of the other, causing her little bum to wiggle back and forth.

I am astonished at how polite she is.  Please, thank you, you're welcome, excuse me, no thank you, bless you, help, and "you okay?" (whenever someone coughs).

Sometimes I tear up watching my girls play together.  Julie loves being a little teacher, and Robyn just dotes on her.

I get nervous when I see Robyn trying to keep up with Julie and other big kids, whether it's on the playground, climbing something, playing on/around the stairs, or neighborhood kickball.

I smile that Robyn knows our neighbors' first names, and uses them.

I relished that, from the start, Robyn was a Mama's Girl.  Julie was always attached to Ben, so I finally got my turn.  (Though Robyn is starting to be much more of a Daddy's Girl lately, while Julie is taking more to me, finally.)

I laugh, out loud sometimes, at her expressions.  She is so emotive, and her face makes funny looks a lot.




So while my pregnancy wasn't emotionally the easiest, I wouldn't trade my Robyn Bird for the world.  My family was not complete without her.

In the spirit of celebrating the twos, here's some fun Robyn trivia:

2 favorite foods: chips and milk
2 favorite movies: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and The Magic School Bus (TV show, not movie)
2 favorite people: Julie and...probably a tie between Mommy and Daddy, right now
2 places she goes most often: school and nursery
2 favorite books: Peek-a Who? and anything Little Critter
2 favorite things to do: ask Daddy for chips when he gets home from work, and identify school buses wherever we go
2 favorite things to play with: puzzles and balls
2 big milestones this year: speaking in complete sentences (believe it or not), and first camping trip
2 biggest physical changes: walking and talking (very exciting, right?)
2 things she looks forward to every day: getting Julie from school or the bus, and Daddy coming home

I LOVE YOU, BIRD!!!

Happy birthday.

 

Remember me?

Hello there. Why yes, I am still alive, thank you for asking. And I've received my fair share of scolding feedback regarding my absentee-ism on this blog. So what's been happening? Life, that's what. A quick rundown:

May 5: (The date of my last blog post) Robyn ate her first solid foods. I skipped the grains to start with and went straight to sweet potatoes. She loved them. We soon added homemade carrots, mashed bananas, and applesauce (that I canned last fall) to her pallet. She's a good eater.

May 6: We had some major boundary changes at church. I mean major -- an entire ward was dissolved! As a result of these changes, we suddenly had a youth program about three times the size of what we had before -- wahoo!!!!

May 20: I was released as the Young Women President in my ward, after serving for a little over two-and-a-half years. I was told right before church started, so I was a complete and total mess that day, because it was completely unexpected (despite the recent changes). I'm over it by now, but that day was a really really hard day.

May 26: Ben took a sledgehammer to my kitchen counters. We're in remodel mode, and after researching many options, Ben decided to DIY the countertops in our "new" kitchen -- with concrete. It's definitely been a learning curve, and things are not done yet (grumble), but he got an initial chunk of work some while I was out of town.

May 26- June 3: The girls and I went to Connecticut to visit my family. My brother Clayton was leaving soon for his mission, and is (by now) out in the field already. He and my sister Candice were both going to the temple for the first time, which is a really special thing in the LDS Church. It was important to me that I could be there with them and my parents. It was a long drive -- 10 hours. Add to that the complications of a pretty much non-functional air conditioner in the car, as well as a completely non-functional stereo console (which we later fixed by simply replacing a fuse...d'oh!). I managed the drive (each way) surprisingly well on my own, though.

May 30: I joined Instagram and got a whole lot cooler. I think that's how it works, right?

June 4-8: Julie went to her first-ever Summer "camp." Earlier in the year, I saw a LivingSocial deal for a week-long gymnastics camp half off. Julie has always been a great climber, and naturally flexible, so I thought she would enjoy it. The class incorporated gymnastics, rock climbing, dance, and a couple other things. She LOVED it. I'm so glad I signed her up for it -- she really had a lot of fun.

June 6-8: Ben went to Utah for the wedding of a dear friend of his. It was kind-of a lightning trip, and expensive, but worth it to him. I'm glad he got to go.

June 9: Ben went white-water rafting with some friends. They got up early and drove three-and-a-half hours to a place that Ben had gone rafting with the Scouts in the past. They spent all day on the water, and headed home around 5:00pm. By the time Ben pulled into the driveway at 8:45, I had the car halfway loaded for a week away. I sent him up to take a shower, and then we piled in the car and left.

June 9-16: The girls and I were in Indiana, while Ben continued on to Tennessee. By this time, the air conditioning was completely gone, so we drove at night. We arrived at Ben's parents' house around 3am or so, and completely crashed. We didn't bother getting up to go to church, because we were so completely out of it. Ben had a conference in Nashville that week, at which he presented a coding package he'd written. Since the kitchen at home wasn't very usable yet, the girls and I stayed with Ben's parents. A few weeks before, I found out that the week we were to be there was the same week as Cub Scout camp for Brandon (my nephew who lives with my in-laws). Brandon's family lives in Alabama, and they were coming up for the week, which meant four other kids in the house as well. All the adults were staffing at Cub Camp in some capacity or another, the older kids were helping out as well, and Julie's cousin Sam (only a month older than her) was attending "pixie camp" with the kids of the staff. So we signed Julie up for Pixie Camp as well (under her grandma), and I drove her to and from camp every day, since everyone else actually camped there. Robyn and I stayed at my in-laws' big empty house and fed cats all week. We drove home overnight, and once again stumbled our way through the next day.

Things got a little bit back to normal for a couple of weeks, but not really.

July 4: Darcy (Ben's mom) and Eli (Ben's 12-year-old brother) came up so that Eli could go with Ben to Scout Camp the following week. They stayed with us for a couple of days, all of which were busy.

July 5: Major milestone: Julie got her first haircut.

July 6: Another major milestone: Robyn started pulling herself around on her tummy, and has been happily scooting along ever since.

July 7-13: Darcy went back to Indiana...and the girls and I went with her. We got to spend some real time with Gma and Grumpa this time, without Cub camp, without other cousins, and without major activity going on.

July 14: I had a newborn photo shoot for Square Root Photography. I'm still working on editing the images, but you can see a sneak preview here.



During all this, Ben has been working on new countertops in the kitchen, as well as digging up/cleaning/leveling/replacing the pavers in our driveway for a cleaner look and an even seal.

So yeah, life has been a little crazy, but we're starting to get back to normal a little bit. I plan to do a few individual blog posts about some of the above events, but wanted to at least get this down. In the meantime, here is me and my beautiful girls playing in the kiddie pool on my parents' deck last month:

Easter fun

I didn't take any pictures of the girls in their Easter dresses. Julie was being a little less than cooperative, and Robyn's diaper was quite uncooperative when it came to pictures (I had to change her clothes at church because she wet through). We'll try again during the week.

We did, however, get around to dying eggs, though not until Easter evening. I put the eggs on to boil on Saturday afternoon, but by the time they were cooled all the way through, it was too late to start the dying that evening still, so we waited. Last year, Julie and I went over toe a neighbor's house to dye eggs, but she and her friend got bored after about 30 seconds, so my friend and I ended up dying about 2 dozen eggs ourselves while the kids ran around outside. This year she was much more interested in it. She's been watching the movie Here Comes Peter Cottontail, and I told her that we were going to paint eggs just like Peter does in the movie, with special egg paint. She was really excited.

All the stuff together...

Excited to get started!

She liked dropping the tablets in and watching/listening to them fizz.

But the vinegar (for bright bold coloring) stank -- P. U.!!!

Daddy sure was happy this evening.

Look what we did!



This the current face she gives us if we ask her to smile.

My handsome husband.

She was super excited about her Phineas & Ferb toothbrush.


(Side note: For Christmas I had asked for a point & shoot camera. I take a lot fewer pictures of daily goings-on and also outings with having the bigger camera. It's just not as convenient. They serve two different functions. Ben and I did some research and settled on a P&S that we thought would be a good fit. For the most part I like it, but it seems to really like putting a glowy haze on every photo. I need to check the settings, but sorry if your eyes are funky now.)

Giggles

Robyn is starting to giggle a lot more lately. Here's a small sampling. These clips are from my iPod, so they're pretty low quality.

The password is giggle.

Trying out the trike

Grammy and Gramps got Julie a tricycle for Christmas this year. I was a little sad, because I figured we wouldn't really be able to break it out until March. We've had several warm(ish) days this week -- now that it's March -- but I was pleasantly proven wrong when we were able to go out on New Year's Eve of all days to take it for a test ride. The temperature got up to almost fifty degrees that day, so Daddy assembled the trike, and Julie and I headed out while Daddy worked in the garage.

At first, Julie wasn't quite sure what to make of the trike. With several rides under her belt by now, she still won't actually use the pedals. She tiptoes herself along just fine. It's pretty cute. She loves her "hat" that goes with it, and doesn't fight having it put on at all.

I love the stuck-out tongue. You can totally tell she's concentrating hard.



Exploring the features.

"Look, Mom, I rang the bell!"

It wasn't raining, so I'm not really sure what she's doing in this photo, but I absolutely love it.





Love these next two -- pretty cute!







"Bye, Mom! I'll be home in time for dinner!"



"What??"

It was starting to sprinkle a little by this point.

Once it became clear that the rain was about to break through the cloud barrier, I tried to get her to head back inside. No dice. I ended up carrying her over my shoulder (fireman style -- I do that a lot lately), the bike in one hand, and my camera bouncing across my back, slung over my shoulder. I'm sure I was quite the spectacle as I crossed the sidewalk in front of three houses, trying to get back to my own garage, and not a moment too soon, either, because the rain let loose less than two minutes after we got inside.

Fifth anniversary

Ben and I celebrated our fifth anniversary in December. We didn't make any plans to do anything, but we still had fun. We made pudding and fingerpainted with it. Julie loved it. I'm actually not sure, though, if she or Ben had more fun.

First, we had to show her how it's done:


She caught on pretty quickly.


All our colors, minus the chocolate. The purple wasn't very pretty. It was vanilla pudding (the yellow isn't dyed at all), and by day 2, the purple was a pretty nasty brain gray.


After awhile, Julie just started dragging her fingers from one bowl to another, and the colors got all blended up. She loved it, though.






Detail from my masterpiece:


The finished product:


Happy anniversary, babe!

So pitiful

Julie has been in need of a few new stories lately, so we've pulled out some of my old Strawberry Shortcake books. They're still a little advanced to hold her interest for long, but she likes them for the most part. She doesn't get to read them by herself, because they're "Mama's special books," and she has to be very soft with them.

This morning, she and I were reading about Raspberry Tart's surprise birthday party. Raspberry was very sad because she thought everyone had forgotten her special day.



Julie was quite pathetic in her sympathy. It was pretty cute. She even whimpered.







(She did that hand thing all on her own -- no prompting. I mimicked Raspberry, and then Julie mimicked me, but I didn't try to get her to do it. It was darn cute. She did it again so I could take the pictures, but this is all her.)

Little builder

A couple weeks ago, we found ourselves, as we often do, at Home Depot on a Saturday morning. We were walking down a main aisle when an employee smiled at Julie and asked us if we'd been over to the kids' workshop. Both Ben and I knew that HD does a kids' workshop every month, but neither of us had ever bothered to find out when it was, and Ben didn't realize it was free.

So we headed on over to it and sat down. Julie got a bag of freshly popped popcorn and a kit to build a battery sorter. It looks like a tiny tiny bookshelf. She's too young still to actually do the building, but she pounded the hammer a few times. She loves "helping" Ben when he's working, and she has her own tool set at home.

As part of the workshop, she also got a nifty orange apron and a pin with this month's project on it. We're definitely going back again next month.

Daddy's little helper

While I was at Time Out For Women, Ben was still working on finishing up the basement. He'd put up the drywall, but was still working on filling in cracks, and smoothing out corners. Julie decided to help him with the drywall mud. And knowing that I would appreciate it for the blog, Ben took pictures of her messy clothes for me. And then threw them in with the rest of the dirty laundry, instead of throwing them in the washing machine. *sigh* I guess I still have more training to do.

The kitchen help

Julie is entering that phase where she like to do everything she sees me doing. She loves to wear my aprons. Luckily, I have more than one, so when she sees me put one on, there's still another of mine she can wear. It's pretty funny, because it's twice as tall as she is, and it hangs way low off her neck. The ties and the bottom half of the apron drag between her legs as she walks, but she loves it.

A little over a month ago, I visited my parents in Connecticut. My mom got Julie a little toddler-sized apron she could wear in the kitchen with me. Julie loves it, and now wants to wear it anytime she's in the kitchen, even if it's not "helping" with the cooking.





Sticking one's tongue out always makes a tough job easier.



I thought these two shots were hilarious. I caught Julie in the middle of double sneezes.



One of Julie's chores is to help put away the dishes. She pulls out all the silverware and hands it to me, and I put it away. When we finished the normal flatware, she started pulling the prep utensils out of the back end of the basket. I don't normally let her play with scissors.