Art time

I'm too little for markers!

I'm not!

Ian man and his parents came over for a hang out today. Ian and Reese had a little date for a few minutes...

While big brother enjoyed a solo date with his chocolate cake!

Ok fine one last picture of my cutie.

I phone pictures

Glamour shots from Ms. Amanda's house.

Sibling snuggling.

Breakfast date with mommy at Bob Evans.

More morning snuggles with the siblings.

What is there to say?

Cut Lemonade and a good weekend

Donovan had his first miss-heard lyrics experience this week. Reese has this picnic basket that sings different songs. A couple days ago he was playing with it while it was singing, and he said "Mom, it says '...cut some lemonade.' " I laughed but knew that couldn't really be it. Tonight he was listening and said it again. Then sang it and added, "... to cut some lemonade....with a saw!" So I replayed it and listened real close and found out it actually says, "...two cups of lemonade." and not, in fact, what Dono had thought. But I have to admit, I had to listen really hard! Either way, it will forever be "...to cut some lemonade" in this house from here on out!
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In other news, we had a fabulous weekend full of friends, friends and family time. Friday night two couple's came over that we are great friends with.  One of the couples has a 2 year old girl named Avery, and Donovan and Avery played very well together. So well that Avery's dad said he had his faith restored in little boys all due to Donovan. Good thing too because they are expecting a baby boy in about 6 weeks. The kids all had a great time and so did the parents. In fact, Donovan cried before bed because he wanted to go to Avery's on Saturday night too and I told him we couldn't. That's love. All in all, great people, great food, great time.

Then yesterday we went to our good friends the O family's house. Claire is 5 months older than Donovan, and little Owen man is 5 months old, and the two older kids ran around like crazy, while Reese tried to catch up and Owen just took all those crazy kids in. Again, a great night with great people, food and fun. Nights like those make me want to have whole family sleep overs on occasion.

Today I met up with two good friends for brunch while Tom manned the homestead with the kiddos. Both kids seemed to have picked up a little cold bug but overall they were really good and happy. In the afternoon we hit the world bird sanctuary and Lone elk park where we got to see bison up close and personal. Reese thought the birds were great! The weather was gorgeous and the kids just ran around for a while enjoying it. Then afterwards my sister and parents came over for a nice visit. Good ending to the weekend.

For me, the sign of a great weekend is a complete lack of pictures, because we were too busy having fun to be bothered by taking any. Of course, I kick myself now but at the time it is an inconvenience. These two pictures are the only ones we took all weekend, and they were from the World Bird Sanctuary.

Dono-bird in his bird house.

Kids taking in the Pelicans.

Donovan quotes/story from this weekend:

"Oh, I'm running away because I am being shy."

Saturday at Claires house- convo between Dono, Claire and me:

Me: "Wow Claire, your hair is getting long."

Claire:"Yeah it is."

Dono:(to Claire)"Your hair is crazy!"

Claire: (very offended)"No it's  not!"

Dono: "My hair is handsome."

Claire: (to Donovan)"Your hair is crazy."

Dono: (to me) "No it's not. Is it?"

Me: (shakes my head to Donovan so Claire doesn't realize and then make a big deal about me disagreeing with her.) "When is the last time you had a hair cut, Claire?"

Claire:" A long time."

Dono:"Wow Claire, that's a lot of weeks!"



15 month update

Miss Reese is getting to be so big! She is finally over her drama baby phase and it is so much fun (for the most part on the last two facts). She is talking so much, and doing so much big girl stuff. She had a 15 month dr's visit yesterday and her stats are as follows:

Weight: 22lb 2oz (approx 35% percentile- daddy forgot to ask for this so I had to look it up myself)
Height: 31.75 inches (approx 75%)
Head circumference: 19 inches (no idea %)

She is still wearing size 4 shoes, still only has a mullet, wears size 3 diapers, wears clothing ranging from 6month (tops) to 18 months (bottoms for length but 12 months for waist), and only has 4 teeth. We call them her beaver teeth and we love them (see below in a picture that Donovan took).

She is only taking sippy cups now. We cold turkey-ed her off the bottle about 3 weeks ago. She still prefers her milk warm but really has done well with the bottle transition. She still takes 2 naps, ranging from 45min to 2 hours. Goes to bed around 8:15pm and is up for the day at 6:15-7. She is getting more and more independent and showing that she wants to try using utensils and feeding herself, (see below pictures).

The biggest change has been her level of understanding and her communication skills. She takes direction well and will do what we ask with requests like, "put this in the hamper" or "can I have a kiss?", or "go throw this away." About 4 weeks ago it was practically overnight and she was saying words! A LOT of words! She shocked us and has just kept on going with her vocabulary. This is a list of words she knows how to say:
Dono (Nah-no), Petey (tee-tee), mommy, daddy, grammie (Mi-mi), Paw-Paw, puppy, neigh-neigh (means horse and also is what a horse says), shoe, ear, eye, mouth, nose, up (she says "Up-E" for "up please"), hi, bye, night-night, ball, baseball, water (wah-wah), bottle (bah bah),bubble, thank you (tai-too), no (and is "NO, NO,NO!" while she waves her finger and shakes her head), baby, hop, pop, raspberry (I swear, although it doesn't sound exactly like that of course), cheese (both the food and before you take a picture of her), ah-choo, choo choo,pee and poo. I am sure there are more. I will update this blog as I remember them.

She also will tell you what a puppy says (ruff ruff), horsey (neigh), cow (mooo), sheep (BAAA), snake (ssssssss), and bee (pfffftttttt-that one is my favorite, she basically blows a raspberry).

She knows the following body parts and will point them out to you: Belly, toes, feet, arm, leg, head, hair, mouth, tongue, eye, ear, belly button, hands, and feet.

She is trying to put her own clothes on, including socks, which are her current obsession. She loves high socks and will often seek out her brothers stinky used socks and ask someone to put them on her. She is getting better about reading and her favorite book is "mo, ba, la la la" and all the animal picture books she has. She loves pictures of horses, cats and dogs especially. She loves her neigh-neighs. We have also been taking a lot of wagon walks and she loves going on those and sitting in there with her brother.

She still can throw a mean fit, still bites and hits when she is really mad (although not as much as she was), and still prefers her mom over her dad. I am ready for that phase to be over. I am tired. She wants to yank me around by my finger and show me things. My favorite thing she does right now though (other than the beaver teeth chomp we ask her to do), is smell her own shoe, wave her hand in front of her face and say "Poo Poo!" (her version of pee yew).

This is Reesie snuggled up with Grandma after a bath, playing on her Ipad. She is getting better and better at the Ipad and loves playing it with her brother. She really likes making funny faces with him and taking pictures of it.

 This is what Reese gets to do at her daycare, Ms. Amanda's. That is her boyfriend Nick.

Playing at the park in my mermaid jammies with Ms. Amanda.

Taking a choo choo ride with her boyfriend.

Awesome bed head picture from a day at Grammie Q's house.

A picture we took of ourselves one day that she was playing with my phone.

She is just such a fun little spitfire. We love her so much and are so happy she chose us as parents!

Mini Golfing with Daddy and PawPaw

DAD POST! For Father's Day this year we gave PawPaw a pass to go mini golfing with his son and grandson. This past Saturday he took us up on that offer so we headed over to Grammie and PawPaw's house around noon. We played at the playground, had some lunch, played some more around the house and then Dono took a nap. And after the nap it was MINI GOLFING TIME! Dono was very excited (although tough to tell if PawPaw or Dono was the more excited one). Once we got there, we helped Donovan pick out a club just his size, although even the small ones were pretty big. He's just extra advanced in the golfing department. Then the nice ladies behind the counter had a whole bucket of fresh colored golf balls for Dono to pick from. He picked dark blue. He also picked out colors for PawPaw and myself. Finally it was off to the first tee! We weren't really sure what to expect with this because Donovan is very good at hitting a plastic ball with a plastic club in the basement, but he puts a full swing on it. However, we were pleasantly surprised when he had a very gentle touch on the putt-putt course.

The first three holes all had a par of two and Donovan legitimately got a two, a three and a two! We couldn't believe it! The kid was a natural! After that things went downhill a bit, but he was still very good! I think the oversize club got a little heavy for him and he grew impatient with all the waiting around for things like daddy to putt, PawPaw to putt and for the ball to stop rolling.

All in all our trip to the mini golf course was a rousing success! Here are some pictures from our outing:

Lining up his shot on hole #2

and the swing

This is where he ended up on hole #3. Kid's a natural!

Watching the expert, taking mental notes

A rather large backswing here, I believe he was attempting to make it up a sizable hill

"Why are you guys way back there? The hole is up here!"

Cheesin' on a big hill towards the end of the course. He mentioned several times how much fun he was having!

Here is some video footage of Donovan's tee shot on hole #3

And the tap in

Some recent fun in St. Louis pics

A couple weeks ago Grandpa B got to step in a be the fill in day care for Dono. Those boys had a long, fun, hot day together. They went to the zoo and had a great time. These are some pics my dad took of their adventures.

The next day we took a family trip to Powder Valley nature center. I dressed the kids in matching shirts for the occasion  so we could get cute pictures and then proceeded to get only one picture of Reese as she threw a fit almost the entire time we were there.

The one picture I got of Reese.

Our little equestrian

Sorry for the delay in posts, the Olympics have been on and we are obsessed. I never want them to end except I do because then I can get on with my life.

Anyways, on to why I wanted to post tonight. Today Reese was at Grammie Q's and she sent us this picture of Reese, so happy, swinging with her horsey.

Then later we get this picture: (look closely at what she is sitting on)

Tom's mom wrote this text of the above picture: "For real. She's watching equestrian and she gets on her neigh neigh! Genius!"

She said Reese was loving watching the horses. Tom and I thought it was great too, especially because she is way to young to start asking for a real pony. I am just surprised that she made the connection once she saw the real horses and people riding them. She's a smarty pants!!