love when it rains. and thanks to a ridiculously run-down asphalt driveway, the kids get great puddles. do you notice the nice plants in the neighbors yard? notice the dead (or dying) ones in mine? yea, that's right. that's how i roll.
libby got quite good at splashing.
girls. silly, silly girls.
maria trying to get libby to cooperate.
cute baby of mine.
lincoln's probably wondering why he's seeing spots. oh, that's just mommy taking hundreds of unnecessary photos flashing an extremely bright light in your eyeballs. that's what you get for being so cute. deal with it.
baby's are just so wonderful! don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks and then kiss them then squeeze and kiss them again?
have i mentioned before how much i just love cute little pudgy toes?
handsome pair they are. hmmm. now i sound like yoda: "confront yourself you must." nap time it must be. for talking weird am i. more sleep must i need.
here are some recent kid pictures. they sure are growing fast!
maria. she has such a beautiful smile. she is doing really well with school. she loves playing the piano and is completely self-motivated with her practicing. sometimes she gets tired of waiting for me to teach her new songs so she just figures them out herself. she's looking forward to when grandma and grandpa nuttall come for thanksgiving so she can play some christmas songs for them. silent night is her favorite. she's memorized it.
lincoln is getting so big. i love his laugh. it's more like a chuckle. he laughs at me all the time. in his eyes i must be the funniest person in the world. he laughs at everything i say. he's my biggest fan. he's such a cutie. he's rolling over really well, although, oddly enough, he's better at rolling from his back to his tummy than his tummy to back. he's just starting on baby cereal and seems to enjoy that. he really, really hates baths. every other baby of mine has loved baths. he screams and screams then laughs when i finally take him out.
libby loves to hold lincoln. she'll situate herself on a chair or the couch then every so sweetly say "pees?" which means she is asking to hold lincoln. it only lasts about 20 seconds before she's done. lincoln is very patient with all her hugging and kissing and loving.
hudson and libby. cute kids. play together a lot. drive each other crazy a lot.
handsome boy. he's growing so fast! and he's finally potty trained! wohoo! cannot tell you how exciting that is for me! only two kids in diapers now! my potty training method for hudson: prayer. lots and lots of prayer.
hudson is learning to read. he's picked it up really fast. faster than maria did. but maria wins in stamina. hudson's attention span is like a nano-second long. i know, i know, he's only three. but really. a nano-second? is this a boy thing or is this a son-of-ethan thing? if i can get him to focus he can read three-letter words. and he can do them really well. i really have been amazed at how quickly he got to this point.
hudson put his hat on lincoln. lincoln often has this bewildered expression on his face in our pictures.
more cowboy lincoln without the bewilderment.
cowboy hudson. he loves to wear this hat. it is most often accompanied by the cape his grandma nuttall made for him - that's what's tied around his neck. he's kind of like a super cowboy i guess. he love that cape. he'll often put it on just to wear, not necessarily to play with. he'll just wear it around the house, wear it during school, etc. trying to convince him not to wear it in the bathroom.
brothers. they love each other. hudson loves to entertain lincoln and lincoln loves to be entertained.
can't i read for 15 minutes without something bad happening?
this is precisely why we have a rule that the bathroom door must be closed at all times. unfortunately, the newest potty user in the house has trouble remembering this rule.
libby did this before i found her. i was reading and realized the water in the bathroom sink had been on for longer than anyone washes their hands. i went upstairs to find libby using hudson's toothbrush. apparently she'd sampled all of our toothbrushes. then i found that wonderful surprise in the toilet, although, i admit, it could have been worse. there could have been something that wasn't disposable in there.
ah, libby. you are a busy girl.
pretty cute, tho, isn't she?
trying on maria's new shoes. she's a sucker for pretty shoes.
can hardly ever get her to pause long enough to get her to look at the camera and smile.
what a smile. how can i not forgive all the madness?
and if you didn't pick up on the sarcasm in the last post, i'm fairly certain this is the reason for the computer mysteries.
wait a second. why is the toilet flushing? again? and again? all the potty-trained kids are downstairs . . . "LIBBY!"
lately all sorts of mysterious things have been happening to my computer.
i never see it happen, i just sit down and things on my desktop will be different.
like the one day that my calculator mysteriously vanished from my dock, never to be seen again. it somehow disappeared so well that i can't find it anywhere on my computer. weird!
or often times my files decide to rename themselves, things like "?040;" or "4308482183_a5a2a7c04f_0" or even "3". and then there's my favorite "28650_435744297463_530762463_6108035_5949397_n". isn't that interesting?
but the most mysterious is when i found this picture suspiciously sitting on my desktop:
apparently the computer managed to open a few files and then take a picture of the whole scene, sort of like mocking me in a neener-neener-catch-me-if-you-can kind of way. so strange!
there is a store in town, jensen books, we love to go to. you can fill a grocery bag of books for $7.00. the people that work there are really friendly and helpful. we just love poking around looking for treasures.
we went there last night. we filled two bags full of books. about half of them were maria's. it was really fun to watch her look for books - she was so excited! she's been reading a few different series, so when she found books in those series she practically squealed with excitement. it was so cute. she enjoys the magic tree house series, junie b. jones, and pony pals. of course, she gets excited when she find any book about ponies or horses.
the rest of this month jensen's has a special sale for families that homeschool: $1.00 off each bag. while we were checking out the lady helping us said, "i accidently only charged you for one bag and i'm too tired to fix it." so we only had to pay for one bag.
we ended up with 75 books for $6.00. that works out to $0.08 a book! not bad, eh?
a powerful message. "mother, father, are you there? grandma, grandpa, are you there?" are we really there?
answer: no i'm not.
funny/traumatic story. traumatic to me. funny to the rest of the world.
today i played the piano for a couple who sang in sacrament meeting. we met in the relief society room 45 minutes before church to practice. ethan, being the ward clerk, was attending early morning meetings, so i had my normal charge of all the little ones. i set lincoln on the table in his car seat (he has to be out of reach of libby), and gave the other kids paper and crayons to keep them busy (never works by the way). we practiced until the relief society sisters started to come in. by this time ethan had come and then left again to attend a stake priesthood session. i quickly gathered up all our stuff: crayons here, paper there, shoes . . . wait, why are the kids shoes off? here's one of libby's shoes, where the other? "hudson get your shoes on now!" sisters filling up relief society room. "libby, i just put your shoes on, where'd they go?" a sister offered to take hudson and maria to primary. i was so grateful for that because i had to take libby to nursery and see if her teachers were there yet. it was time for church to start and i needed to be in the primary room to substitute for the chorister. luckily, libby's teachers were there and i was able to head to the primary room. it was a little crazy but we got our practice done, it sounded good, and i made it to primary in time.
fast forward 30 minutes.
"oh my goodness! i left lincoln in the relief society room!"
oh, ya. i did that. i totally forgot about him. i rushed up to the relief society room to see lincoln on the lap of a sister in the presidency. at least i left him in a room full of grandmother, mothers, and hoping-to-be-mothers. the sister holding him saw me standing in the doorway and i mouthed "i forgot!" she laughed and mouthed back, "he's fine! go." i left him with her. but i came back to the primary room feeling like a, like a, well, like a big poo. sorry, but yes, that is what i felt like. i can't believe i forgot my baby! i never thought that would happen to me. i didn't think i would ever be one of those moms. you know, one of those moms who is so frazzled and unorganized and disoriented and crazy that she'd forget one of her own flesh and blood!
please tell me i'm not alone. now is a great time to share stories of forgotten children. those poor, poor, abandoned children. i'm not the only one, right? make me feel better! please!
so, in answer to elder hales question, "mother, are you there?" sadly no, i am not. i'm in the primary room forgetting about you.
the top ten reasons my life seems* crazy right now:
1. libby
(what the . . . when did she grab my camera?)
2. libby
(why won't you just take a nap?)
3. libby
("maria! you can't leave food on the table!")
4. libby
("i guess we're having corn for dinner.")
5. libby
(libby likes pudding.)
6. libby
(this is the after picture. the before picture is exactly like this but without the diaper. seems she decided to take a nap without her diaper on. luckily i was able to get the diaper on without waking her up.)
7. libby
(girl, if you'd just sleep when i ask you to . . .)
8. libby
(no explanation needed.)
9. libby
(yes, my girl is chewing on the handle of a bucket.)
and the number 10 reason my life seems crazy right now: you guessed it . . .
libby.
(note to self: do not leave butter on table.)
* okay, so my life isn't really crazy, it just seems like that sometimes. and i realize that it's not really because of libby, it just seems like that sometimes. she's actually a sweet girl who loves to play and help out. i realize that she's not really a "crazy" kid, she's just not as well supervised as her older siblings were. it's just a tad difficult to keep a constant eye on a toddler when there are so many other little kids running around. she make life interesting, that's for sure. another thing that's for sure: we love her a lot.
