Picture-less update

Sorry all, the pictures are on Jared's computer waiting to be compressed before I can do anything with them. Give me another month or two and I'll have figured out how to do it all myself. I figured family might appreciate an update on the mini Meakins. 

Our beautiful little Allie is growing like a weed and learning something new everyday. She's an incredibly happy baby and just LOVES to play with her sisters. We all pretty much make fools of ourselves trying to make her smile. She had her four month well check yesterday and weighed in at a full 14 pounds and is 26 inches long. All of my girls have been in the 75th percentile for their height, but this is the first time one of my children has managed the 75th for weight. Obviously nursing is being much more successful this time around! Allie is doing great with tummy time and sitting up in her bumbo. I can't get over how strong she is! Her doctor and I agree that she'll most definitely be crawling in the next couple months. I don't know how I feel about that, but Melody and Katie will be stoked!

We celebrated Katie's fourth birthday last wednesday and had a ton of fun! She's still very much in a princess stage so we had all variety of princess things at our party including tiara party hats. Pictures soon to come. I really can't believe she's already four. It seems like just yesterday Melody was turning four! Katie was struggling a little with adjusting to having Melody gone all day at school and this new baby here taking up all of mom's time, but she seems to be doing better now. She's finally getting to a point where she's interested in learning her letters and how to write them. So far we've mastered A, K, M, D, R, S, O and P. I'm really enjoying all the time I get with her lately. She learns so differently than Melody and it's really forcing me to stretch my abilities to help her progress. I suggested to her that once she turned four we could put her in preschool. She was not interested and actually got upset. She wants friends to play with, but she wants it done where she can still see me. She's never had a problem being without me before, so I'm chalking it up to more baby adjustments. 

Melody is pretty much in love with school. I think the only thing she doesn't like is the getting up at six. She was such a morning person as a baby, but all that is gone now. She comes home everyday with something new to tell me. She absolutely loves the specials; music, technology, science, gym and art. This kid is every teachers dream, she just soaks up everything you give her and keeps asking for more. The only problem we're running into is keeping her busy. She doesn't know how to be still. I've started to limit the amount of computer/tv time she gets in hopes that she'll get better at using her imagination. It astounds me how completely different she and Katie are! Recently she was in her very first play. She had three lines and she remembered two of them lol! The bulk of the play was singing and she had a good time learning all the songs. We still get to hear them all the time. I remember my parents telling me when I was little that they just needed me to be quiet. At the time I was seriously offended that they weren't interested in what I had to say. Now I understand. There are days that I swear my ears will bleed if I have to listen to Melody say one more word. That little girl started talking ten minutes after she was born (seriously she was cooing at everybody!) and hasn't stopped since! Good thing we love her so dearly :)

With any luck I'll have a slew of pictures to post by next week *fingers crossed*

Christmas 2011

Instead of pictures we did a video of opening presents. Jared's go this fancy camera now, so he has to practice using it any chance he gets. If you're not family or don't think my kids are as cute as I do this may be terribly boring. Just an FYI.



As you can see, they REALLY wanted pillow pets lol! Christmas is always more fun when your kids are mildly crazy :)

Merry Christmas!!

busy busy busy...

So this may have been the longest, most hectic month in recent history. We had my family here for a week at the first of the month, then Jared's family was here for about a week and a half shortly after that. Jared took a ton of pictures while his family was here, but those pictures are all on 'his' camera so as soon as he dumps that card I'll get those posted as well. In the mean time I wanted to post a video of little Allie. She's growing SO fast and starting to move a little. She can nearly roll over as you'll see in this video and she does really well with tummy time. I may be off, but I'm pretty sure the other two weren't trying to move this much already.

Going BoNkErS!!

One of my girls' favorite places to go is Going Bonkers. It's like the mother of all playgrounds. You can jump, climb, slide, zip line, bounce and basically go completely crazy. The best part is that the grown ups can play too! The first time Jared and I took the kids to play we hurt for days after. This was really the ONE thing the girls wanted to go do while my family was here so I added it to the agenda. I really didn't expect my parents to get in there, but Melody has a way about her and pretty soon they were in there sliding and climbing and feeling their age :) Jared followed them around taking pictures which slightly annoyed me at the time. I kept telling him to put the camera down and go play. However, after I saw some of the cute/silly pictures he got I thanked him for being so terribly talented at everything :)

Halloween

Halloween #3! The kids had so much fun with Halloween this year! Having Taylor here just made it that much better. In case you were wondering he's supposed to be cookie monster. I thought it was cute and so did a number of the girls we ran into lol!

What a busy week!

Holy cow I had no idea you could cram so many activities into one week! Especially with three little ones in tow. Jared took a billion pictures so I'm going to break up the posts a bit. Don't want to overwhelm you with our family awesomeness :)

One of the things the kids really wanted to do with Grandma, Grandpa and Taylor was the zoo. We had a ton of fun. Melody was pretty much attached to Papa's side the entire time!

Getting a closer look at the giant turtles in the tank just outside the restaurant.

Katie making her typical silly faces!

Melody has been completely fascinated with all things creepy crawly lately so this exhibit was by far her favorite. She kept asking which ones were poisonous, and what each one did to protect itself.

Notice the GIANT cockroaches in the tank. I think Katie's expression was appropriate!

They had a snake out for the kids to touch and look at. Melody was super excited ...Grandpa not so much :)

The next few are inside the bird house where they had cockatiels and parakeets flying around. You could buy sticks covered in bird seed to feed them with. I think everyone enjoyed this exhibit!

She was very proud that she managed to get the bird onto her stick...

until they started fighting! lol!

This very friendly bird you see here on my dad's head made the rounds to each of us. He knew how to get to the food first!

Notice how Allie's head is covered by the wrap. I was afraid one of the birds would either try to land on her or poop on her!

Poor little Melody was trying to look at an animal and didn't notice the railing that was right at her level. She bounced right off! It took her a few minutes to calm down. Thankfully it didn't bruise! I'm such a mean mom laughing at her pain, but it was really funny! Not two seconds after she did this, Katie did the same thing only with the top of her head instead of her forehead.

These two pictures really show the personality of my girls right now. Jared was annoyed that he couldn't get Katie to smile, but I think that face shows just who she is at three! A little monster :)

Melody convinced Papa to skip with her. He doesn't hold back!

Can you tell how adept we are at reading a map? lol

Yeah I didn't buy those...Papa did!