Play time

So this video is nearly two months old, but it's still cute! The house was a wreck because we were trying to pack and Allie was SO BORED! The older girls were outside playing and not around to entertain her so Jared and I decided to take a break and enjoy some sweet play time with our Allie.

Story time

I've always enjoyed reading stories to the girls right before bed. It's something Melody has loved since she was still a baby, but Katie is just learning that it can be fun. Now that Melody can read us stories it's added a whole new level of enjoyment for Jared and I, or maybe just me :) She was so ready to read and has picked it up really fast. This is kind of a long video, and you have to over look Katie walking back and forth and Allie abusing the blinds, but aside from that prepare yourself to enjoy Dr Seuss' 'The Foot Book'!

Allie's little world

I can't believe how fast Allie is growing up! I feels like we only had a day in the infant stage and now she's crawling and trying to walk! The layout of this house is actually perfect for an infant. The bedrooms are all on the far side down the hall so doesn't try to go down there very often. Then I can gate off the kitchen and the school room, which leaves her plenty of space to play in the living room and the play room. This play room is exactly what I've wanted since having kids. It's right next to the living room so the kids can still see us (and we can monitor the damage) and it has giant windows and a door leading out to the backyard. Allie spends a lot of time in there just crawling around, going from toy to toy. Then she'll go to the window and pull herself up so she can watch all the critters outside. It's so nice to have such a big space where I can feel safe just leaving her to play. She's pretty much mastered crawling, and has started pulling herself to standing. She's even dared a few steps lately, while firmly holding on to something of course. I'm willing to bet that by the time we come to Utah in July she'll be walking. Which should make for a very interesting trip lol!

When it comes to eating Allie has yet to meet a food that she didn't like. I went to great effort to make her several kinds of homemade baby food and the little stink pretty much skipped that stage all together! I think we did baby food for maybe a month and she was ready to move on. I gave her a cheerio one day just to see what would happen and she chomped it up, swallowed it, and immediately demanded more :) So i gave up on the baby food and just started cutting up what ever we were eating at that meal and letting her enjoy. Last night she enjoyed zucchini and spinach noodles and so far today we've had scrambled eggs, peaches, grapes and cooked carrots. You'd think with all this extra food she'd be nursing less, but she's maintained a pretty steady pace. Obviously she plans to grow soon!

 Allie officially has four teeth and four more that are making her life miserable. She has the two bottom front ones and her top two incisors. That's right she's a vampire! I have to say it's terribly cute when she smiles. Her front two teeth are on their way, and the bottom two incisors are starting to break  through too. Pretty soon she'll have a mouth full of teeth to enjoy her new eating hobby even more.

We're still working on setting a schedule for napping, but at least she does the bulk of her sleeping at night. Some days she'll nap all day while others are more like this...

She started to crawl out because she wanted to get up and decided half way that she was too tired. lol!

This is how meals go at our house here lately. The girls would both prefer to play with Allie instead of eating. Needless to say it can drag meal time out quite a bit, but it's fun!

Here we go again

And so here we are moved into our eighth home in our short six (almost seven) years of marriage. I feel like I've finally come home. I was really sad at first because I liked our last house and really had planned to stay there for several years, but once we started moving stuff in and I got the first few rooms unpacked it just felt...right. I've decided this house is just like us, mostly awesome with a little quirkiness mixed in lol! First of all it's huge. Well, maybe not huge, but to us it feels that way. We now have a 'school room' where I plan to do a lot of our lessons and computer based learning next year for school, and a craft/office/mostly craft room, a perfect playroom, a gigantic yard, and my very own closet! That's right. I don't have to share! Well I share with Allie, but I don't mind her teeny tiny clothes, it's Jared's smelly socks that I don't miss :)

The one thing about this house that has had us shaking our heads from the beginning is the light switches. We used to tease my dad about the house they built in West Haven and all of the crazy light switches. This house blows that house out of the water! Our main living room has four light switches AND a master switch, so if the master switch is off then the other four don't work. Then last night we had to eat dinner in semi-darkness because we couldn't figure out the combination of switches and pull chains that would turn on the dining room light. There's a fan and a light and they each have two switches on each side of the room, and they each have a pull chain that will also turn it off! But what happened tonight topped it all. We've been using paper plates and cups since the move so I wouldn't have to worry about dishes. Last night I finally made a real dinner so I started fiddling with the dish washer trying to get a load washed. Nothing I was trying was working. It's a dishwasher not rocket science right? I finally gave in and asked Jared. He did all the same things I had to no avail. Finally he randomly flipped a light switch and surprise surprise, it turned on. I was completely astounded. I have a switch to turn on my dish washer. Really!?! Now if we only had a switch to flush the toilet it would officially be the oddest house ever ;) pictures to come soon!

Melody

Fun pictures of Melody. I'll do a better update on our little mischief maker once we get moved.

 Crazy hair day. It was so cute! And it was even better after we took it out!

 She was SO proud that she figured out how to climb a tree! (thanks for that grandma Taly :)

 Dad doing some more practice with lighting. We're so lucky to have such a talented daddy! 

 

 For their 100 day celebration they had to do a 100 project. Melody decided to sew buttons on a shirt. It probably would've been easier to glue them all, (and we did the last twenty or so) but it was a great opportunity to start working on sewing skills. She really did great following instructions and managed to sew most of them on by herself. I'll get a picture of her wearing it once we get it back, right now it's on display in her classroom. It was a frustratingly fun project for the two of us to do together.

 She spends every spare second she can playing with Allison. She's such a nurturing little girl and always has been. Even when we brought Katie home and Mellie was only 18 months old she was always trying to take care of her. She's going to be an amazing mother if I don't ruin her before she gets that far :)

We love our sweet little Melody!