More Random

this pic is from several weeks ago.  after taking off charlotte's sweater, john realized the two of them were dressed alike.

Arabelle made sure her bear had matching crocs, but she is still upset about something here.

Island Baby?

 At 2 and a couple months, Arabelle continues to have a knack with fashion accessories:

If I were more adept at photoshop, I would make a loin cloth for her.  As it is, it was too funny not to share although, as I have mentioned before, I still disapprove of naked children/baby pictures at any age.

Charlotte 2.5 months and Arabelle stabs tortillas

I walked into the kitchen and Arabelle said proudly, "Look, Mommy, I opened it!"

I agree it's terrifying.  I just have to second what mom says that kids must constantly have guardian angels intervening on their behalf.

2.5 months old

Dinosaur Exhibit!

Last Saturday, as a Mother's Day gift for me, John took the day off from working in the garage so that we could all go down to the "Discover Dinosaurs" exhibit in Denver. Michael and Brittney had invited us as they are more clued in to what fun things are going on in Denver.  It was (for us) way expensive at $50 for tickets for the whole family and then you tack on $25 for gas and that eats up our entertainment/restaurant budget for the entire month.  But since we've never done anything like this ever, I think it was well worth it for the memories we created for Jeffrey.  It was also nice to hang out with family and get the cousins together.

Jeffrey was very excited.  He had just finished a "dinosaur" unit at school.  He classified pretty much all the dinosaurs as either a "T-rex" or a "Velociraptor" (as these are the only two names he knows, evidently).

They gave Jeffrey a paper with a bunch of dinosaurs' pictures on it, and he kept trying to match them up.   I'm pretty sure he got them wrong each time, but it was still really cute.

Charlotte was remarkably good.

Several of the dinosaurs were "animatronic" and the kids could press buttons to make specific parts of them move.

I didn't notice that Arabelle had a particular interest in the dinosaurs, but she could tell we were somewhere "cool" and she definitely enjoyed herself.

Excavating dinosaur bones. There's Kaitlin in the blue shirt.

A Young Paleontologist.

This was advertised as an "excellent photo opportunity", but I'm not sure if I agree with that.

Another picture to take advantage of the "excellent photo op".

Arabelle really liked this blue dinosaur.

There were also some big blow up slides (like big blow up slides anywhere, but with large blow up dinosaurs attached) as well as a few small dinosaur rides that cost additional money.  We weren't planning to do these, but it turned out that Jeffrey was too short to do them anyway.  This made me think of the issue that Jeffrey will probably be 20 years old before he can ride any of the big kid rides at amusement parks, etc.  Let's just hope he gets there eventually.

Some Humorous/Funny Anecdotes (to quote Mrs. Puckett)

Jeffrey and Arabelle are both at such funny ages that I wanted to record some of the things they have been doing/saying recently.

Arabelle has an extremely strong will and is definitely well into her terrible two's.  She throws a lot of tantrums and basically I can't seem to make her do anything she doesn't want to do.  I can, however, stick her in her room, so that's what I do when necessary.

Here's an example:  We needed to go to the grocery store the other day.  I park on the street and John has been trying to grow grass in the area right by the street, so he has been watering a lot, which of course creates a lot of mud.  When Jeffrey climbed into the car, he got mud all over it, so when Arabelle got in after him, she got mud all over her pants.  I took off her pants and went and got her some new pants.  In the meantime she had evidently changed her mind about pants as she immediately threw a fit and wouldn't let me put any on...literally if I put them on her, she would pull them right off.  So I grabbed a few pants options and decided to drive to the store anyway.  I figured I could put the pants on her once we got there because she would be excited to go into the store and so would most likely be in a more malleable mood.  I was wrong.  I said we couldn't go into the store if she didn't wear pants.  She kept screaming "No Pants!!!" and wouldn't let me put pants on her, so we went home.  (Fortunately I live just a few blocks from this particular grocery store).  We got home and I found more pants options for her (we really needed to go to the store).  Then it dawned on me:  a solution she could accept without losing her pride and without me technically giving in.  Her hideous Dora the Explorer dress. I let her wear it without a diaper cover.

Another Arabelle story:  She was recently in an apple juice phase, where she not only loved apple juice but also felt the need to nurture it.  She would always want to carry the apple juice bottle around with her wherever she went, even to bed, where she would cover it carefully with a blanket.  I decided the easiest way to stop this problem was to quit buying apple juice.  The current bottle would be our last for a while. But in her usual fashion, Arabelle preempted me by moving from apple juice on to milk.  I'm happy that she likes milk (Jeffrey has always refused to drink it), but milk we absolutely cannot let her carry around with her, so there have been many a screaming fit over this, where she yells, "I wanna take it!!!"  Fortunately I have not given in.  Evidently at some point you realize that the result of giving in is just so awful/disgusting that you find resolve you didn't know you had.  Sad it always takes me right up to that point before I stand up to my kids.

Arabelle likes to say that she is a "big girl".  After she sneezes or coughs, she says, "Bless you Arabelle."  She calls all dogs "Elsie".

Jeffrey likes to carry around books.  His favorites are his soft cover copy of the Book of Mormon, which he calls his "Book for Mormons" or his scripture book or Jesus book. Another favorite is a small German/English dictionary.  His last favorite is a Nancy Drew book which he made me buy him for 25 cents from a Library sale.  He'll just sit there and look at the pages.  Sometimes he'll come up to me and point to a page and ask, "Does it say 'hide-and-seek?'" or something of the like.





Jeffrey is finally talking kind of like a 3 year old, which is starting to be quite funny although somewhat anticlimactic after all the waiting.  The other day he looked at his hands and said "I don't have clamps, I have fingers" (He was referring to a robot on Futurama that has clamps for hands.  Jeffrey and John like to bond watching Futurama together, one of very few shows they both enjoy, although we have to be careful about what episode is watched).

Jeffrey evidently is influenced quite heavily by Futurama as the other day, Charlotte had her hat covering one eye, and Jeffrey started laughing and said "Charlotte is like Leila" (Leila is a cyclops).

Jeffrey also does the classic misunderstanding/mishearing of words without the sense to auto-correct for this.  The other day, I said, "Jeffrey, you need to take off your pants and put on your pajamas." Jeffrey just stood there looking sullen and didn't do anything.  I said, "Jeffrey, why aren't you doing what I asked?"  He said, "But I don't want to take off my hands."

Last night Jeffrey sat at the table before dinner and looked in his cup, which had water in it.
Jeffrey: "I want apple juice."
Me: "No, we're having water for supper."
Jeffrey started crying.
Me: "What's wrong?"
Jeffrey: "I don't want water for supper, I want food!"

Perhaps This Will Refresh Your Memory

This was one of my favorite outfits of Arabelle's. I wish I could find some pics of her in it at this age to compare them, but the computer we were using at the time died and we would have to figure out a way to get it off the hard drive.  Dad, do you have any saved somewhere perhaps? 

10 Weeks Old, and already such a big girl!

Charlotte wore this to church today and she got lots of compliments on the boots.