happy 2nd birthday miss davis

Seriously late on this particular post but Miss Davis is 2!  Everyone tells you time flies when you have kids and I swear it goes by way faster the second time around.  It really seems like just yesterday I was waddling into Altru's birthing center where just 9 1/2 hours later I would meet my incredible baby girl.  She was always moving around while I was pregnant, she was in a hurry to get on out and she pretty much hasn't stopped moving since.  I mean that literally.  If you have been to our house any time in the last year and a half since she started crawling and then walking you have witnessed the endless laps her little legs make up and down the hallway from the moment she wakes up until we force her to go to bed. 

She has recently developed quite the little attitude as well.   Standing with her hands on her hips she will yell "I don't wanna!" or "How 'bout, No!" when asked to do something she apparently doesn't feel like doing.  Last week she was threatening me with the wrath of Great-Grandpa.  Not quite sure what she thought he would do or say but when she was told it was bed time and that she needed to come back in the house, little Miss Attitude spouted off a string of words (very loudly I might add) and the only two I was able to catch were "Great-Grandpa" and "tomorrow."  If this is a glimpse at things to come, she and I will have a very challenging relationship. 

All the sweet moments of her asking for hugs and kisses, placing her chubby little hands on my cheeks to pull my face closer, running her fingers through my hair as she falls asleep or always making sure to tell her big brother "good morning" more than make up for her moments of attitude and sassy behavior.  So Happy 2nd Birthday baby girl!!! I don't think it's possible for anyone to love their daughter more than I love you!

 

 

mama turned 30

Yes, it's true and I am going to openly admit it.  I am 30!  Not gonna lie though...I haven't been that OK with this number as it crept closer and closer.  But now that the day has come and gone and did I survived, I am starting to feel better about it.  I am sure that when I am in my 40s I will look back and think "what the hell were you so worried about" but for now, I am struggling and I'm not really sure why.  30 doesn't feel much different from 29 but it just sounds so much older.  Maybe I am struggling because my 20s were so amazing?  They really were!  I had the best time in college after 20, I graduated from college, got my Master's degree, got married, had two of the most beautiful babies on the planet and so much more.  All that amazingness (not sure if that's really a word but oh well) is a lot of pressure to put on this new decade.  I have to say though, it definitely started out amazing!

In order to have my mental break-down in peace, I took the Friday of my actual birthday off from work.  Who wants to work on their birthday anyway?  At midnight, yes I was still up, I started getting some of the nicest texts and FB messages from friends and family.  I did send the kids to daycare (insert mommy guilt here for not being at work but not keeping the kids home with me) so that I could have the whole day to do whatever I wanted.  Mom took me shopping and spoiled me rotten, followed by sushi (yummy!) for lunch and a little more shopping.  She made sure to tell everyone we talked to that it was my 30th birthday too (thanks Mom, did you realize that made us both sound old?)Grandma and Grandpa came over to have crab legs for dinner (yummy!) that night and we had a great day.  The day after my birthday, I got the biggest surprise ever.  Jacob threw me a surprise party.  I was completely clueless and was incredibly surprised.  I also have to admit that I asked the dumbest question ever when we got to our house and I was surprised.  I turned to J and asked him if the friends we had just been out with were in on it too.  Really?  Like it was just a big coincidence they asked us to go out on the very same night he planned a surprise party?  Apparently turning 30 didn't make me any smarter.  I also got the sweetest present from my far-away friends who couldn't make it.  A bag full of 30 things that made them think of me or that they thought I would like.  Each item had a note referring to a memory or inside joke and every single note made me laugh or cry or both. 

So, I may not be in my 20s any more and I may not totally be OK with it yet but my 30s have definitely started off pretty great and it doesn't look like that will be changing or slowing down any time soon! 

just stay put

One thing that I discovered as a parent is that kids really do thrive on routine.  The more you can get them on to a fairly set schedule, the better your days will be for everyone.  It is not always possible though and things like travel can disrupt a routine fairly quickly.  My kids have always been really good at adapting to new routines, new situations, etc. when we are traveling or start with new activities.  The last few weeks have been really busy between Great Grandma and Grandpa coming back from their winter in Arizona (so excited to have them in town BTW), Cayden finishing preschool and spring finally arriving in Bismarck and allowing for lots of time to play outside.

I didn't really realize just how busy we have been or how much running we had been doing, especially on the weekends, until Cayden woke up on Saturday.  He came out to the living room, half asleep and rubbing his eyes and asked me "Mommy, are we just going to stay home today?"  That made up my mind about running errands or doing anything that would require us to put real clothes on or even brush our teeth.  So, I hugged him and said "Yes dude, we are just going to stay home today."  He perked up, smiled and ran laughing into his room where he spent most of the day playing in his boxers.  Harper must have also been just as happy to stay home because she refused to wear any more clothes than her brother.  It was a good day!

What accessory goes with a pull-up and flip phone? Mommy's running shoes, of course!

Makes my heart melt :-)

Watching the rain coming down the drain pipe.  "Mommy it looks like a waterfall!"

Watching rain must be as captivating as watching it snow!

too funny not to share

With Mother's Day right around the corner (because it's seriously May already), I just had to share this with all of you mom's out there (or the two who might actually be reading this)!!!

I got one of my regular, daily emails from Parenting Magazine with a subject line that said "19 Hilarious Mother's Day Cards."  If I am being perfectly honest, it's 3pm on Friday afternoon and I am looking for any possible way to procrastinate starting a new project at work when there are only 2 hours left of the work week, so I decided this would be a good way to work towards that ambitious goal.  These cards are really funny, very true and made me extremely thankful that greeting cards don't actually tell the truth.  I particularly like the ones from the "tween."  Something to look forward to.  

ENJOY!

19 Hilarious Mother's Day Cards 

what happened to april?

We are not three days into the month of May and I am still baffled as to where the month of April went.  I only have a handful of pictures from April and they are all from the circus and New Orleans.  I guess that's what we did.

For the second year in a row, Harper, Cayden and I went to the circus with friends.  To say that we all LOVE the circus would be a huge understatement.  All three of us wait all year long for this weekend and can barely sleep the night before.  Although we were disappointed that there was no elephant to see, we had a blast (which is obvious from Harper's face...remember she slept through the whole thing last year)!

 

 

Next, it was time for Mommy and Daddy to head to New Orleans.  Brace yourself for this shocking piece of information...ready?...this was the first solo trip that we had taken since our trip to Jamaica 5 years ago and I was pregnant with Cayden at the time.  Now, that you have wiped that shocked and/or horrified look off your face I can tell you that New Orleans is an amazing city.  It is the BEST place for people watching and you can spend hours just walking around.  We had some of the most amazing food and you have to love a city where every other store/business down almost every street has a whole wall of frozen drink machines and every drink you buy from any bar or restaurant comes in a giant to-go cup!  Bonus - we also missed the massive April blizzard that hit Bismarck :-)

 

BEST OYSTERS EVER!!!

 



 

The rest of April saw 70+ degree weather while we still had snow on the ground, much better days/nights/weekends with Miss Davis and a new found obsession with watching morning cartoons in Mommy's bed. 

 

Her love of accessories has now been extended to include her babies and stuffed animals.  Why wouldn't her elephant need both a hat and a headband?

 

 

 

she may look innocent

To say that Harper and I have struggled the last two or so weeks is a vast understatement.  Every day she becomes more and more independent and strong willed and with that has come this notion that she needs to challenge anything and everything I try to do and say where she is concerned.  Case-in-point, I tried to get her dress on her before church on Easter Sunday and she refused to put it on.  The minute I mentioned her pretty dress she started screaming at me.  When I tried to put it on, she screamed harder and attempted to hit me before throwing the dress across the room.  15 minutes later when Grandma showed up, little Miss Innocent was more than cooperative.  Jump forward a few hours and Mommy is again trying to get her dressed to go to Grandma's for dinner and she again throws a fit.  Daddy brings her dress in and she smiles while fully cooperating.  This whole dress thing came after three days of her and I butting heads about EVERYTHING!  

I am on to her game, though...she is trying to make me forget all the wretched tantrums she has thrown with sweetness and she is not playing fair at all.  Last night, after four days of torture, crying and frustration on both sides, she woke up about an hour after I had put her to bed.  I hadn't gone to bed yet so I took her to the living room where we could snuggle up in the dark for a few minutes.  She kept turning around to look at me, holding my face in her little hands and giving me kisses.  It didn't make me completely forget but I definitely went to sleep a little while later a little less frustrated and angry than I was before she got up.

This too shall pass, right?

 

 

 

20 questions

We have officially reached the stage where Cayden's curious 4 year old mind wants to know about absolutely everything.  As his mom I am so excited to see his little mind at work and know that he is not only observing the world around him but really wants to understand it.  However, I am also completely exhausted by it.  A 10 minute car ride can and does yield about a million questions about anything and everything he sees.  Forget about trying to watch something on TV while he is in the room or walk through a crowded store because those 1 million questions that I answered on the way were just the tip of the iceberg.  And saying "I don't know" is not an option.  I have tried to tell him that I just don't know why those people are wearing black shirts instead of red like he is or that I am not sure why the person in the movie I have never seen before is driving down that road but all that does is causes the same question to be repeated 30 seconds later.  Understandable, right?  Why wouldn't I know why the the car in front of us in the car wash was there first or why the kid in the other cart is crying in the middle of Target?  I am Mommy, I am supposed to have the answers.  But, I have to tell you, coming up with answers to every question (and I mean valid answers because I don't want him going to school the next day telling his friends something extremely inappropriate because I couldn't come up with the "right" answer) is a lot of pressure. 

When I actually stop to think about this though, I realize that this stage is just another step in his giant leap towards becoming a "big kid!"  Every day he is doing something new, telling me a new story about something that he is certain he has completely figured out or using new words that I didn't even know that he had heard before and using them correctly.  He has even completely grown out of toddler sized clothing.  It is sad to know that I now have to shop in the big kid section for him and that refers to himself as a big kid now.