Hazelisms

I'm so proud of Hazel and all the progress she is making in speech therapy. However, I still find some of her mispronunciations so stinkin' adorable. For whatever reason, I'm bad about videoing the girls. I take lots of pictures but when it comes to documenting their language, dancing, singing, etc. I seem to fall behind. I wish I would have taken more time to do this with her.

So do I have a video? No. But here are a few Hazelisms off the top of my head from today.

Hazel said, "My nose is 'nuffy." and "I want a 'nuffed anemal." She also would love some hot lotlate. Which used to be ot lotlate, but thanks to therapy she has those "h" sounds pretty much down now.

We are moving on to "p" this week :)

The return of Baby Rainbow Dash

Hazel had a beloved tiny plastic Rainbow Dash pony with removable hair. She also has a baby Cheerilee but the Rainbow Dash was a favorite. Unfortunately, right about the time of our trip to Wyoming Baby Rainbow Dash went missing. I've searched the car, the house, everywhere. I'm guessing she was left in one of the many hotels we visited on our trip home. Hazel claims she was going on fabulous adventures and got lost in the woods. Every time she sees a crop of trees we have to look for poor lost little Baby Rainbow Dash.

And now for the other part of the story. No, we did not find little baby Rainbow Dash. However, this week Hazel insisted she did not want to wear a pull up to bed any longer because she was a big girl now. So we tried it and success. Two nights and no accidents. Her reward, as you might guess, a new little baby Rainbow Dash. Who is set to arrive here tomorrow, along with baby Pinkie Pie and baby Scootaloo.

Let me tell you, finding a baby Rainbow Dash, not an easy feat. Hence why she's getting all three because that's all I could find on Amazon. Hopefully, tomorrow I will have one happy little girl and we can stop searching for the poor lost little baby Rainbow Dash.

The big 5!

That's right my baby is 5. We celebrated with a home brewed my little pony party. I thought about doing my usual fancy decorating scheme, a cake with 3D ponies, etc. Then I decided, Clara is always wishing she could participate more when it comes to baking, decorating and decision making, so why not let her do it. It's her party after all. So Clara picked out decorations, decided on food, decided on the cake flavor, helped bake the cake and decorated it herself. She also made the artwork for the invitations and the "Happy Birthday" banner. I think letting her do all this was just as exciting for her than the actual party. Everything seemed to go well. We had a taco bar, all her idea, which I have to say worked out really well because it was easy to do. As usual I didn't get many photos because I was busy but here are the few I did get.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Chips and Chocolate Buttercream, covered in white fondant and decorated by the birthday girl.

Birthday Banner done by Clara, the ponies and a hot air balloon.

The dessert and favors table.

Flowers from the garden, we had 7 vases full of them.

Catch up

I've been extremely lazy about the blog this year. It's all that vacationing. Not that I'm complaining the vacations this year have been fabulous. Yes, I'm still editing photos. One day they will make it to the internet scene. Until then, what have we been up to?

The girls are getting big of course. Our little bug turned three in June and Clara is a week away from the big 5. Crazy how time flies. We have entered a hectic schedule of juggling school, ballet classes and countless Mommy and Papa activities. It's been crazy but fun. Now that a few weeks of our new weekday schedule have gone by I'm starting to get in the swing of things. It was hard going from a weekly schedule of nothing unless we felt like it to something we have to do everyday. So anyway enough about the schedule here are a few recent pics of the girls and their silly mommy. More can be found here - Clara and Hazel 2011

Firsts

It's a week of firsts. Clara has begun her journey into formal education (if preschool really counts as formal education. She loves school. Her class is small and has only two other girls but she's having a great time. She paints or draws everyday. Some days she has music, movement, drama and all sorts of other fun activities. I'm very pleased that she is enjoying school and Hazel and I are enjoying our few hours of one on one time together.

Another first for the month. Hazel has finally started ballet class. After waiting outside her sisters classes for a year she was so excited to be able to go too. She thinks it's fantastic. For only being three she's had no problem running into the room and participating. She hasn't once cried or complained. I knew she would love it since she's so into dance but I was a little worried about the transition since Clara had a little bit of a problem in the beginning. Nope not Hazel. She's been doing great. She appears to be the smallest in her class which makes her look even more adorable doing all her ballet steps. Now we have two little dancers in our house.

Fashion Diva

I know it's been ages since I updated the blog. My main reason is vacation. I like to wait to add new post, post vacation until I've edited vacation photos to post. However, I'm still behind on them and am tired of waiting so they will get up eventually.

This afternoon I asked Clara to finally go get dressed before lunch and this is what she came down in. Striking a pose and exclaiming. "I didn't feel like wearing pants." I was later told her fancy crocheted belt actual is dual purpose. It's also is a lasso. Thanks Wonder Woman.

I really think my child is going to grow up being a fashion designer. She is definitely artistically inclined. She obviously loves fashion and accessorizing and she is completely fascinated by my sewing skills. She wishes more than anything to be able to make her own dresses.

Paintings and Drawings

Putting a few more pieces of artwork up. I love this first one Hazel did. It's a really simple watercolor painting of a Hazel person. Followed by another that I think is the sun and a guy.

A few weekends ago, Clara was being quiet in the morning and when I came down to check on her she said, "Look Mommy, I made a camel!" This is one of her collage pieces, she is so into them lately. It had a bit of ribbon on it too that looked like a continuation of the reins she drew, but it fell off at some point.

This one she did last Friday at Grandmom's for me. She said it's her with really long hair like Rapunzel. Rapunzel has come up a lot around here lately.

Plans

Clara informed me this morning, as I was getting dressed, that she has big plans for this weekend, big plans. What they are exactly remains to be heard.

She also decided that she was making an exception to her no pants policy. She came out of her room dressed in her only pair of jeans, which were rolled up at the cuffs, a butterfly belt, a brown peasant top with flowers around the middle, pink Tiana socks and of course the tiara. I tried rolling her jeans down and she yelled at me. "NO MOMMY, I want them that way!" The outfit was then completed with her pink rain boots.

ComiCon

Another convention season has begun. Bryan left this morning for Seattle and Emerald City Comic Con. Oh, how I wish I was joining him. However, if it comes down to Seattle or Portugal, I'll take Portugal this time.

Time for the girls and I to find some stuff to keep us busy.

Nice day

The girls and I spent a few hours of this nice, windy day out enjoying
the fresh air. First we took the mutt for a walk. A good idea in
theory but realistically not so much. Two walking preschoolers and a
dog that insists on stopping at every tree to pee, plus in everyones
yards even when I'm putting him in heel not so fantastic. Plus, Hazel
whining the whole time and pulling on my arm because she wanted to go
in the stroller. Well, you get the idea.

We did have a nice time in the yard afterwards riding bikes, washing
sea shells, playing in the sand box and throwing toys for Eli. Clara
is getting so fast on her bike, almost too fast. Hazel is finally
starting to get the hang of peddling hers which is awesome. Now we
need to work on her steering. Here are a few pics. Clara sporting her
new, cute raincoat. Yes, I know it's not raining :)

Alphabet

Clara wrote her alphabet. She needed help remembering how to write J
and K and the first Z was backwards but not too bad. She got no help
from us as to what came next.

Photo Shoot and No Heat

I woke up this morning a little more reluctant to get out of bed than normal. I soon realized why. At some point over night our heat stopped working. After several attempts to fix the problem myself, I ended up calling the mechanic.

We then spent the day trying to occupy ourselves to take our minds off of how cold it was. Well I did anyway, the girls didn't seem to mind the fact that they were cold. So what did we do? We did all the ponies hair and then had a photo shoot. I realized that I haven't done one of those with the girls in a while. They were actually really cooperative, so were the ponies, and we got some cute shots. You can check out the rest of them here - Pumpkin Seed Photo

Our heat did get fixed, thankfully.

Twos

Somedays I wonder if -

a. Hazel will ever get over the stage of putting everything in her mouth.

b. If she will ever get over being two.

Today over the course of the day we dealt with at least 10 tantrums, oh . . . wait . . . 11. She also tried to consume a tiny plastic pellet that must have come out of a beanie stuffed animal.

It was actually, over all, a good day for her.

*sigh*

I try to remember that cute, chubby, always smiling, happy baby. I'm hopeful she will revert back to that temperament someday. At least she still is cute, well, when she's not screaming "NO!" "BUT MOM!" "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" or any form of the above in her best whinny two year old voice.

New look

I've decided the blog needed a new look. I know if any of you are like me and only use google reader, you probably don't even see the blog. Meaning your probably saying, who cares. Anyway, I got tired of looking at it so here is the new version.

Things in our life have been busy lately. We are gearing up to go to Portugal in a few weeks. It kind of snuck up on me but I'm so glad it's coming. Bryan and I haven't had too much time sans kids lately so it will be nice to get away. I'm sure they will have an equally nice time wearing out their grandparents. Thank you, awesome grandparents for putting up, I mean spending time with them ;)

What we are up to now

It's a new year, and has been for a whole month. When did that happen? I feel like I haven't been blogging enough on what's going on in our lives. What the girls are up to, etc. So lets start with a little interview. I asked Clara these same questions New Year's Eve 2009.

Clara Feb 2011

Age 4

Favorites:

Color-Pink

Food-Dessert

Drink-Pink Milk

Toy-Sparkle Bell (An old school style Pinkie Pie-My Little Pony she renamed because of her sparkly hair.)

Game- Mouse Game (Chateau Roquefort)

Book-Fancy Nancy

Animal- Dragon (Figment, her purple stuffed dragon)

Song-Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Favorite thing to do- Craft

Where would you like to go on vacation this year? South Carolina because there are nice trees.

What do you love the most about . . .

Mommy - gives hugs

Papa - gives hugs

Hazel-I don't know

Eli-gives kisses with his slobbery tongue.

Hazel Feb 2011

2

Favorites:

Color - Green (Really because she LOVES Orange)

Food - Rice (?)

Drink - Juice

Toy - Fishies

Game- Iron Man game (which is actually a hard 100 pc puzzle)

Book - Charlie and Lola

Animal- Fishies

Song- Fishy song (What's with the fishy obsession today? I thought it would be My Girl since she insists I sing it every night)

Favorite Thing to do - Color

Where would you like to go on vacation this year? The beach

What do you love most about . . .

Mommy - glasses

Papa - glasses

Clara - sun glasses

Eli - Nose

What else have we been doing? Clara's in early stages of sounding out words and trying to read. She's also crafting, crafting and crafting. Which includes drawing prolifically and cutting up things into miniscule pieces all over the house. Hazel is working hard at her pronunciation of words. Just this week she started saying Lara instead of Dala which is closer to Clara. Other words are getting better too. She's also drawing a lot and has become somewhat of an obsessive puzzler. She has become quite good at them and we are pretty proud of her new found interest.

We've been working on our basement. What once was the shop, an unfinished mess, is now slowly turning into an awesome comic room. This means an awesome upstairs sewing/ photography, whatever room (basically a Tasha room :) ) I'm very excited to have a room of my own. Yes, I feel slightly guilty that our kids are sharing a bedroom and we each will have hobby rooms. However,to be totally honest , they love having a room together and when the time comes that they don't, we have plans for them to have more space all to themselves.

I'm also chugging along with my photo business - www.pumpkinseedphoto.com and now a cake business too - Cakery on the Boulevard and Bryan is still doing the CGS thing. Hopefully, one day it will pay off and he can retire from the 9-5 world of computer programming. Ok, probably anyone who actually reads this blog already knows all this stuff. I write it mostly for my personal agenda. Now that I'm a mom, honestly before that, I have no information retention. I like to look back and say, oh yeah, that's right we did that :p

Monsters, Monsters, Monsters

Hazel has become monster obsessed. She talks about them all the time. I can't tell if she likes them or hates them. She always wants to watch Monsters, Inc. She loves Sully and Mike. However, now she's been waking up every night screaming for me. I go in and half the time I'm not sure if she's awake or still asleep. She refuses to talk to me. If I ask her about dreams she doesn't say anything. I feel like the monsters are what is causing it but she won't tell me that. Griffin has this little gorilla truck, she is both fascinated and petrified of. If you push buttons on it it moves around and "goes ape", the arms move, etc. She talks about it everyday whether we've been to their house recently or not. If you mention Griffin it's the first thing she talks about. I remember Clara going through a brief monster phase. It's a tad frustrating since no matter what you say to them it doesn't help much. Hopefully, she gets over it soon. I'm getting a little tired of waking up in the middle of the night.

More Artwork

I think I posted a person Hazel drew on the white board but here are a few more. These first people, I like to call "crosshair" people, since she mostly uses one line for a body, hair and each arm. Since these first attempts she's already changed her style to adding more hair, sometimes bodies and legs. She did one last night of me, her and Clara and she gave me glasses and a belly button which was located right below my mouth (since I had no body) such a little cutie.

A few of Clara's from the last few months, I finally got around to scanning in.

Reindeer

Starsong, Pinky Pie and Rainbow Dash - My Little Ponies, a favorite in our house right now.

Dragon (During her brief dragon obsession.)

The year of imagination

This morning I returned from class to find not Clara but Butterfly waiting for me at the door. It's Butterfly's birthday and she is here for a sleepover. When I told butterfly she was very pretty, she responded with, "Some people say I'm gorgeous."

I've had several visitors over the last few weeks. All between the ages of 8-10. One little girl named Sally stayed for a good part of the day.

Four has been a very imaginative year for us.

Easel

In addition to all the Christmas goodies mentioned in the last post, Clara got a fantastic easel from Grandmom and Granddaddy. This finally motivated me to go through the mounds of craft supplies and organize it all. We now have a functioning craft corner or wall in our office for our little artists. And they are loving their new easel.

Christmas 2010

Ok, so I'm finally getting around to posting Christmas photos, now that it's been almost a month. And to be honest I can't even use the excuse that I was editing them, because I didn't really do any editing other than a crop here or there.




We had a nice Christmas. The girls were really into it this year which was a lot of fun. Clara was really into making presents for people. She drew pictures and even did a little sewing. They were both very excited for Santa's arrival and he did not disappoint. Clara got her Tiana Christmas ornament and Hazel got the tiny purple $0.29 teddy and silly bandz she asked for. Along with much more from mommy and papa, grandparents and aunts and uncles. Clara was so into the Christmas spirit she's still trying to make and give gifts and it's Jan 19th. Maybe I should just let her run with it and save them for next year.



To check out our holiday pictures, look here - http://gallery.me.com/brydeemer#100116

It's not winter until there is snow

And finally we have some. Though it's been too cold to really enjoy it and it's not the right kind for snowmen. Despite the less then ideal conditions the girls were still having fun. We drew a snowman in the snow and they occupy the rest of their outdoor time throwing snow at me and looking for ice. Ahh, winter.

Ballet classes

Clara has been so into the idea of ballet for several months we decided to let her try out some ballet classes. This was her first experience in a structured setting without having Bryan or I around. I'll have to say I was really surprised, she was having a harder time then I thought she would. I was standing out in the hall watching and she kept coming out to me. Many times she refused to do anything the teacher was saying, she told me she wanted to dance her way. At one point she got panicked because she couldn't see me. She cried a few times. Eventually, towards the end she was participating. She got a sticker and when she came home told Bryan she loved ballet and had a great time. Being there, who would have thought.

I've since taken her to a second class and she was completely different. She listened and participated the whole time. I was very proud of her. And it was so cute to watch her, Stella and Evey dancing along with the teacher.

I'm hoping that this will help give her an easier transition to school in the fall.

Dress up

We've been really into dressing up here lately. Here's ballerina Clara with her tough ballerina bodyguard. I personally think the pjs are a nice touch. And then we have the superhero/princess drawing on the white board.

Regardless of whether Clara is dressing up or just wearing a casual dress the tiara has become a permanent fixture on her head.