santa is a comin'

So i'm down here all by myself in Raymond at my mom's in a quiet house. That hasn't happened since ours and Regan and Rhonda's arrival on Tuesday. The kids are BOTH asleep. (after a 6 am wake up today, fun fun) The parents are out braving the stores on the last Saturday before Christmas. Derek is hopefully in Utah as I write, finalizing everything with the car and will return sometime tomorrow with our late car our early christmas present, depending on if I want to be positive or negative about the whole thing. We are getting a 2007 Honda Accord. I'm soooo excited. We got such a good deal on it that it just might be worth all the hassel. I'm not super excited that it is a standard, and there are no heated seats (i don't know how I'll make it through the rest of an Edmonton winter without them!), but other than that, it's perfect. I'm just hoping and praying Derek makes it across the border now.

So far we have been having a fantastic time. I'm pretty sure I'm well on my way to welcoming the 5 pounds back I said good bye to over the past month. (great to have ya back love handles) Alli is non stop hyper already from sugar everyday with Lucy. They are so cute together playing and bossing eachother around. And James is accomplishing way too many things for my liking in this big house with space to roam. Climbing up stairs is the one I'm not too excited about among others. He makes me nervous. He has no fear. He has fallen SO MUCH. But, he's got to keep up I guess.



and yes, they are eating a bowl of sprinkles.



Here's the picture of the kids with Santa. Since my scanner isn't working I took a picture of the picture, so you know it's quality.



Well, I've got one kid on my lap and I hear the other one calling my name. So hope everyone has a merry christmas!

25 questions for christmas

I stole this from whit since i thought it looked fun. so you get a long list instead of pictures today.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper for sure!
2. Real tree or artificial? we had an artificial 90% of the time growing up and now i have an artificial, but someday i think i'll try a real one.
3. When do you put up the tree? first week of december. i get too excited if i put it up sooner!
4. When do you take the tree down? oh first week of january or so.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? i was pretty excited about my barbie car, it was a jaguar. how cool is that!
7. Do you have a Nativity scene? yes, but it's a breakable with nowhere safe to go this year, so it's staying in the box this year, sad i know.
8. Hardest person to buy for? ummmm, the inlaws. they never ask for anything. my dad too.
9. Easiest person to buy for? the kids for sure!
10. Hot coco or apple cider? love the flavor hot chocolate
11. Mail or email Christmas cards? well the plan is mail this year and i'm just about ready to send them out! so if you want a card from me make sure you send me your address!
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? i fell asleep watching elf last night. soooooo funny, it's gonna be my new favorite for the holidays. me and my sisters used to fall asleep watching sound of music on christmas eve, but it's not a christmas movie at all.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? well, this year i started in november and i have never done that before. i was so proud of myself for starting early i forgot to go again and finish, so i'm staying strong to the last minute shopper!
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? NEVER! i love all my presents.
15. Favorite things to eat at Christmas? EVERYTHING! turkey dinner and the leftovers, chocolates, crackers with various toppings, triffle at the baldry's, that cranberrry gingerale, everyone else's homemade christmas treats, just to name a few.
16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? i love the white!
17. Favorite Christmas song? ALL OF THEM!!! whenever derek chooses christmas music it's bing crosby, alli can really get down with the jackson 5 christmas songs, and i just like anything i know the words to so i can sing along
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? I guess I travel to raymond every year, but when we live there someday, i'm sure there won't be much christmas travel.
19. Decorations traditional red and green or something else? I like the red and i like the green, but not so much together. my tree is red and gold. and i like green and gold together. but it's got to be really cute if it's gonna be blue or pink christmas decor.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? star, i don't love the star on my tree, but i'm a general fan of stars.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? same as whit (and a LOT of people i'm sure) jammas on christmas eve the rest in the morning.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? i'm also with whit here, driving on snowy roads and bundleing and loading the kids in and out in the snowy weather.
23. What is the “silliest” family tradition you do, or miss doing? ok, i'm not sure i should fess up here, because i guess my family gets a little cockoo when we spend a night together. i'll just say one. we have a burping contest in the hot tub on christmas eve. it's disgusting! oh i'll tell what i DON"T miss ( i think my mom FINALLY quit the past year) is oyster soup for christmas eve dinner. i cannot believe my mom kept that tradition alive for so long. how many of us had to vomit before she got the hint?! after i got married it was just a done deal, christmas eve dinner at baldry's.
24. Which looks best, theme trees or homey trees? i like a homey tree that is kinda matchy
25. Gingerbread or sugar cookies? mmmmm cookies! i can't choose!

I really wanted to scan on the picture if the kids with santa, but my scanner is not working. We took them the other day and I was a little worried Alli wouldn't like Santa. Because as per usual she is obsessed with shrek. And there was a little Shrek the Halls show on last week and Alli has only seen it maybe 17 times since. There is a part where Santa is eating gingy's friend and the make it all scary. Everytime she sees it she runs to me and says, Mom Santa scary! So I was worried she wouldn't like to go see Santa. But we got there and she could barely wait her turn and went right up and sat on his lap. She was pretty shy and hardly talked, but Santa sure wasn't shy. he probably kissed her like 5 or 6 times! It was werid. So beware of the kissing Santa if you go to Southgate. Oh and James could have cared less about Santa obviously. He was recovering from a bloody nose. That kid! The worst part is, it's his second bloody nose in 7 months of life! And the worst mother of the year award...to me!

in case you were wondering...

we are still driving this car. it is 20 years old. it is very cold around here. it does not have a block heater. it is an adventure getting behind the wheel every morning.



in case you were wondering, james is still loving his food, and he started crawling the normal way. no more g.i joe scoot. he's now onto trying to pull himself up to standing, haha, nice try james.



in case you were wondering, alli's room got very cold every night while the rest of the house was like a sauna. the vent was closed, oops.



in case you were wondering, my tree is up! i love my little baby tree, and so does james, the decorations are all a little higher up. alli tries to blow out the lights like candles, and she calls the tree "amaaazin" (amazing) it is pretty much the cutest thing i have ever heard.



so, there ya go. that's what we are up to around here...just in case you were wondering!

ouch!

poor little james.

doesn't quite understand when to stop crawling...

then BONK! into the wall.

this picture is the day it happened. he looks tougher today with the rainbow of bruis colors, and it really stands out on that bald head.




i'm sure this will be the first of MANY

he is the son of derek after all.

the son of a dad who...
-taught himself how to ride a bike at age 3 (no training wheels) and then went on to teach his 3 year old little brother the same thing.
-pulled a chainsaw off the table around age 4 (no it wasn't on) but he's still got the scar from the stitches.
just to name one of the MANY incidents of stitches.
-played football for way too many years (only one surgery and one broken bone thankfully)
-made his sister so upset she came at his neck with a fork and stuck it in his neck too (but i'm sure he desreved it)

he is a boy, so this is just the beginning of bumps and bruises and who knows what else, right!

cutest?

As I was dreaming at the anthropolgie website, I came across these...






Are these not the cutest ever?! I guess it's the forever ago figure skater in me. Too bad I'm not about to spend $24 a piece for a tree decoration. Oh how I love all the Anthropologie decor I can't afford.

On to other things. James started eating the solids a week or 2 ago, so exciting right?! I feel a little bad sometimes. All of a sudden it's bedtime and I remember, oops, i forgot to give James some rice cereal today...oh well. We just took this picture the other day because I thought I should document the "first" feed. So what if it was actually the 7th or 8th feed right? When Alli was a baby it was a big production, this time I realised that feeding in the beginning is not fun. What a mess! The kids have no idea what to do, no swallowing, no opening the mouth, oh wait, they know how to do one thing...spit it out! And it takes half an hour to create the disaster all for a bite or two. Luckily James took a liking to the food pretty quickly so my rant is just for fun really. Look how good he opens his mouth while posing for the camera. Love it. I also love it when Alli insists on helping and shoves a huge spoonful right into the back of his throat, James appreciates it too. He's such a trooper with her torture, but I'm pretty sure he will be beating on her soon, as he is about the size she was at a year



Here's a pic of me and Alli that I like lately. The ivy is so nice. It's from forever ago when Melissa was here. I put it up on my post way back when and it disappeared (which my pictures are liking to do lately) so here it again incase you missed it.

picture overload

So as promised here are more than a few pictures from lately. When we got the new leopard system we also got the new ilife which has the new iphoto, so now I have more options on how to play with my pictures. It's very easy and fun, I could spend A LOT of time doing it, also it's sooofast. I blink and things are done!





Here's his little devil face. He does this all the time, and breathes really fast and heavy out his nose at the same time.



Here's little James. He's been up on all fours rocking for 2 or 3 weeks now and pretty much crawling for a bit now too. He hasn't figured out the arms, so he just pushes off with his legs and throws himself forward. Then he does the G.I Joe scoot to go backwards. I think he's really frustrated that he can't move faster, and let me tell ya he does NOT STOP moving. Even in his sleep he's all over. (which is no good because I'm sure that's why he's always waking up.)




These are a few a my favorite pics lately. It's probably been almost a month since Susie took them. We borrowed the little tutu from Alysha for extra cuteness. Thanks Alysha!







I won't ramble too much with all these pictures but I have to tell a couple funny Alli stories.

On Sunday when we walked into church Alli gets in the doors and throws her hands up in the air and yells "JESUS!" So excited to come to church our little molly morman!

Earlier tonight Derek took Alli to a little football awards night. One of the coaches that was handing out the awards was a bit of a bigger man around the middle. Alli saw him up there and said "Fat Tummy!" Derek claims no one else heard it because no one else was laughing with him. And so the embarrassing child stories begin...

Also, Susie has a few cute pictures of the kids with Sadie and a lovely story about where Alli REALLY learns everything, haha!

i'm baaack

I've got my pictures back! They were all backed up on the external hardrive so I wasn't worried about losing them forever. However, along the way the pictures tripled! So we have 3 of every picture. Over 10,000 pictures! The deleting has begun, but is soooo not over.

I'm smother the blog with pictures soon.

slack-er

I know what you are all thinking. WHAT happened to the once faithful blogger lindsabea? You used to be able to pretty much count on her for a weekly update. Complete with pictures and way to much writing of her rather exciting life to go along with the pictures. So why has she fallen off the wagon? Where did the life lessons and profound words go? (At least she's not as bad as Whitney..hehe...Ok, I'll quit with the 3rd person, love ya Whit, but you fell halfway off the wagon a while ago)

I'll tell you why I have been so lost this month. My computer!! I have no idea why this "fancy must have new mac operating system" is a must have. I won't get into the details because I don't know the details. But the jist of it is, I have no pictures! I see that my last post of pictures disappeared. I tried to fix them and I can't. I now can't import or upload anything, not even old pictures that are still in my photo library. I have no iphoto and no photoshop and my itunes is screwed up too. SO, I haven't been posting because what's the fun in a post with no pictures. Just a lot of my ramblings....

confessions...

I have a few confessions...

1. I think that a good 75-80% of the ladies boots out there these days are NOT CUTE!!! Maybe I have zero style, but I feel as though we are on the verge of bringing back the 80's, THE 80'S PEOPLE!!!!!

2. I rarely make my bed. Sorry mom, contrary to the way you raised me, I have failed.

3. I'll be sad when we move back to Raymond and I can't go to the grocery store with greasy hair and no makeup on, because I'll probably run into someone I know.

4. I'm totally copying Rhonda on this whole post and I'm copying this confession we share. I REALLY REALLY don't like kids clothes that has cartoons splashed all over. Shrek shoes and Diego shirts will never be found in my house. If my child is having a tantrum for the pink sweatsuit with the little mermaid jazz up he pants and the logo and whatnot ruling the sweatshirt, they will be pyjamas. Kids don't need to wear these things, thats what the toys and snacks and shows are for. (also, i hold nothing against people who dress their kids this way, just my own personal taste)

5. I have to say lefty loosey righty tighty in my head when I'm screwing stuff.

6. I have never seen a Star Wars movie. I get the drift, Darth is Luke's father right?

7. I don't think I'm old, I actually feel quite young. So what's with all the waitresses and store worker girls and the new nurses at work being so young?!

8. I love Costco parking lots with all the space for idiot parkers like me with 2 kids to get out the doors.

9. My final confession, my house is a semi disaster right now, but Alli is asleep and I'm about to rock little James to sleep so can you guess what I am going to do instead of tidy up? Yep, I'm gonna nap too!


Here's a few from when Melissa cam up to visit at the Muttart. We had so much fun and I can't wait until we get to meet up again. Hopefully it's not another 10-12 years!

I see we failed to take any pictures of the 2 of us together.

I have no idea why this picture is not turned the right way. It's the right way in my iphoto, and it's so cute I wanted to put it up. And i wish I could fix up the colors a bit, but my iphoto is still not quite right since the update, maybe that's why this first one won't turn right. Derek still hasn't sold me on why this new system was so important to get.

happy halloween!

My computer has been struggling this week. Derek got the new mac operating system and nothing works like it used to. And he has has ZERO time to figure it out. (I am not capable of figuring it out on my own, so he does it first and then teaches me) So I have no idea what I am doing, I can't even get rid of the red eye! Here are a few halloween pics, I reallly didn't take as many as I thought I did, oops. So maybe Sus can send me some she took...

I was a slacker halloween grinch this year. As in, Susie found me James' costume on Monday and I borrowed Alli's ladybug costume from someone.





One my friends had a little halloween party the other day. The girls were all so cute! I guess we forgot to get one of all the babies.




Alli had a great time last night. She didn't say Trick or Treat, just Treat! Also, she figured out how to open the treats. And she just kept eating and eating them last night! And she has forgot about them all today! But I haven't, haha.

So I'm off to work tonight. I've really been putting in my time. 4 hours a week for the past 3 weeks! PHEW!! Haha. It works out great. I go in a 7 at night until 11. Derek is home with the kids and I get to use my brain for a few hours.

I hope we'll figure this out soon and I'll post some pics from my fun weekend with Melissa!

I just had to put this up. I thought it was so funny. Alli was wearing these around yesterday saying "I go school" because she always sees Derek wearing these when he comes home from school.

poor blog

I sure have been neglecting the blog lately. After the accident my back and neck have sure been bothering more than I thought they would. I've been going to physio so hopefully things will improve soon. Not to mention a certain someone is keeping me up at all hours.

We have been renting apartments for over 5 years now. It sure would have been nice if we would have bought 3 or 4 years ago when we were thinking about it, but what can you do! There are some really good things about renting an apartment and some really bad.

GOOD
-when something breaks, I just make a call and someone else comes and I don't pay anything
-we don't have to worry about heat or water bill
-if I spill on the carpet, I wipe it up, but I really could care less, which brings me to my next point
-I wear my shoes on the carpet all the time
-we don't have to shovel any snow or rake leaves

BAD
-LOUD WALKERS UPSTAIRS!!!
-$4 a load for laundry
-the walk from the parking stall to the apartment and up 2 flights of stairs in the winter seems very long and cold (and will seem longer and colder with 2 kids)
-I can't paint the walls
-it is soooooo hot in our apartment and there is only so much I can do about it.

I could easily come up with many more BAD things, but there is an end in sight with this apartment living so I'm getting over it.

Now I have a story about why I do kinda like our apartment right now.

I'm gonna go all over the place with this. I went out on Saturday for a Girlie Night. I came home to the most wonderful surprise. The stunt James has been pulling lately (as in for the past month!) is to be awake for an hour or 2 in the middle of the night. Sometimes he's content and babbling away, other times he's just fussy and whining the whole time and occasionaly he is GRUMPY! We have had him in our room the whole time and even if he's happy it's hard to really sleep through his jib jab. Like I said, I hate apartments, I'm so sick of them, but as far as apartments, we have a good one on some levels as mentioned above. We have not one, not two, but THREE storage rooms, and a nice size bathroom closet. So back to my story. I came home to find the storage room right beside our room ALL CLEANED OUT with room for James' bed and a chair too! We have been trying to find the time and energy to do if for a month or two now, but Derek has been soooo busy we haven't had a spare moment. And I wasn't about to take on this task myself with the large items that had to be moved. Also, I was sooooo excited I let Derek have an extra soda. It really isn't that great for the night yet. It only means now I have to get out of bed and walk instead of roll over and put in his soother, but I'm still happy abut it. Now we have some room to breathe in our bedroom with that playpen out of there (yes, James sleeps in a playpen because I really don't want Alli out of her crib yet and have to do some disipling to keep her there) and we can actually talk in bed instead whisper for fear of waking the beast! So I am very happy about that.


I'm so very excited right now because I am going to pick up my friend Melissa in a few hours! We were the BEST childhood friends. We met somewhere around the monkey bars in grade 1 and were inseperable for years. The first thing I think of when I think of us as kids is BARBIES! We were CRAZY about barbies and played them day in and day out untill our legs were asleep and cemented into the kneeling position. She moved to Las Veags after grade 7, and we slowly lost touch. But have been in really great touch (as far as email, blogs and facebook go) for the past couple years. So we are just going to pick up where we left off 12 years ago. I'm so excited for this weekend!

Ok so I just wrote A LOT! hope you enjoyed it ALL! Here's a few pictures of this and that.

Give him a second of your attention and he's smiling.



Here's the craft we made with the stuff alli gathered on her walk in the river valley with grandma forever ago. She wasn't into having her picture taken, so I jusy propped it up!



Alli and Lucy with all the pumkins grandpa grew in his garden.



He torments her already. Did i mention he is trying to crawl and sit up these days? This kid has got to learn how to relax.



This picture looks like James almost has some hair, but he really doesn't have much. He could really use some to hide that ridge in his head!

miss alli

Thank you Jacklyn for the earings!



i'm slightly behind, but i still had to do this post...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLI!!!!



Things kinda got screwed up last week with the crash. I was without a car for a few days so I didn't plan anything for Alli's birthday on the actual day, the 11th. But it was ok because we had an AWESOME party for her when we were down at my parents with Lucy who turned 2 on the 5th. With a Barbie cake and all!




I felt bad for like 5 minutes for not doing anything on the day of Alli's birthday, then I realised...SHE'S 2!!! She will never remember. Plus we have been having so much birthday cake the past weeks I'M SPENT!!! Alli is going to wonder where the cake is next week. She is so good at blowing out candles too.



On Thursday, (her birhtday) during my 5 minutes of guilt, Alli was asking for ice cream. I have no idea where this thought came from. She usually only asks for it at Grandma's (because Alli knows where it is and my mom's feeezer is on the bottom of the fridge and she can open it and find it.) or when she is watching sesame street and they say ice cream, which is why i hate sesame street ( the whole cookie thing too) It was 5pm when she got this idea in her head. I had no idea as usual what supper was going to be, and i happened to have ice cream because of the cake lately, so i thought WHY NOT?! So Alli and I ate ice cream right before supper and i'm pretty sure Alli thought it was the best present. Your welcome for the view directly into my beautiful mouth.



Ok, so I cannot believe my little baby is 2! And I can't believe that she is not my baby, I have another! It is a little ridiculous I will say. Now that I have a 2 year old I will tell all things i love about her right now that i can think of this late. ( not the things that drive me crazy, because there are a FEW of those too)

I love:

-the wake up call I get in the morning. "maam...Maam...MAAAAAM"
-when Derek tickles her she's laughing but says Daaaad, like she is so annnoyed and just humoring him.
-she sings! oh goodness she SINGS! sometimes it's songs like twinkle twinkle and jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but mostly is just made up randomness and it's soo funny to me
-her fake laugh. if you've ever heard it, you know what I'm talking about
-and she does her fake laugh EVERY time she hears other people laugh
-EVERYTHING is a phone. a book, a pen, a cup, a toy car...the list goes on. she holds it to her ear, say hi, does the fake laugh, and her favorite phone saying lately...oh great!
-she's always asking where James is, so concerned, and very cute.
-she plugs her ears when James is crying in the car, or says "JAMES SHHHHHH!...Coome On!" ( I have no idea where she gets that from...really)
-she always seems to know where derek is. Dad school. Dad fuball. Dad work.
-the way she runs around the room in excitement saying the name of whoever she thinks (or maybe hopes) it is everytime someone rings our buzzer
-when we go shopping she pulls stuff off the rack and says awwww cuuute, and then looks at the tag.
-she picks out her own clothes...oh wait i'm not saying the things that drive my crazy
-derek wanted to contibute one...that she sleeps throught the night, for the most part. (he's rocking james right now)
-she asks for oats (oatmeal) every morning for breakfast
-she's obsessed with shrek, thunder, diego, spaghetti, baby dolls, trucks, dragons, dinosaurs, coloring with a pen or pencil (no crayons)on any paper that isn't a coloring book, and the word "ok" to name a few.
-the way she grabs my hand and says "Hand" to drag me to wherever she wants
-she likes me to sing songs before bed, and then as soon as i'm done she says Again, again. Really i'm thinking she just wants to stay up later.
-when she kisses me and says i love you, it's the BEST!

Ok, ok my list could go on and on, but i better stop for fear of losing my readers. She cracks me up on a daily basis. Also, she keeps us on our toes. She copys EVRYTHING!!!
I just want to pause this stage (most of the time. come on, she is 2 and has some pretty serious meltdowns daily)

I wanted to dig out a few pictures to put up for us all to reminise, so i have been going through my iphoto for the last half hour looking at Alli pictures. Then I thought, I'm reall the only one who wants to reminise, and if anybody else does, I have been doing this blog for a long time and it is pretty much ALL pictures of Alli. I will say i sure am glad Alli grew hair. I forgot how bald she was for that first year. Looks like James is outta luck in the hair department for a little longer.

It's official. Our car is nonfixable. Now we have to buy a new car, sooooo annoying.

thankful

I decided to post again today. To make up for my neglect of the blog over the past couple weeks.

I feel like thanksgiving was yesterday so he's my thankful list.

I'm thankful for...

#1 My talented sis in law Rhonda who takes BEAUTIFUL pictures, that I can't wait to see! And she was the one who jazzed up my title thing. She's a bit of a computer whiz and "taught" me how, but my eyes glazed over pretty quick. My fault not hers.

#2. My bright idea to switch babysitting with our neighbors once a month. They have 2 little kids just like us. Taylor is 3 and baby Hannah is a month younger than James. Now Derek and I can go out once a month guilt free and no paying a babysitter either! Plus Taylor and Alli play pretty cute together.




#3. My family. I love them all! My mom was up after Sadie was born with Susie, and was here for my birthday. So she babysat while I went to the gym, we went shopping, she cooked a yummy supper, and Alli helped her make me a cake! I made a last minute decision to go to Raymond with her and we had a fantastic time as usual.




#4 That we are all safe. We were in a little car accident on our way home on Monday night. We were about 20 min from Edmonton and there was lots of traffic. We had to slow down suddenly, but the car behind us did not. So we go hit from behind with enough force to push us into the car in front of us. I'm stiff and sore and so is Derek but we are all ok. Our car is probably not fixable. I'm going to be annoyed, i can see it now.

#5 James slept! James cried and cried until we got home on Monday night. And then he slept, and he slept and slept. I was totally being a worry mom because he slept through the night and and most of the day. Which is not like him at all! But really I was so happy that he did, because I was a little stressed all day Tuesday, and it was nice not to have him fussing and squirming. Don't worry, he was back to his lively personality at 5 am today!



#6 Surprises! I love surprises. But for some reason I usually ruin them for myself somehow. My brother Pete came home for the weekend from Vancouver. That was a fun surprise, (and so was the lady friend he brought along!) and minus my middle of the night rant to him (sorry i was out of it) we had a great time. Alli once again cried around him. So weird, she never acts the way she does around Peter, and she was the same at Christmas. She must get the vibe of the torture he put me through as a child and wants nothing to do with him! She did let him feed her cake, and that was about the only time she wasn't running for me whenever Peter looked at her.



# 7 ANOTHER little nephew! Derek's sister Mindy had a little boy Kade on Sunday. Everything went well. They live in California so I'd love to meet the little guy soon, but....well, they live in California.

#8 This is an unthankful. Sorry to ruin the mood of all the positive and grateful, but my week has been crazy and I just need to vent this one.
Alli likes to sit on the toilet lately, and she is refusing her diaper at times. So she is ready to potty train right? I seriously have to hold her down kicking and screaming and fight the diaper on when she is in the no diaper mood. Today in the early evening she did a large #2 in the diaper and was in the no diaper mood. Well, I have no car so I have no big girl undies for her yet. I thought, ok, lets give the old no diaper will remind the child she has to go right?

Everyone reading this is wondering if I'm going to go there, and yes I am, you know where this is going next.

I was asking Alli often if she had to go potty and she kept saying no. About an hour and a half after the diaper had been off she took me up on the offer. She sat on the toilet, did the usual, sit and make a few pretend noises ( they are hilarius, she pretends to push) and then "All done!" grabs the toilet paper and pretends some more with that and flushes. She actually did that twice, but nothing real. WELL, the diaper had been off for about 2 hours now. I had just got my sweet little James down for a little nap, but he woke up and was crying so i was in trying to settle him without picking him up. I was bent over him when I hear Alli "Oh no mommy, oh no." I turn around to the disater before me. And maybe if I wasn't already a bit irritated by James crying, I would have responded better. I see the mess, and it is a MESS! I yelled NOOOOOOO ALLI NOOOOOOO!!! I grab her and run her to the toilet, but it is too late, the job is done....on my bedroom floor and one of my t-shirts (which did not make it to the wash, straight to the trash). She is crying a bit because I scared her with the yell. So I get her in the tub and give her the scrub down while James is wailing at this point. After I settle James and get Alli dried off, the diaper is on within seconds, I think Alli actually helped me a little in putting it on.

All the while Derek is at mutual painting pinatas.

So am i now doomed with the whole potty training? I think I scared her into never wanting to poop again. When I was pregnant with Alli i was totally nervous for 2 things about kids. Labor (which I got to skip with Alli and had just a taste of it with James) and Potty Training. The dreaded day is here. My laundry costs $4 a load, do I really want to do this? I'm taking advice. Where do I start? And don't tell me the nakedness worked for you, I don't want to hear it!

I'm off to do a final scrub of the carpet.

another

someone had a birthday....





i was away for a week and it has been a slightly crazy since we got back. i promise to post soon...

birthdays!

on saturday susie had her baby! YAY! so exciting. she had her a few days early unlike me who had the joy of experiencing 8 beautiful extra days of a growing babe inside. i think now, james was just teaching me some patience, because thats what i need these days! anyway here is a couple of sadie jane tilleman. (i'm sure there will be more to come) she's so cute and little, 7 pounds 1 ounce and 20 inches. when james was born ( over 8 pounds) i could for sure picture a smaller baby, but i cannot beleive that alli was 2 pounds smaller and 3 inches shorter than sadie. susie's husband ryan said now you know why i was scared to hold alli. i know susie has some super cute pics on her camera, and since she cursed herself with a blog she better put up some pictures soon...so if you are reading this sue and i know you are, get on it! (ok ok i'll give a ya week or so)



all day saturday alli was asking for susie. she was chanting her name. alli LOVES susie. i'm pretty sure her love has something to do with the fact that when ryan had to be in calgary for may and june and susie was still teaching, she came over everyday to play with her. and since james was new, alli was a little low on attention. we didn't take her to the hospital on saturday ( i didn't want her and james to contaminate the moment, haha) so she got to go see her tonight. alli was right into the baby...for about a minute. we'll see how she handles less attention from susie now. who knows she might have already replaced susie because when we left tonight she was bawling for ryan...



now on to the other birthday...
it was derek's birthday yesterday. the big 29! i rememeber like 3 or 4 years ago when derek was jumping around different faculties in school picking a major and we would laugh and joke saying you better be done by 30! at the time it really was funny and i sure didn't think he would be finishing school 3 months before he turned 30. but time flies...really...it does (note the last sentence had a tone of a sarcastic nature) we had a quiet birthday with just the fam. derek bbq'ed, (i would have cooked but he does the bbq) and i did do the rest. and if you are wondering yes that is a german chocolate cake, and yes i made the icing myself and yes the cake was from a box (grandma baldry would almost be proud! haha)

derek got a golf club for his birthday a few weeks ago. but i wanted to give him something for his birthday on the day. well, golf stuff isn't cheap and the funds are low, but i still went ALL OUT. he got a dr. pepper. i know what you are thinking, i'm so nice that's too much, the things i do. the deal about the soda is ryan and derek are allowed 12 cans of soda a month and then they are allowed to go on a golf trip next summer. so getting an extra soda IS a BIG deal. (especially considering how much he used to drink on a daily basis)



i'm just loving derek as much as ever these days. he is so good with the kids and so good to me. i cannot imagine life without him. i'm so glad that he is so happy these days. he is really liking his school, loves coaching football of course (his man time) has the funnest time in his calling at church with the young men and of course he comes home every night to a spotless house where his perfect wife has supper on the table when he walks in the door and the litte ones smile and are shiny and clean and never raise their voice. i smile and sing as i do the dishes while he reads the paper then we all go to bed on time and we talk about our day as i am giving him a massage, and nobody wakes up all through the night...oh how happy we are!



and speaking of birthdays, here's alli swimming in her birthday suit!