Settling In

New baby, new house, but life still seems to move on just like it did before. These girls (Eliza and Miriam) fell asleep after a exhausting day.

This girl (Holland) is such a sweetheart, but she is trying to give up her pacifier, which is really making our lives hard. :( I hate that I have tried everything I can think of to get her to go to sleep peacefully, but she just won't. I have turned soft since our time of making Ellie cry it out. It makes me cry to make Holly cry it out. I feel so bad. Nothing helps though. I have tried six different types of pacifiers. Yeah, if anyone out there needs a pacifier, you know who to call. Just sleep baby!

It finally isn't summer anymore! We had the a/c break on us during October. So the good news was that it was October, but the bad news was that we were having record breaking heat. So it was still 106! Yeah, at least it cooled off a bit at night so we could open the windows. Going to bed with it being 89 degrees in your house is just not okay though. Trust me, that feels hotter than it sounds.

Cool enough to start wearing pants for the first time ever!

Two different repairmen had to come, but eventually they got it fixed. Apparently we have a top of the line a/c unit with 2 compressors so only certain companies will work on it. Thank goodness for that home warranty.

Miriam said the cutest prayer tonight. "Please bless me that I will understand what Jesus is telling me."

Miriam also said one Sunday when we had to skip church because we all had nasty colds. "Then what can we do on this special, holy day?" Other good ones: "Was I asleep or awake? I couldn't tell." "I know everything because my mind tells me it." Love her.

Three girls in footed jammies!

I love how nice it is outside these days. Definitely the time of year when it pays to live in Phoenix! But these warm weather girls get so cold! While nursing Holland at night, her hands felt like little ice cubes on my tummy. We had to buy her some warmer jammies stat! It is one of the funny things about Phoenix though. It goes from HOT to COOL, really really fast! We go from putting Holland in a short sleeve onesie for jammies to blanket jammies in the course of two weeks. Hey I am just glad it isn't triple digits right now!

I Wish I Could Freeze Time

How is Holland changing so fast? I read something recently that said that you never know when it is going to be the last time...the last time your child asks you to tuck her in, the last time you get asked to read a story, the last time they come ask to help do some chore, etc. :) I wish I could just freeze time and enjoy this stage for a good year.  

For the record I interrupted writing this blog post to go read a book to Miriam, so not too hypocritical. :)

I wish I could bottle up the smell of her milk breath (I know, it's weird). And the feel of her soft soft baby skin. I love that her soft cheek rests against mine when I carry her. I love how she almost always smiles and burps when I carry her down the stairs. Miriam wants to say, "I love her. She is cute." Although, normally I end up getting spit up on when she smiles and burps at me.

I love how she will just break into a huge grin while she is staring at the wall. I know it is cheesy, but I wonder if she is seeing angels. 

I wish I could always remember how expressive Holland's feet are. She loves stretching them out and flexing them when she is excited.  I love how she doesn't quite have control over her hands, but she is getting closer. Anything her hand touches she tries to grab onto or open and close her hand to scratch it. I love how she takes out her binky and will give it to herself again. I love how anything that touches her cheek she involuntarily tries to suck on. Miriam wants to say, "Holly is so cute when she splashes the water everywhere. She is really cute when she smiles. She is cute when she is smiling all of the sudden."

I love how her laughs are still rare enough now that it makes our day to get her giggling. I love how no matter how cranky/tired she is, she still loves her bath. She surprises herself by splashing on herself and she and we love it!

And all that is just Holland! I wish I could bottle up Eliza's love of learning. She reads non-fiction books just as much as fiction ones. I wish I keep their sweet, innocent purity. I wish I could remember every awesome thing that Miriam says. She is at that perfect age when she says the funniest things. Last night they were sorting Legos by color and her commentary was, "We made girl land and boy land. But you don't want to be in boy land because there is random garbage there and random people dying." It was so funny!

I love that they still don't have any sense of clothes matching or not. I love that Miriam is in the stage where she wants to wear play dresses. I love that they get so excited over a new hairbow or getting their nails painted. I love how pleased Eliza is with herself when she comes up with a math equation or story problem for me to solve. I love that they still love me to read to them. I love that they pretend that the gravel in our back yard is magical moon rocks.

I love how Miriam whispers to herself while she is playing pretend. I love how they still think it is fun to help me do things. I love how Miriam is always so scared to go to the library or Costco near closing time because she is scared that we are going to be locked in.

I love how forgiving they are. I love that they want to say good-bye to John about 10 times each morning when he leaves for work. I love that they want to cuddle with me in bed.

I love it all! I can't believe how blessed I am to have them. What a joy it is to be their mother!

Our New House!!!

We closed on our house on Sept. 2nd. We then had almost a month to do stuff to it before we had to be out of our apartment. We were pretty ambitious for this time. Haha! Little did we know how long home improvement projects take! (Or how expensive they are!)

Everyone told us. 'You guys should paint! It is a cheap and easy way to make the house feel new!' Well, we sure do love the new paint job, but it sure wasn't cheap or easy.

Living Room!

We do love our new house though, even though it feels like the to do list on it is only getting longer. We want to do a lot of work to the yard, but we also want to update a lot of stuff on the inside.

Dining Room (in a couple years after we replace the carpet!)

We love how much storage space this house has! It is unusual for houses in the Phoenix to have large closets. The previous owners really maximized their storage space too and put extra shelves in a lot of the closets. They also put in cabinetry in the garage and extra shelves! Sweet!

Living Room again

Family Room - those awesome curtains though!

Kitchen and breakfast nook.  We are excited/dreading to be changing that yellow paint in a couple of weeks!

Kitchen. I am also thinking that I want to stain the cabinets. Or maybe paint them.

Lots of to-do's! Fortunately most of the stuff we want to do is cosmetic!

Breakfast nook.

Family room. That yellow paint! Oh and that light fixture is now a ceiling fan!

It is fun having two living areas now. Although we definitely only have furnishings for one of those living areas. When it is in the budget we will get a living room set for the front room.

Upstairs hallway light. (pretty cool!)

So in the month that we had to work on our house, one of the main projects that we did was paint the bedrooms (see the pictures below). We thought we would have time to paint the bathroom too, but of course everything always takes longer than we think it will. So we have a couple of big splotches of paint on these walls (we were considering paint color). It is pretty awesome to leave that long term.

Master bath

I had to take a lot of these 'before' pictures, because I thought they were the most noteworthy things we wanted to change. Ironically, we really don't have a before picture of the main painting that we did.

Master bath again--duel sinks!

Master bedroom--yes, you may call me master. The after pictures start here!

I love our bedroom. We hung up a really pretty ceiling fan. I love the paint color that we choose. It is called 'accessible beige.' I accidentally call it 'accidental beige' (haha, see what I did there?), but seriously, I do. I think it is a lot more of a 'greige' (read: grey + beige).

Check out this huge closet! It was like painting a small room!

The girls picked out the color "ghost pines" for their bedrooms. It is a lot like the 'accessible beige,' but it has a slightly purple cast to it that the girls love. It doesn't really show up in natural light, so we are okay with it.

Eliza's room. She wanted the one with the built in shelves to display her treasures, even though the room was smaller. (I think there is a big ol' can of AJAX on her shelves right now. )

Wow, I am looking at this and reliving how much work it was. Find the holes (One of Miriam's walls had almost 30 holes, what the heck people??), fill the holes, sand the holes, fill and sand again, caulk the window, tape the window, tape the ceiling, tape the floor. Take out the doors, paint the closet, take off all of the hardware, take out shelves, do the edging, check the edging, roll the walls (2 coats for everything), wait for it to dry, tape the walls, do the trim, paint the doors, install the doors, take the doors off and sand down them to be able to fit properly. touch up, touch up, touch up, etc. (We didn't do everything in that exact order, but you get the point.)

Miriam go the bigger bedroom to accommodate the toys in her room. (More than what is showing in this picture.)

I really do love how it turned out though. Truth be told, I have never been more exhausted at night than after doing this project. I was seriously wiped out every single night from going strong the whole day long. Miriam spent a lot of time texting people (seriously!), and Holland spent a lot of time in the swing.

Holland has the largest kid bedroom. Go figure!

Welcome to being home owners! It takes all of our spare money and time, but we love how we are really making a place ours!

Glow in the Dark Date Night

I love date night! Often we just play board games and make a treat, but it is so awesome having this time with my best friend!

One recent fun evening we had was with a couple of highlighters and a black light flashlight. (The same one that we use to check for scorpions. Blah!)

We gave each other glow in the dark tattoos. It was pretty funny! I had a nose ring. John had clown lips.

I had a pretty cool flower naval tattoo. This was super fun, but I have to admit it didn't wash off very well. Fortunately in the natural light you couldn't see it at all, but it was showing up in the black light for a good week after we did this date. Haha!

Another really fun date we did recently was doing a grown-up coloring page! We whipped out the nice colored pencils and colored while we chatted, listened to music, and to an audiobook! It was a great time!

Holland 3 Months

Ah! How did I miss including her 3 month pictures?! She's adorable! 

Miriam is going help me tell you about this post: Holly is so cute in these pictures. This one and these two I mean. Mommy is in these pictures too.

Holly is so cute in this picture. She started out so big then she grew smaller and then bigger again. (Interesting)

Holly is most of the time, not really smiling at us. She loves ours whole family. (Miriam always says 'ours' instead of 'our'.)

She is starting to hold up her head so good. We love kissing her cute cheeks. We all do.

My monkey and the baby hold, but after we pretend to hold hands, she cries. We love Holland! Bye!

Holland 5 Months

I don't have any stats to report this month, but I think she is around 13.5 lbs. According to my not-so-accurate bathroom scale. I have a lot of other things to report on though. She is growing up so fast! She loves grabbing her feet now. She also loves grabbing other things. Holland doesn't have total control over her hands just yet, but she does manage to wave them in the right direction and clasp onto things. Because of this, toys have really started making her happy. She loves the big stuffed animals that are easy to hang onto. She grabs on and shoves whatever she can get into her mouth.

Just yesterday she started rolling over from her back to her tummy a lot. I laid her down and the next thing I know she is on her tummy (and not too happy about it!). She still doesn't love her pacifier, but she does like sucking on almost anything else. She doesn't really suck on her fingers too much. More often she puts her arm across her face and sucks on her forearm. She often grabs that arm with the other hand to help hold it into place. It is super cute!

She has started to kind of bat at my face, when I am close to her. She is a much easier smile and giggler now. Her smile lights up the whole room when she catches your eye. No wonder we love her so much!

Her hair is growing pretty fast on top. Still can't tell if it is going to be blond or brown. Those eyes sure seem to be staying blue though. Holland's favorite time of day is bath time. She also really loves the swing, which is unfortunate because the motor gave out. We are in process of getting another one. Holland doesn't really like the bumbo or trying to sit up just yet. That's okay with me. Stay little baby!