Daphne: 3 Years

Some things I love about this 3 year old of mine...














Birthday pancakes this morning. She blew the candles out too quickly for a picture.

I love that she always finds a friend at the playground.

I love that one of her new favorite phrases is "look at me, mama!" I love that she wants to do things that make me laugh.

I love that another favorite phrase is "can I help you, mama?" I love that she wants to be with me, doing what I'm doing.

I love hearing her little voice say "mama."






















birthday ice cream at Red Robin

I love that she loves going to church.

I love that she's happiest when we're spending time as a family.

As a new 3 year old...

Her favorite songs to listen to are "Ice, Ice Baby," "Everybody Dance Now" and "Frosty the Snowman." She asks for them as soon as we get in the car.

Her favorites to sing at bedtime are "How Great Thou Art," "It Is Well" and "Angel's We Have Heard on High."






















Traditional Dec. 22 lunch at Izzy's.

She loves playing with Duplos, cooking, playing the piano, and visiting friends.

She loves to eat fruit, peanut butter, and ice cream.

We struggle with temper tantrums in stores and fussiness and grouchy behavior at home. Sometimes I wish she liked playing alone a little bit better, but I know she needs to spend quality time with me to help her know she's loved.

So sometimes the house is messier than I would like it to be and we eat peanut butter on crackers with carrot sticks and apples for supper on more nights than I can count, but it's because we have this girl here with us:

















And a perfectly clean house isn't so important anymore.

Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. ~Ps. 127:3

Pretzels

Daphne is eating up the time I spend with her on crafty or cooking projects. It's almost the only time (at home) when she is not, let's just say, expressing her negative feelings about having to share mama's attention. She loves Christian with all her heart, but the transition from being an only child to being a big sister hasn't always been easy on her.

Today we made chocolate covered pretzels. Usually I dip the pretzels so they are completely covered in chocolate, but imaging Daph digging around in a bowl of chocolate kind of gave me heart palpitations, so we used spoons to drizzle the chocolate instead. They pretty much look like an almost 3 year old made them, which is fitting since an almost 3 year old did make most of them. And she loved every minute of it.






































Daddy joined in for a bit:






















Then Christian woke up and was not happy to be watching the cooking when he really wanted to be eating. (This is the best picture of him, ever.)






















We're going to take pretzels to the neighbors tomorrow and Daphne is so excited about that. Do I tell them she was licking off her spoon??

Relaxed

Christian likes to chill out. He is always lying around with his arm up behind his head.






















It makes him so happy. (Also, not having his wild sister in the room may have had something to do with his happiness in this particular photo sequence.)






















Oh, the cuteness. I die.

Cookies

It's so great that Daphne is old enough to do fun activities with me.

We decorated Christmas cookies this week.















It did not take her long to discover that the best way to decorate is to get the frosting, put it on the cookie, lick the frosting off the cookie, get more frosting, put it on the cookie, lick the frosting off the cookie...over and over again until your tummy is full of frosting.





























You may be able to tell which plate I decorated and which plate is Daphne's.

And don't try to get smart with me and say how beautiful that big plate of cookies is, and isn't Daphne such a natural at the decorating?

Only one of us was allowed to use sprinkles, and it sure wasn't the one who licks the frosting.

Christmas Pose in Front of the Fireplace

Good:






















Not so good:






















P.S.
If you get a Christmas card from me this year, know that it was lovingly addressed between 2 and 3 this morning. Christian still wakes up almost every hour at night, and sometimes instead of sleeping for that 1/2 or so between getting up with him I stay up and work instead. Last night it was Christmas cards. So if yours is addressed upside down or I spelled something wrong or if your envelope was entirely empty or you thought you should get one and you didn't...I blame Christian 100%. You can too.

Birthday Week

Let's take one minute and discuss the fact that Daphne turns 3 next week.

Helloooo heart attack. How did that happen?

We're really starting to notice the problems that come with having a Christmas baby. Celebrating is the pits. I think we've decided that we'll always keep Christmas Eve morning as just her birthday before we need to head to any family Christmas event. We'll have a fun birthday breakfast with presents and we won't talk about Christmas at all. We won't wrap her gifts in Christmas paper and we won't ever do a combination birthday/Christmas gift. Because that's lame.

That's all we've decided so far. As she gets older and more aware we'll probably just ask her what she wants to do to make her birthday more fun since we can't do any special activity on her actual birthday. Celebrate on her half birthday? Celebrate on January 24? Whatever sounds good to her.

Last night she celebrated with her Grandma, who also has a December birthday.

It's nice for birthday people to wear crowns.















My favorite was the birthday cakes which I baked in 4oz. canning jars. Thank goodness for Pinterest or I would just be making regular cupcakes. We can't have that.






















Today she enjoyed playing with her new toys. The pliers that came in her new tool box are very useful...















...and she was teaching Christian how to play Memory.















Until this started happening:















Why does she always want to do that? Poor Christian.

I did make one rule: she cannot use her new tools on Christian. He does not need his head hammered or screw drivers in his ears. She is in fact not allowed to hammer anyone. A good rule for any household.

It's Nice to Know I'd Jump in Front of a Bus if I Had To

Yesterday the kids and I were walking through the Target parking lot, Christian in his stroller and Daphne holding my hand. We were walking right behind a white SUV when the driver started backing up, and none too slowly.

You know that moment when you think "my, my, that person is getting awful close, but I'm sure they are paying attention and will stop soon," and then they usually stop. I thought that would happen...but it didn't.

I jerked Daphne's arm to throw her out of the way, put myself in front of the stroller and pushed it out of the way, and then managed to get myself out of the way right in the nick of time.

The driver didn't see me standing there clutching my kids in fear until she had pulled out far enough that I was even with her passenger side window. She looked a little startled to see me there, what with being distracted on her cell phone and all.

She pulled back in to finish her call, and then as she left, drove by my car and apologized for not paying attention. I thought that was nice of her.

I didn't tell Daphne what had happened (like, "hey, that lady almost hit us!") because I didn't want her to be scared. But several times over the course of the evening she would mention the lady at Target who crashed into us and tried to squish us, so I guess she is more aware than I expect her to be.

You might wonder at times in an emergency, would you save yourself or your kids? I'm glad to know, thanks to our near-squished experience, that I would indeed jump in front to save my children.

I have officially become a mother. (Because the miserable pregnancies/long labors/never sleeping again definitely isn't enough.)

Our Acting Debut

I feel we got this gig as part of our church's live nativity not based on our impressive acting abilities but more on the fact that we have a baby boy at Christmastime.












And though it may look like Daphne played the part of a small Russian soldier, she was actually manger dove.

Although the soldier would have been cool.

Newport

We went to the beach.












It was Christian's first trip.












It was also his first time in a Bumbo.


















The weather was good but cold.


















Daph did crafts.


















Christian got lots of snuggles.



















The end.

Christian: Month 3

Would you believe it if I told you Christian is 3 months old now? I know, it's almost unbelievable.

He is such a gem. Really. I could just kiss his chubby cheeks all day long.












Snuggling with the Grinch and wearing Christmas jammies. Because it's Christmastime.

During his awake time he'll lay on the floor or in his bouncy seat and be quite content. If you sit next to him and talk, he will give you huge smiles and answer all your questions with little gurgles and coos. I know I should take advantage of his contented state to do some housework, but he distracts me so.

I'm OK with that. I think when I'm 80 and looking back over my life I won't be wishing I had kept my house cleaner, rather I think I'll be thankful that I snuggled my sweet babies as often as I could.

1 month


















2 months


















3 months

The Great Tree Hunt, 2011

The day we get our Christmas tree is one of my favorite days of the year. We've gone to the same tree farm for the past 4 or 5 years, and now that we have kids we have started some little traditions to keep the day fun.

Daph is so excited about Christmas. I told her the other day that it was almost Christmastime, and since then she's been asking every day if we can 'go to Christmas.' I don't know what that means to her, but it's fun to see her having such a good time.

Monday we told her we were going to find our Christmas tree. She was bouncing off the walls with joy.

First we stopped at a little donut shop in Gresham.

Happiness for Daphne:












She likes the chocolate ones.

Christian had a good time, too:


















We got to the farm where all our hopes and dreams of a jovial time trekking through the trees came to a screeching halt.

Literally, screeching.

First Daphne was super sad at the acres of what we were calling 'Christmas trees.' I think she expected hundreds of lit up and beautiful trees.

Then, I don't know, she just started throwing fits and laying down in the dirt.


















It was strange and slightly disheartening. Did she not get the memo that this is one of my favorite days?


















Finally we just picked a tree and hoped that when we got home and had a chance to look at it we would find that it was full of branches and had no giant dead spots.

At home things did pick up a bit.

Daphne was thrilled that we were bringing the tree into the house. As soon as we had it in she made herself at home right in front of it.












She loved decorating it.












Christian slept through our entire decorating party, but enjoyed hanging out with Daphne once he woke up.


















Despite the somewhat disappointing tree hunt, we still managed to come home with the most beautiful tree ever.

And we came home with this most adorable little reindeer, so that was worth it.

Thanksgiving Weekend

This Thanksgiving baby is so cute! It's a good thing he is so cute and that I love him so much because he still is sleeping quite poorly at night. God made babies cute for a very good reason.



























These Thanksgiving siblings really love each other.












Oh dear, poor Christian.












That's (sort of) better. Face it, buddy, you have years of obligatory sibling photos ahead of you.












David's favorite part of this Thanksgiving was showing Christian how wonderful it is to spend the morning watching football. Clearly C was thrilled. Or terrified.












This morning we did a little Black Friday shopping, although it's a little hard to get too riled up about shopping when you're working it between nursing breaks. I went as wild as I could and got a new handbag, something I haven't done since I started carrying a diaper bag 3 years ago. David got a new shirt. Yes, our spending is out of control.

But you know we're really crazy when David starts flashing gangs signs at Taco Bell. Or whatever it is he's doing.












Happy Thanksgiving weekend!