Hallie's Dedication

We had a busy Mother's Day at our house.  Our church does ALL the baby dedications for the entire year on Mother's Day, so Hallie (and 4 other babies during our service) was dedicated.  She looked beautiful- with her white dress made by Grandma Sue.  Mom has made both of the girls dedication dresses using the scraps of fabric left from when she made my wedding dress.  They are priceless, and something we will save forever!  We arrived at church and went to the back room to wait with the other babies and their families for it to be out turn to walk out to the front for the dedication.  As we were waiting Natalie was a little anxious... she would really rather have been out in the seats with all her grandparents and great-grandparents, who had come out in support.  But, we told her we needed to wait a few more minutes and it would be our turn.  She said, "That's right.  Because baby Hallie has to be decorated!"  We about died laughing.  That kid.  After we were done she didn't want to go back to Sunday school, so she stayed in 'big church' and really was a good girl (to our surprise!).  We had brunch here at our house after church with all the grandparents to celebrate, and it really was a great day.  

Natalie continues to baffle me... her new thing at night is that she reads the stories to us before she goes to bed, rather than us reading to her.  Last night Hallie was fussy so Cameron was in the living room with her and I took Natalie back to read books.  She read me 2 different versions of Cinderella (her very favorite story... we have about 4 different versions in the house).  It amazes me to hear her rattle off LONG passages of the books word for word.  My favorite last night was "The fairy Godmother waved her wand and turned Cinderellas rags into a dress the color of moonlight.  And, on her feet, 2 dainty glass slippers twinkled like stars."  Word for word what the book says... and I had to look it up to remember.  She doesn't. :)   Two nights ago Hallie wasn't fussy at story time, so she and Daddy got to come with us.  Natalie was reading, I think that night it was Snow White, and Hallie was laying on the bed next to Natalie.  When Natalie started to read Hallie was completely fixated on her face... just staring at her, listening.  And, then she started to smile at her big sister.  It was the sweetest thing.  I can already tell I am going to love watching those girls interact. :)  

More Natalie

That kid just never ceases to amaze me. Her latest fad is a series of books called Fancy Nancy. She loves them. We read them on an almost daily basis and there is even a game that came with it. The premise is that this little girl loves to be fancy and her family is not. She uses words like exquisite, posh, and iridescent. So of course Natalie is in to those as well. Our favorite two are posh and exquisite. Posh is because she tells everyone that her family is posh. The other night we were out to dinner and bumped into some friends we hadn't seen in a long time. She was complimenting us on having a beautiful family and Natalie said "we're posh!". I am not sure the lady heard her but Sara and I were laughing pretty good about it. The reason we like exquisite is the way she pronounces it..."ex-quiz-a-bit". It is priceless!

Every time Hallie cries, Natalie likes to help calm her down. Lately that has involved singing to her and sometimes Hallie actually does stop when Natalie sings to her. This leads to a couple of stories. The other day they were at my mom's house and mom was singing to Hallie to calm her down. Natalie was playing on the other side of the room. The singing worked, however my mom didn't stop. She just kept on singing to her granddaughter as any grandma would. Natalie would have NONE of it "GRANDMA, quit singing, she's NOT crying anymore!" Mom wasn't sure if the singing was that bad or Natalie just thinks you should sing when babies cry and no other time. Those of you that know my mom, I'll let you decide. :) The other story is from the other night when we were in the car. Hallie started crying and so we asked Natalie to sing to her. She sang Rock-A-Bye-Hallie to her and it was precious....only one problem, Hallie didn't stop and actually cranked up the volume. Natalie goes "(gasp)That made her cry even MORE!"

Hallie is much more entertaining these days. She will lay on her back for long periods of time and if you talk to her she will smile, kick, flail, flex, anything to let you know she hears you. Last night she and I were having quite the conversation. Natalie wanted to join in. So she came over and I had her tickle Hallie. Hallie smiled at her...it was awesome...and so I said "Natalie, are you and Hallie going to be good friends?" She looked me dead in the face and said "No, first I have to finish my candy, THEN I can be her friend". Apparently in Nat's world it is candy or friend, never both. :)

Big news around our house, Natalie is going to school next year! A little back story first. Derby has a program where they take kids that aren't developing as quickly as others or have certain conditions like Autism and stick them in pre-school classes with "mentors" so they can hopefully pick up the basics and be ready for Kindergarten. They do it for 3 and 4 year olds both. Three year olds in the morning and fours in the afternoon. There are a lot more kids that try for the four year old program so if you can get them in as three year olds you have an in the next year. Sara found out about all of this, I had no idea let's be honest. So a couple weeks ago we took Natalie to a screening to be a mentor. She did really well and was put on the list of possible mentors. There are like 20 spots for mentors and they had somewhere around 30-35 kids qualify. So out of that list they just start drawing names (or so we're told) and our Natalie was chosen to go to Carlton next year from 8-11 Tu-Fri. My favorite part is that I get to take her to school now. I can't wait, we will have quite the time and I will have TONS of stories, I'm sure. :)

Here are a few pics of Hallie working on that smile:

Cinderella Round 2

Today we had a fitting for Natalie with Grandma Sue for her flower girl dress for Auntie Em's wedding in June.  In the short time since she last was a flower girl, I forgot just what it does to a daddy to see his baby girl in a beautiful princess dress.  Since this was a fitting, the dress wasn't hemmed and so it scraped the floor hiding Natalie's feet.  That meant that when she walked it just looked like she was gliding along like an angel.  Add to that the fact that Sara is a bridesmaid and was also wearing her dress and lets just say it's a good thing I got a preview before I see them walking down the aisle in June.  This fitting went MUCH better than the last one, in fact she like it so much she didn't want to take it off, but we made her don't worry Aunt Em she won't be wearing it before the big day. :)  Before she got out of it she told me that she was Cinderella and that I could be her prince and asked me to dance with her.  Man that kid knows how to get her daddy.

This afternoon Natalie had one THOSE sneezes.  You know the kind where the boogie comes out and goes to about her belly button.  All of you parents know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, she went to brush her hair back and grazed the dangling rubbery goo with her hand and got some in her hair.  As I got a kleenex to wipe her off she looked at me and said "Oh.   Daddy.  I have sneeze in my hair"  I laughed so hard I almost couldn't wipe her off.

Natalie is also still loving her baby sister.  She constantly wants to be around her and go check on her.  She also gives her hugs and kisses and likes to try and make her smile.  She also comforts Hallie when she's crying, often saying "It's okay baby sister, don't cry."  Hallie is starting to smile.  I forgot just what it feels like the first time your child smiles at you on purpose.  It's amazing, that's all I can say.  She doesn't smile alot and it doesn't last very long.  She sometimes needs help so we have to tickle her face to make her muscles react and form a smile, but hey it's still sweet! :)

I guess I haven't written since Easter so I will fill you in on that.  It was BUSY.  Honestly it was so busy I forgot to slow down and enjoy the day.  The weekend started with an Easter Brunch at my mom's house with her side of the family.  It was a blast and the weather was gorgeous.  Natalie and her cousin Destiny had a great egg hunt in the back yard and a real live Easter bunny was hopping around in the back yard as well.  Mom had found some "eggs" shaped like animals and she thought Natalie would love them...not so much.  Natalie didn't want any animal "eggs" in her basket.  She would pick them up and throw them back down, even once she realized they had candy inside.  My dad snuck one in while she wasn't looking.  Five minutes later I hear "Hey, what's that doing in here?  I don't WANT animals!" and she chucked it back on the ground.  It was an excellent start to the day.  After that we went to Sara's parents to see Uncle Eric and Aunt Christina while they were in town.  We had a nice dinner and enjoyed spending time with them.  Natalie got to have a solo Easter egg hunt there.  She liked it but started to slow down and had to have grandma help her finish.  She liked it well enough but the long day was starting to wear on her.  Easter Sunday was wet here just like most of Kansas.  Church was packed but the service was nice.  That evening we went to Aunt Penny's house for the Hunt Easter celebration.  With the weather being so wet we had the egg hunt there inside.  With this being Natalie's third egg hunt she was pretty much done.  She didn't want anything to do with it, she just wanted to play with toys.  So we got what we could out of her and then let her be.  By that time there was no reason to fight with her.  She was warn out but we are pretty sure she enjoyed it none the less. :)

When bargaining with a two-year old...

...be careful. :) Last night Natalie was just crying and crying and crying. She has been doing this for the last week or so, originally because she was sick and now we aren't really sure why other than she's two. Her normal bath time is around 8:30 and then she heads to bed and is out around 9:15 and up around 8:00 a.m. Works great. Last night I heard her tell Sara through sobbing "I'm ready to take a bath now". It was 7:15. Sara made sure she was really wanting to take a bath and Natalie was adamant that she was. So Sara said alright. Natalie immediately stops crying, starts jumping around and says "can we watch videos now?" The latest Natalie fad is to watch a few of her disney songs on YouTube. She will sit there and watch them for an hour if we let her, she just loves them and it's disney music, what's wrong with that? :) I piped up and said no, that if she was taking a bath this early it was going to be without videos. She starts BAWLING. Sara looks at me and says "I told her she could watch two." I missed that part of the conversation. So basically Natalie is willing to take a bath and go to bed at ANY TIME just as long as she can watch two videos before that. We managed to make her wait until 8 and then she got to watch her videos, take a bath, and head to bed. Little stinker. :)

Story time

So many stories I don't even know where to begin.  First someone who Natalie sees on a regular basis is in serious trouble.  We are not sure who at this point but when we find out, you are in soooo much trouble.  The other day at dinner I was joking around with her asking her all sorts of silly questions.  We were talking about her day and I was asking her about what Hallie did.  I asked her something like "Did Hallie have ice cream?" and then "Did Hallie eat pizza?".  Natalie said "No, she didn't."  She thought for a minute and said "What were you thinkin' about?"  Sara and I tried our hardest to not laugh because that is not something you want to hear from your two year old for fear that at Sunday School she looks up at the teacher and says "What were you thinkin' about?"  So whoever you are, know that we are looking for you. :)

Last weekend my dad and I painted Natalie's room.  It was of course miserable outside so hanging out all day painting seemed like a great idea.  When we broke the news to Natalie she said "Oh, can I have green like Hallie's room?"  We said no, she got purple so she would have her own room.  She said in her saddest little voice, "But I want green like Hallie."  We convinced her that her own room would be better.  She "helped" us for a few minutes and painted a few streaks on her wall.  She was so proud of herself and walked around the rest of the day talking about how she "helped" paint her room.  That night when we were done and had the room all put back together I took Natalie in to show it to her.  She loved it!  I was so relieved.  After what she said earlierI had this nightmare of her walking in and going "No, I DON'T WANT PURPLE!" and throwing a huge fit, but she didn't.  She did the opposite, she went "ooooh, it's purple!"  A few minutes later she was in Hallie's room for something and I walked in and asked her how she liked her new room color.  She stared straight up at me and said "Oh, it looks terrific, dada.  I just love it!"  Makes a daddy proud. :)

Tonight we went for a walk.  It was a little windy, but other than that pretty nice.  Wrigley was her usual self, more on that later.  Natalie is getting over being sick so she was getting kind of fussy and wanted to walk with us about a mile from our house.  I said, how about you ride on my shoulders instead.  She was good with that so up she went.  When she's on my shoulders she likes to play with my ears.  Not sure why but she does.  Sara and I were walking along chatting when I hear above me "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear ears, happy birthday to you!"  I almost dropped her as I was laughing.  Like I've said before, that girl kills me.

Another dinner story.  Last night she was in the worst part of whatever illness she was dealing with so it was all we could do to get her to eat anything for supper.  I promised to go get her ice cream if she would eat her dinner.  So she fussed a little bit and then said "you go now to get the ice cream."  Sara said that she needed to eat two more grapes before I would go.  So she said okay.  A little back story.  Even when she's healthy she sometimes will only eat fruit if she shares with you.  She goes one for one.  You eat, she eats.  That's her deal.  Well, last night she picked up two grapes and said "I will eat these two.  Mommy you eat one too."  So Sara picked one out of the bowl on the table and started to eat it.  Natalie screams "NO, you don't eat that one!"  So Sara puts the grape down and Natalie says "You eat this one" and extends her hand with one of the two she had.  So they both eat a grape.  Natalie looks at me with a mouth full of grape and says "now you go get the ice cream"....sneaky devil.  She thought mommy's grape counted on her tally.  Sometimes I think she's too smart for her own good.

Today I got my first phone call from Natalie at work.  It was very important too, I assure you.  I answered the phone and could hear Sara in the background saying "put the phone to your ear" and then I heard "Wrigley went outside."  Me: "She did?"  Nat: "She went poopy."  Me:  "That's a good dog."  Nat:  "Yah, here mommy, I'm done."  I asked Sara if that is what she called to tell me and Sara said no, she told Natalie she was going to call daddy at work and Nat said "Oh, I will talk to him first and you next" So apparently she felt the need to tell me that my dog went the bathroom.  I love having a two year old! :)

Now for the Wrigley story.  That dog likes to go for walks.....a lot.  She pulls and pulls and pulls the whole time, no matter how long we go, no matter how many times she goes the bathroom.  She pees about every 10 feet, I swear.  This act gets very frustrating for me as I have to stop with her every time she goes and my right arm is now three inches longer than my left.  The most embarassing thing is when she takes a #2.  I feel like a horrible dog owner because I don't clean it up and I just pray that nobody is watching.  Most of the time she does it in lots that are obviously owned by the city or in a corner of a yard where no one has appeared to walk for ages anyway so I don't feel that bad about it.  Not tonight.  She pooped right by someone's mailbox.  Door was open and everything so I was just hoping they weren't watching, I have to be honest.  They were.  Oops.  Enter angry lady.  She comes flying out the door and stands on her porch "Hey, are you going to clean that up?"  Honestly, we weren't if we hadn't got caught.  But since we did we said, sure we'd be right back after we got a bag and scooper.  Apparently the husband didn't buy it.  About half a block from their house, he pulled up and stopped beside us IN HIS VAN and said "Are you really going to go back and clean that up?"  We assured him we were and that was good enough for him as he drove off.  And after we got home, I did go back and clean up after my dog.  We won't go on a walk without the scooper and bag again, I assure you of that.  But honestly, did he have to chase us down with his van?  It's just a little dog poo, it's like fertilizer.  It's not like it's a nuclear weapon that could kill you for goodness sake, it's just poo.  Is it worth all the fuss?  Would you chase someone down if their dog pooped in your yard and they didn't clean it?  Me, I would just go scoop it up myself, what's the big deal?  Oh well, I learned my lesson and will be a responsible dog owner from now on.

Our girls... the models

Anyone who has ever taken a child to have their picture taken knows that its an adventure. Since we are camera-happy parents who had our first child's picture taken at a studio monthly, the bar is sat rather high for how often Hallie will get her picture taken. You'd think this would have made Natalie a champ at posing for the camera... not so at all. (Note: 1. We did not take out a loan to pay for all those pictures- most of them came from Sears where you can get a package of pictures for $10... I showed restraint and did that for most of the months her first year. When we want to spend a fortune, we go to Portrait Innovations. You can't leave that place without enough pictures to wallpaper a room in your house. At least I can't. 2. People told me I was crazy for taking her every month because I'd never manage to get that done with a 2nd child... now I'm determined to prove them wrong!) Anyway- many of Natalie's photo sessions have been disasters, so taking both girls to have Hallie's 1 month pictures taken along with a few sister shots was a little disconcerting. We started talking about it days ago, to prep Natalie, and she seemed excited about having her picture taken with Baby Hallie.

When we got there we didn't have to wait long, which was good because the longer the wait the worse the pictures in my experience! Our photographer was really good with both the girls, and to my astonishment, Natalie was more cooperative than I could have imagined. She is still 2, so there were a few things the photographer wanted her to do that she didn't want to or wouldn't try, but she did awesome. Hallie did her part just by being awake and not crying, what more can you ask at 1 month old! So, the pictures we got are BEAUTIFUL- which isn't hard with our beautiful girls.

Natalie is a child of obsessions. She moves from one to the next every couple of months. One of her first ones was her Larry and Bob CD just before she was 2, then she was hooked on Madagascar for a long time and carried her Madagascar toys everywhere, then the princess phase began (which we are really still in). But the current thing she is hooked on is watching Disney videos on YouTube. They have all the songs from the classics on there- Lion King, Little Mermaid, etc. So, even though she hasn't seen any of those movies (she's a fraidy cat and I'm afraid the villians in them would scare her half to death), she knows all the songs by heart, and randomly sings them when she is playing on her own. So precious. She doesn't quite understand all the words. For example- a line in one Little Mermaid song says "I've got whos-its and whats-its galore" and she says "whos-its and whats-its a-glore". The one that made me about fall over laughing last night was when she told me she wanted to watch "Supercaliexpidocious" and "A bowl of cereal"... The first one I could figure out, but it took me until I looked at her YouTube playlist to see that by "A bowl of cereal" she really mean "A spoonful of sugar"... not sure how she made that mistake, but it was pretty funny. I corrected her, but this morning she was still asking for "A bowl of cereal".

She did it!

Natalie did it! She walked down the aisle by herself as the flower girl at Uncle Eric and Aunt Christina's wedding. It was awesome! Now for some details.

We got there on Friday night around 8:30. The trip was uneventful and for our first trip with a 3 week old and a two and half year old it was a breeze. Hallie started crying about two minutes from Cindy and Charlotte's house where we were staying. The good news is that the crying didn't bother Natalie at all. In fact she said "Uh oh, baby Hallie is crying. Why is she crying mommy?" When we said it was because she was hungry Natalie said "It's okay, baby Hallie, don't cry." Once we got to the house we needed to start the process of winding down so Natalie would go to bed. Of course she didn't want to, she just wanted to play. Guess who won that battle? That's right, for one of the few times of the weekend, mommy and daddy won that one.

Saturday looked promising. Natalie slept in pretty late and was in good shape to be on her best behavior for the rehearsal at 11:30 and lunch afterward. Boy was she ever. She did great although she wouldn't sit still at the rehearsal...which didn't bode well for the wedding. The worry was quickly becoming what to do with her once she walked down the aisle. It was apparent that she would indeed walk down the aisle, but how could we contain her and keep her quiet for 30 minutes. This was not good. When it came time for Natalie to practice they said first the bridesmaids will come in, then our flower girl, then Christina and Natalie stepped up to the pastor and said "I'm the flower girl!" Sara and I were impressed. She walked to the back and grabbed her basket full of flowers. She walked down the aisle and placed a few handfuls on the ground. When she got to the front she realized that she had more and she wasn't going to be done until ALL of them were on the ground. Note to self, at the wedding don't put so many petals in the basket. Here is a picture of her at rehearsal doing her thing.



At rehearsal dinner she and cousin Hannah had a wonderful time playing together. This gave me an idea. Maybe if Hannah sat next to Natalie during the wedding Natalie would see how a big girl is supposed to act and stay quiet....hmmm. After lunch we went to Aunt Emily's for a nap and to relax for a bit. It worked out well because she lives only four blocks from where we had lunch and so Natalie stayed awake until we got to Em's house and then fell asleep. Perfect!

On Saturday night we made her go to bed early and she still slept until 7:45 in the morning so again we were in good shape, the question was how would she be at 2 when she was supposed to walk down the aisle. I mean 2 is precisely the time she normally goes down for a nap. We got to the church about 12:15 and got Natalie changed into her flower girl dress. She was beautiful!


As the time drew near Sara and Aunt Em took Natalie upstairs to the room where the girls were all waiting. Sara came back down and we went to our seats. It was judgement time. Unbeknown to us at that time Natalie was upstairs saying "Come on big girls, you go first and Aunt Christina you go last." as reported by Aunt Emily who was ushering Natalie until it was time to go. So down came the first bridesmaid, then the second, then the third, then the maid of honor....then it seemed like forever.....and ever....and ever....and ever...but then there she was, standing at the back of the aisle holding her basket all by herself.

She came down the aisle and wasn't dropping any petals. A cousin (we think it was Abby) told her to drop some petals. She reached into her basket and....nothing. She panicked. She got a look on her face that said "Oh my goodness, where did all of these people come from, it wasn't like this yesterday" She spotted Sara on the aisle and walked down to her without fussing. Success! No petals, but no crying either!

Now for my plan. Would sitting her next to Hannah work? I sat her down and gave her some juice. That was good for awhile. Next in line was a few (and by a few I mean four bags worth) fruit snacks. She was quiet and moved a little bit, mostly to my lap and back to her seat. She did wonderful, thank you Lord!

After all of that it was time to let loose and have a little fun! That she did, holy cow. She danced and danced and danced some more.


And after all of that, here is what you are left with on the ride home....


Here are a few more pictures from a great weekend. First is Hallie in her matching dress to Natalie.


Our family


The new version of the Hunt Family (welcome Christina!)


And finally one last shot of my sweet sweet flower girl