A Musician in the House

Mally is way into music.  She loves to sing songs.  She loves to listen to the radio.  She loves to watch music videos.

If you are riding in the car with her and you don’t have the radio on – she will request the radio to be turned on.  Then she will probably follow it with – turn it up.  Then she will probably start requesting her favorite songs.  She also likes to tell me when she doesn’t like a song and for me to change the channel.  And if I change the channel and she likes the song she will holler… hey I like that song!

I recently found out that we have music videos on our on demand and found “Crazy Girl” and “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” which are her very favorite songs right now.  She knows these songs by the first seconds… and I’m talking seconds!  She will yell “You know this song?!”  She gets so excited when these songs come on.

Mally pretends to play the piano and drums all the time and sings songs.  When she is done she will request that you clap and cheer for her. 

The other morning I was getting ready and I found the kids in my room… well I purposely put Max in there, but Mally is usually where ever we are.  Mally was singing and playing the “drums” while Max watches, squeals, kicks, and twirls his hands.  I thought it was just precious so I sneaked and got my phone and started recording them.  It isn’t the best video because the light is coming in the window which is glaring… but it is still very fun for me.

Oh and Maggie starts barking in the video and Mally starts singing “Maggie that’s enough”.  Otherwise I have no idea what else she is saying and she talks extremely clear… one of the nursery workers at church told Grandma Mary she has the vocabulary of a 5-year old… but apparently when she makes up songs – she also makes up words.  : ) 

Enjoy!

Is that a frickin door?

I forgot to write down this story when I posted our new house updates and I don’t want to forget it.

The day our front door got replaced I came in for lunch and the door was replaced that morning.  Mally & Mrs. Carolyn were downstairs having Rhyme Time so Mally didn’t hear me come in.  When she finally heard me she came flying upstairs and she stops at the top of the stairs and she says “Hey Mom!  Is that a frickin door?”  I’m shocked.  I freeze.  I can’t move.  I just stare at her.  “Mom!  Is that a frickin door?”  Is she saying what I think she is saying?  Mrs. C middle daughter was there that day and she was upstairs with me and I looked at her and she looked back at me and she throws her hands in the air in surrender mode and says “I don’t swear.  We don’t swear.  I don’t know where she got that from.”  So she is saying what I think she is saying. 

“No Mally.  That is a front door.” 

“Nooo Mom!  That is a frickin door!”

Note to self – stop saying the words frickin and freakin!  And here I thought her first swear word would be from Jesse!

Then my sister comes over and she says “I like the frickin door.”

I told her the story – so she did it on purpose!  Sheesh.

Little Bike

Dads play completely different then Moms.  My quality time with Mally is reading books, hide and seek, signing songs, playing with toys, etc.  Jesse’s quality time with Mally is chasing/running after her around the loop in our house.  Mally screams with glee yelling “chase me!”  Then he catches her hangs her upside down by her feet and swing her like a pendulum for awhile and drops her on the couch.  The entire time she is in fits of giggles.  She gets up off the couch and says “how about chase me?”  and takes off running and they do it all over again.  Another activity they do is Jesse will pick her up and let her hang onto the beam that runs down the center of ceiling.

Just the other day Jesse got his little bike running again and now they ride this bike around the yard!  Oh she loves it!!  Jesse says she is either signing or talking the whole time – he can’t hear her to know what she is signing/saying.

The dog is not a fan of this little bike.  She barks a lot while they are riding.

And yes, Jesse does prefer to ride in work clothes best.  ; )  Somewhere around here we have a picture (from when we were dating) of him on his dirt bike jumping over a truck… in his church clothes!  We stopped at his buddy’s house after church one Sunday and his buddy had a dirt bike track behind his house and they were attempting some tricks.  Well Mr. Jesse needed to impress me, I think, and threw on his helmet and jumped over this truck!  Must of worked, because here we are… married!

I bought Mally her first pair of snow boots!  (I couldn’t get her feet into boots last year.)  She refused to wear them until I called them her motorcycle boots… now she will wear them.  She also calls the zip-up sweatshirt she is wearing her “a-b-c-d-e jacket”.  It says Old Navy across the front.  She doesn’t like to wear her real jackets and if I try to put them on her she says, “I want to wear my a-b-c-d-e jacket.”

Jesse thinks that Mally will be ready for her first dirt bike this summer.  He says you just put training wheels on them when they are starting out.  And when we moved here to the house, two houses down, their little guy was riding a dirt bike with training wheels.  I remember them telling me he was 3… and Mally will be 3.  I’m not going to win this battle.

They do have calmer, safer activities that they do together.  She thinks it is very fun to ride along with Jesse on his errands – in the Jeep!  We don’t ever take the Jeep when we go places as a family – but hopefully next summer when Max is bigger we can.  So going for a ride in the Jeep is loads of excitement for her.  They also like to watch Bug Bunny together.

Something about a Dad and his little girl!  So special!

Makeover–Home Edition

We have been wanting to reside our house since before we even signed the closing papers.  Other projects just kept getting in front of it – and then we thought we would do it this fall and we looked into and then decided to hold off.  However, we really couldn’t hold off on the roof – so we re-shingled.  After the new shingles were on it was hard to leave the old siding on.

Here is what it looked like before – this is a picture that the realtor took.

It does not show all the weeds that were in the front side.  And this next picture kind of does.

Here is what it most recently looked like.

And since we were getting new siding – why not add on a front entrance and replace the door.

It bothered Jesse that I left the garage door open in my picture.  I am usually a very Type A personality – but for some reason that door didn’t bother me… but now it does. 

I found inspiration for the look on pinterest!

The reason the wood doesn’t go all the way to the bottom is because we will be putting a stone pillar wrap there.

Here it is at night.

Now the house was looking good and our back patio was half patio half swimming pool… remember…

Jesse needed to get that patio fixed (before snow flies) so that we didn’t have major issues this coming spring.  We found a guy who was willing to fix it for us with the exception that Jesse had to tear it all out.  And he did.  He lugged each and every piece out and pressure washed it – all by himself!  It is all level now and will not flood anymore!  It was like a puzzle for the landscaper to get it all back in there the way we had it and so that he didn’t need anymore blocks, because we didn’t have any more.

It looks so so so so much better!!  It will get a varnish/sealant which will darken up these stones and give it a whole new look – an even better look.

This what our back yard looked like most of the summer as we attempted to grow grass.

And now.  (Still working on that growing grass part.)

This is the end of updates… for 2011.  I’m sure next spring will bring a whole new round of updates/makeovers/improvements.  One improvement leads into about ten more. 

Maxwell–6 Months

Maxwell at 6 months…

He still has not rolled over!  I try and try to get this kid to roll and he refuses.  I try to put very enticing things just barely out of his reach so he has to stretch… and he will stretch… and then decide nope, not worth it.  However, one morning I laid him on his back with his toys and went to take a shower and came back and he was on his belly.  And today I think I figured it out.  I left Max with Mally (she loves it when I leave him instead of take him with me) and I hear him getting fussy and I come and see that he has moved to the other side of the living room.  Hmm.  Then I see Mally strattle him and heave-and-hoe and drag him across the floor!  My eyes pop out of my head!  Then she squats down beside him and yells “roll over Max!” and gives him a shove.  Okay, it was not funny at the time, however it makes me giggle now.  She watches me a little too closely sometimes… I’ve been encouraging to get him to roll over and I try to assist him… gently.  Mally hasn’t caught on to my gently though.

He is so very very very close to sitting up by himself.  And would rather sit then lay down now.  He is such a good player too.  He can sit (with my assistance) and play toys for a long time.  Right now he likes to play with the big over size blocks and anything that fits in his mouth that he can chew.  My kitchen spatula is a fav too!  The bubbles from doing dishes are also very fascinating.

He is eating more solid foods.  He actually is eating 3 meals a day of solid foods.  He is very much into food now too.  If you are eating something in front of him he sits there and watches with his mouth gaping open and his hands and feet twirling.  He sampled Jesse’s juice one morning (out of a real glass!) and he was huge fan of that! 

Still not sleeping threw the night.  I’ve tried to just snuggle him back to sleep… and I’ll get him back to sleep, but when I go to lay him down he wakes up.  Sometimes he wakes up (10pm) and there is no way he can possibly be hungry so I will let him cry and he will go back to sleep after a while.  But I am afraid to let him do this too many times because Mally and him share a room and I don’t want two kids awake in the middle of the night.  I don’t know if I just need to bite the bullet and let him cry and just pray that Mally won’t wake up… or is he really hungry?  I know he doesn’t look like he is starving.  So hard.  I thought for sure once he started solids he would sleep – wrong!

Temper!  Max at 6 months old has a HOT temper!  As the saying goes zero to 60… yeah that is him!  He will be content and all of sudden unhappy and mad.

Screams.  He is also a screamer when he gets frustrated.  He was in his highchair this morning and I gave him a toy… and the toy fell down between him and the tray and he couldn’t get it – SCREAM.  The other night Jesse and I were in the kitchen cleaning up after supper and Max and Mally were in the living room and all of sudden we hear Max scream… and I knew it was his frustrated scream and Jesse went to look and he said, “shesh you would of thought something attacked him.”

Giggles.  He is so easy to get to giggle.  I love his giggles!  He is also very ticklish and will giggle so hard when tickled. 

It seems as if his lactose intolerance is lifting!  I’ve reintroduced cheese and he isn’t having any troubles with it!  I had milk a few weeks ago and that didn’t work… however I ran out of my milk this morning so I used real milk on my cereal and he didn’t do too bad.  But now that I think of it – he had trouble falling asleep tonight, which was what happened when I had real milk a few weeks ago.  So I better stay away from milk still.  But cheese is okay.  And am I so happy to eat cheesy things again.  Pizza just isn’t the same when you have to scrap the cheese off. 

Babbles.  He is very much in the babble stage.  I’ve been trying to get him to say “ma ma ma” but no luck.  He is just kind of in the “aaahhh” and every once in awhile I hear “na na na”

He is also a blanket boy.  Needs his blanket!  He also needs his blanket over his head to sleep.  And if you remove his blanket from over his head – he will wake up and grab for it.  He also is a very light sleeper.  Usually kids sleep in vehicles, and Max does.  But as soon as we stop the truck and turn it off – he is awake!  There is no sneaking him in the house and into bed.

He has also found the TV and gets real excited when it is Mickey Mouse time.  Mally gets to watch Mickey Mouse after lunch.  One day I was holding Max when the girls turned it on and he started hoping up and down in my arms and wiggling trying to see around me to the TV.  Mrs. C said one day she was trying to feed him lunch and it was on and he was trying to turn around in his high chair to see the TV.  So she spun him around and he got to watch TV and eat lunch that day.  When I was uploading my pictures from my camera – I found this next picture and I did not take it.  I’m guessing the girls did…

Poor Max with all these girls!  One day at lunch we came home and the girls are dancing all over the living room and singing and Max is sitting in his high chair watching them.  We better find him some rough tough boys to hang out with… and fast!

Mallory @ 6 Months

She Climbs!

Mally has never been a climber.  She never attempted (that I can remember – and I do have a horrible memory) to climb out of her crib when she was little.  We took her out of the crib because Max was coming and he needed the crib.

Well…

She now climbs IN the crib.  If she hears Max waking up from a nap she is off and running and yelling “Max is awake!  Max is awake!”  She flies threw the door and when she sees him she is yelling “Good Morning Buddy!”  And 1… 2… 3… she is in his crib.

Sometimes he thinks it is really fun.  Other times not so much.

She will play his music for him… and that is always a great thing.

She is very wiggly.  More like extremely wiggly.  She is not fun to sleep with.  Every once in awhile she gets up WAY too early and I pull her into bed with me and she wiggles and wiggles and wiggles… I am better off just getting up, but I don’t.  : )

She hasn’t figured out how to climb out yet.  We keep telling her and showing her how to get out the same way she got in.  So once she is in there we hear… Momma/Daddy come get me out!! 

Now I just hope she doesn’t climb in his crib in the middle of the night during her sleep walking episodes. 

Spike or No Spike

When I am in public with Max we get all kinds of strangers that will stop me to comment on his hair.  I have big burley Harley guys that stop me and say… what did you do to his hair?  Is that natural?  And I responded with – Yes!  This is natural!  There is nothing in it!  I do not spike it!  Big Burley Harley Guy thought Max’s hair was totally awesome!  : ) 

Then the other day he was sitting in his high chair with the sun shining in and this is what I saw…

Oh boy Max!  That is some wild hair!

One day we were eating in a restaurant after church and a guy and his son walked in and he picked his son up to see Max sitting in his high chair on top of the table, and said “This is what your hair looked like as a baby!  Exactly like that!”  And I said, at what point did it lay down?  He laughed and said, It doesn’t!  We just shave his head now. 

And here is what he looks like fresh from the tub.  His hair hasn’t spiked up yet.  It will.  And it happens very quickly.  Soon as his hair gets dry – bing. bing.  bing.  You can practically hear it popping back up.

He was wiggly and making blurry pictures… but I attempted.

So Buddy Max may have a future in lots of gel to keep his hair down… or in an electric razor to keep his head shaved.  Or… he just might like spikey hair!

Date Night!

With my Mally Rae!!

I found out that our school drama club was putting on a musical… Footloose.  I thought, oh I want to take Mally.  She is so into music and dancing right now she might think this is fun!  I have never seen the movie… I just assumed there would be lots of dancing and singing.

I am hesitant to leave Mad Max with people (even Jesse) because he seriously turns into Mad Max as soon as he doesn’t have sight of me and has been known to cry.  And cry for long periods of time.  But Jesse told me to go and to have fun and to not think about them.  So I did.  I was leaving just 30 minutes before Max’s bedtime so I didn’t think it would be too rough for Jesse.  Mallory was pretty excited that it was just her and I and that Max and Daddy were staying home. 

I had Jesse take our picture before we left.  Our first Mommy-Mally Date!  We will so be doing this again – it was loads of fun for her and me!

The schools stage was in the gym… so they just had folding chairs set up on the floor.  I wasn’t completely sure how Mally would do with something like this.  We had never done this with her before.  So I picked the last row.  : )  This way she could talk, if she needed, and she could be wiggly.  And, most importantly, we could leave if need be.

I took a picture of my big girl sitting in her chair waiting so patiently for the show to begin.

The play didn’t start until 7pm and she goes to bed at 7:30.  I was really pushing my luck with this one.  Half way threw the first half she asked for her blanket, and I didn’t have it.  But intermission came and we got a bottle of water and popcorn.  Popcorn!  And this woke her up enough to make it threw the second half.  She still wanted her blanket – so she snuggled my scarf and that seemed to work. 

I am pretty sure she enjoyed our special little time and now I know that she will sit still for these types of things and will have to plan some more.  Maybe next time it will be more for kids.  : ) 

Max on the other hand… he cried.  And cried.  And cried… 

Last Playground Trip of 2011

We had a nice day last week so I took the kids for a walk and at the last minute I decided to walk to the park and let Mally play for awhile.  A long while.  I think we were there for an hour.  Max was content and sleeping soundly in the stroller. 

Mally was having so much fun climbing and sliding.

It is crazy how much she has grown since early this summer when we would come here.  She use to be afraid of the big slide.  The big slide use to go way too fast for her and she would fall off the bottom and land on her butt.  Not anymore.  It use to be a big stretch for her to climb up the stairs.  Not anymore.

Then she got Goofy out of the stroller and took him on the slide.

Then she took him down the big slide

They crashed off the end and fell on the ground.

A couple girls came to play after we had been there a long time by ourselves.  As soon as they came close enough Mally went up to them and said “Come play with me.” and the three girls ran around and played.  We had never seen these girls before, but they played and played. 

I took a video for myself.  Just to have to remember how she played and how she pretend with Goofy.  She would take Goofy’s hand and have him spin the spinners and yell in the thing.  So it might be boring for y’all… but it is special to me.  : )