Slowly Gaining Independence

My dear honey buns, 

If I were to pick a word that would describe you all right now, the one that comes to mind is: Independence. As we were heading out for our daily Teddy walks one afternoon, I just had to snap this quick picture because it captured you all at your current life stage so well.   

Nathan, you are seeking to be more independent these days. You even wanted to help with walking Teddy in the afternoon by yourself! I did let you walk up 6 houses and back and when you returned, you were so proud of yourself and I could sense this pride in your attitude as you took care of Teddy's poop and put the leash back. The next day, you waved sheepishly at a lady walking her dog. I asked you if you knew her and you told me that she stopped and talked to you the day before and you had told her about only going 6 houses away. 

Hannah, you are just living your life well. You are independent, you wear all the beautiful things (at the same time) and you are finding your voice in the world. You still tend to avoid responsibility, but you are honest about it when you "accidentally" do the wrong thing. 

Hailey, you are starting to love pretend play and want to do all the things on your own. "Me Lai" is a common phrase that you use when you want to say, "I want to do it myself." You are loving Dora the Explorer and will request it when you get to have screen time. 

The weather has been fabulous these past few weeks. Despite the Cedar allergies, we've been pumping up the nasal steroids and loading up on allergy medications to be able to enjoy the outdoors. Hannah is now severely allergic to cedar pollen, and I am pretty sure Nathan is secretly glad that Hannah now has some sort of allergy. 

Some afternoons we skate in the garage or outside by the school. 

 One day we went to the wildflower just to play Pokemon Go. Usually we will spin a stop or 2 if we are waiting for someone, but this past weekend, I just let you 2 run loose to catch them all while I hung out with Hailey at the sand pit...in her Frozen dress.

 We've officially completed an entire year of martial arts and while Nathan is still very motivated to keep going, Hannah's interest waxes and wanes constantly. One day, you want to quit, but then the next day, you want to keep doing it. You have started gymnastics once a week, and the original plan was to quit after you earn your next belt, but I guess I'm going to keep playing this one by ear.

 Nathan, you are currently obsessed with Beyblades. Since Chinese school hasn't started up, we've been spending the time we would usually spend on chinese homework, on epic Beyblade battles. For those of you who don't know of the Beyblade world, these are basically tops that you spin and battle each other in plastic arenas. Apparently there's a TV show that these games are based off of. How you make a TV show out of battling tops is beyond me!

You still enjoy playing board games and your current favorite one to play is Galaxy Trucker. You and Dad, sometimes I join in, will play a round a night right before bedtime. 

Hannah, you adore your teacher Ms. Greenwood. I think she is the perfect teacher for you. She's fun, but firm when she needs to be. I also love that she really lets you all play and imagine a lot without focusing too much on academics. We happened to see her bringing back her tortise one weekend. 

 While Nathan and I enjoy playing games together, Hannah, you and I enjoy food together. Whether it's roasted corn and turkey legs at the Austin flea market, or rolling our own sushi's at home, I am so happy to be able to get exited about and enjoy food with you.

Hailey, your imagination has just taken off lately. You love playing pretend with various stuffies, you will spend so much time pretending to cook in the play kitchen, and you are always willing to help me out with the everyday tasks that I have to do. 

In the picture below, you have comandeered Teddy's bed. I could tell that he was offended because as soon as you got up, he quickly ran in to claim his space once again. 

You love helping me change my wheels out. You are getting pretty good at loosening and tightning my hex nuts. I just have to show you with my finger which way to turn the wrench, and you start spinning away.

Nathan and Hannah have also initiated you into the shake and bake club. I shake it and you bake it! Or is it the other way around? 

 You are very proud to be able to wash your own hand. Now, you don't want any help at all through the whole process. If anyone even attempts to help you, like turn off the water, you will undo their action and redo it yourself. Very typical toddler behavior. I have been singing "Happy Birthday" while you are rinsing to limit your time at the sink. You have quickly learned this limitation and will abide by it most of the time. I stress most.

 You love wearing dresses like the big girls do and you will ask to get your picture taken when you recognize a good photo op. Like this jackrabbit. You even knew to pet it while saying "Cheese!" What a little ham!

 I also love how you come up with interesting ways to play with things. Yesterday, you pulled my skate around like you were walking Teddy.

OOOH, I have some exciting updates on the dairy sensitivity thing. So it turns out that you are probably just lactose intolerant. When I initially tested to see if you were lactose intolerant, I don't think we were doing a great job with limiting your lactose intake. Since we've been doing really good with the no dairy for the past few months, I decided to try giving you lactaid tablets before you eat anything with dairy. I started with a small amount of yogurt made with lactose free milk, and have been increasing the amount of lactose that you are exposed to each day. You were even able to eat a half a slice of cheese pizza and a bowl of ice cream with lactaid and felt just fine this afternoon! The joy that you had on your face as you devoured the pizza at lunchtime was adorable.

So, you can eat real cheese and eat real ice cream! This is huge! Now I just need to remember to carry lactaid tablets with me when we go out.

Well, I think I did a fairly good job of capturing you all right now, I'm just so glad I'm documenting these days because there have been so many things that my brain has just completely blocked out.  Daddy remembers these things happening, I vaguely remember it maybe happening, but I never remember the details. Early childhood parenting is rough, especially when your babies, ahem, don't sleep well at night. 

Right now, things are good. I'm so thankful for you 3 and I'm so glad that I get to be your mother.

Love,
Mommy

Christmas in Chicago

Dear Kids, 

If I were to pick one picture to sum up our Winter vacation it would be this: 

Things would be all hunky dory and then Hailey does something like this...

Overall, it was a smooth trip filled with fun events and family time. I've organized the pictures by theme for this post, so I'll start with all the sweet afternoon car nap pictures. Hailey, you are finally at an age where if you miss an afternoon nap here and there, you are still able to hold yourself together by evening. So, this trip, instead of being bound by naps, we were able to pretty much do everything that the family decided to do (except for the Lincoln Zoo one day because your tummy was hurting really bad that morning to the point where you were screaming for 10 minutes in the car and then we decided to turn around).

Sweet sleeping baby. 

Conked out from ice skating. 

We arrived in Chicago on Christmas Eve, so everyone, all 11 of us in Grandma and Grandpa's house woke up on Christmas morning and uncle Tim, who joined us later made 12 people opening gifts on Christmas morning.

 We went to church, and I don't remember much of it because Hailey, you were very restless and so I pretty much walked around the church lobby with you.

Afterwards we went to the great grandparents' house on grandpa's side for the annual Christmas extravaganza. We shared a pot luck, did the usual robber gift exchange, and as the Christmas band was setting up the set, the crowds started to thin out.

The weather was unseasonably warm, so warm that you all were able to go outside and play.

 The highlight was throwing pieces of frozen lake ice back onto the lake.

 The next day, Nathan went to play broom ball with Daddy while I stayed home with the girls. Nathan, you loved the whole experience and would not stop talking about how you almost scored 3 goals!

Hannah, you went with your cousins to Kenosha, and when you returned, you and your cousin baked Frozen cookies kits that you had both received for Christmas.

 We saw each set of the great-grandparents at least twice while we were there. One time Great-grandma even broke out her accordion and played for us.

Hailey, it was interesting watching you play with these classic toys from years past. I noticed you were matching the balls to the same color rings. While you were not looking, I mixed up the balls to see if you would notice. When you turned back, you were a bit confused at first, but then you proceeded to put each ball in the corresponding spot once again.

 The second time we visited the great-grandparents on grandma's side, we went swimming in her building's indoor pool.

 Hailey was pretty excited to run around, perhaps a bit too excited. You were having some tummy troubles, so we kept you out of the pool. I was afraid that you would fall into the water, so I took you upstairs to the game room.

We played a round of pool, which turned into an epic game of find the ball inspired by Easter egg hunts.

One afternoon we went downtown to go skating at the Ribbon. This $10 penguin rental was probably the buy of the year because Hailey, you were able to stand in front of the penguin while I (or someone else) pushed you around. 

 And then when you were ready for a rest, Hannah was able to push it around.

I mainly stuck with you girls and I managed to take a quick selfie of us with the city skyline in the background.

 Once in awhile, Nathan, you would come zooming past us.

 After skating, we walked and had lunch. On the way back, we snapped a quick picture by the Bean.

 Of the 10 days we were there, it snowed twice. The first time was on New Years Eve. We woke up to a thin blanket of snow outside.

 So grandpa capitalized on this and had you guys outside shoveling the sidewalk at 9 am.

 Hailey, you watched through the window, a bit confused at what you were looking at. It was so cold outside, so I kept you inside until it was time to go sledding. You ended up going down a few times with either me or Daddy, but then you were done and wanted to go back inside. I don't blame you, 29 degree weather is cold!

 You all sledded for about an hour and then came back inside.

 The next day, the weather was a bit warmer, so we were able to build some snowpeople in the front yard.

 Hannah, you really were very set on rolling the ball of snow around until you could not push it any longer.

 Hailey, you were so amused that you kept pointing at the snow man and giggling, "Olaf!"

The next morning, we did some more sledding, and when Hailey went back inside, we had some epic snowball fights. I was nice enough to help you each get started with a small pile of ammunition.

The day we had the snowball fight ended up being warm, so by the afternoon, almost all of the snow had melted. A few days later, it snowed the evening before we headed back to Texas. 

We spent a lot of time indoors, despite the mostly nice weather. Hailey discovered an attraction to pin ball machines. Grandpa has this antique one in the basement and you all love to play it whenever you can. Nathan, you were very excited to break a million points for your score. Let's see what you top score will be next year. 

 Another fun place we went to was the Palatine Library. Besides checking out several books and movies, we also went to the Noon Years Eve Dance party where we danced in the new years 12 hours earlier.

 I wanted to go back to Rockford at some point to go to their amazing children's museum once again. Last time, I was kind of stuck in the infant play area with Hailey, but this time, we got to explore it all in its entirety. I'm just so impressed with the quality of hands on exhibits and I think I am going to say that it is probably the BEST children's museum that I've been to.

Giant Bubble Station

Making Vapor Filled Bubbles

I snapped this picture because I just loved the wonder on Hannah's face. 

Making Corn Husk Dolls!

Nathan you probably spent an hour and a half total between building his own paper rocket and folding various oragami things. In your own words, "I'm pretty interested in paper crafts now." 

There was so much stuff for Hailey to do. 

Hannah loved the make-believe area. 

By mid afternoon, I found you just hanging out. I think at this point, you were exhausted, overwhelmed and ready to just rest. 

We mostly enjoyed spending time with all the family that we don't usually get to see. I'm so proud to see how you guys have grown over the past few years and I'm even more excited to see what is to come. 

One last picture from our return. We were taking a walk outside today and you wanted to push the stroller. You insisted on pushing the stroller through the grass, which reminded me of the Robert Frost quote, "I took the path less traveled." You are this kid. 

 If you didn't take the path less traveled, you wouldn't have found all the amazing acorns that were on the ground!

Well, that's all for now. It's 12:19 pm and Hailey, you are crying. I'm going to stop here and will probably update this post with some of Daddy's pictures, but school starts in 2 days so we'll be back on schedule before we know it.

Love,
Mommy