Enjoying Motherhood

I don't know why, but lately it seems we are just flying through the weeks and my babies just keep getting older. This week we decided that we can no longer consider Taj a toddler and that sadly, he is officially a big boy now. Haivi is fast on her way to approaching toddlerhood and is so close to walking I wouldn't be surprised if she took off on her own this week. I cannot believe that that she will be turning two in less than a year. Now that I teach, I am realizing just how short these years are and how sweet this time really is because  I can never get those chubby cheeks and bum bums back, those little fingers and toes, those infectious baby giggles, and that sweet sweet smell that only babies have. I still have those things with Haivi, except the baby smell, and all I have left of those with Taj are those slightly chubby cheeks and his button nose. Life is definitely moving faster than I thought it would. This post is for naming all the things I love about my kids at this age. This may be boring for some, but this blog is for me and my family and someday when I'm old I want to remember what it was like to have a one year old and a four year old.

Little Miss Haivi:
*She LOVES any kind of stuffed animal, but her favorites are her Minnie baby and her mangy, white stuffed kitty.
*She loves giving kisses to her animals and to her babies. She also loves giving kisses to her momma and her daddy and her big brother Taj. She makes the "mmmmwha" noise when she gives kisses and it always melts my heart.
*She loves her some soul food like her momma and you will regularly hear her exclaiming "mmmm" whenever she's eating. This girl loves food just like her momma AND sweets like her daddy.
*She follows her brother everywhere still and I can just tell that she is itching to run after him. I guarantee these two will be trouble sooner than later. She idolizes him and thinks everything he does is funny except when he takes her beloved kitty from her that is.
*This girl is THE feistiest little thing ever. We still joke that she has A LOT of her Auntie Macee in her. She screeches and squawks at everything and anyone that gets in her way. She is very sassy! We like to call her "squeakers" and "Haivi Hoo."
*She LOVES to dance. I will often look in the back seat to see Haivi's little legs bouncing in time to the song on the radio. She has all kinds of sweet dance moves that include swaying back and forth, flapping her hands, and doing a little shimmy. This girl will definitely be taking some dance classes when she gets older.
*She is super independent and has been since she was about five months old. She likes to try to do everything by herself.
*She is such a sweet little snuggly bug, but she only likes to snuggle for maybe one whole minute tops.
*As of right now she is the queen of tantrums, which has me scared because she's not even two yet. Her tantrums include ALL of the following: slapping, pulling of hair, screeching, kicking, arching of the back, gnashing of teeth, snot, spit, and swaying her upper body back and forth really fast. She really has a flare for the dramatic.
*She is right on cue with her speech, which has us thrilled. She tries to mimic everything we say and can manage a handful of words. She is very curious and wants to know what everything is. She points and we dictate the word and sound, if the object has a sound that is.
*Point is we love having little Haivi Hoo in our house. She has all of us whipped!

T-Man:
*We still call Taj, Taji, but another popular nickname for him is T-Man.
*Taj is doing so well in school right now. His latest accomplishments: counting to 11, writing his name, naming shapes and colors, and trying out all sorts of new words every single day. He feels very proud of himself when he can point to things and name them. I make sure I am his BIGGEST fan every time. He is progressing so quickly that I think we may be able to get him up to speed before Kindergarten. He still has one more year of preschool before he starts Kindergarten, so that will be three years total of preschool for him, which has and will make all the difference.
*Taj is still into riding anything with wheels on it, playing with cars/trains/trucks/, playing with (or teasing) his sister, helping mama cook dinner, getting the mail out of the mailbox, reading books, playing pretend with the holiday decorations, and playing the iPad.
*Taj also started singing in the last few weeks. Every night before bed I lay by Taj and I sing any and every song request he throws at me: Fahmuh Song (Farmer Song: Old MacDonald had a farm), Jesus song (Jesus wants me for a sunbeam), Star song (twinkle, twinkle little star), Santa song (santa clause is coming to town), Wudolph song (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer), Wainbow song (I like to look for rainbows primary song), row, row, row your boat song, and several others I cannot even remember right now. We always say prayers first and then I sing at least five songs for him. He will also try to sing with the radio and he can pretty much sing every word of every song in that old-school Christmas movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ask me what one of my favorite things to do is and I will tell you that nothing makes me happier than listening to my little boy sing. I have waited a long time for him to do this.
*Taj's other thing right now is that he loves giving hugs pretty much all the time. I can count on at least five hugs and smooches on the lips before I leave for work in the morning. I will definitely enjoy this phase for as long as it lasts!
*Something else about this boy is that he LOVES his family so much. He is always excited to see me when I pick him up after work and he always runs to the door when his daddy gets home. Don't even get me started on his papas and gwammas! I think he likes them more than us!
*Basically Taj is one sweet little man and you can tell that he has a very tender spirit. He is so very protective of Haiven and his family. He is very watchful over all of us to make sure that we don't get hurt. I've been scolded for clipping my toe nails before.  In his words, "Stop! Don't hut da toes!" We love this little man and what he's becoming so much!

 My sweet baby girl helping me get the Christmas decor out

 She is so proud of herself for this making such a huge mess, can you tell?

 Justin Bieber in the front

 Mullet in the back

 I cut it all off a couple of days after I took this pic. I LOVED his long hair, but it was in his eyes all the time and the back of it looked ridiculous with that mullet, so off it went!

 Taj helping me make the pizza dough

 This is why mommy  needs an apron for Christmas

Taj's picture of course of the mixer he finds fascinating.

You can probably tell that we are pretty darn lucky parents to be able to have Taj and Haivi in our house. Their daddy and I have both agreed they are the best thing that has ever happened to us and that life would be nothing without our babies. We are so thankful for our little family!

Festival of Trees

 So true! One of my favorites!

 Taj's tree. He called it the "cat in da hat twee"

 Brannon's tree, can you tell why?

 Haivi's tree

 The sweet little "Drama Queen" that inspired this tree. I don't know her story, but she looks like she was one sweet little girl while she was here on earth.

 Also Haivi's tree

 Tree made of plastic bottles

 This too is Haivi's tree because she loves her Minnie Mouse so much!

 Is this not the girliest tree you have ever seen?! Total Haivi as well.

 We tried getting a decent picture of the two of them, obviously that was impossible because we only had partial cooperation at any one time.

A few days ago we decided to take the kiddos down to the Festival of Trees. We went on a Thursday thinking it wouldn't be THAT busy, but we were definitely wrong. People were practically pushing each other out of the way to just to get a better look at the Spongebob tree or the tree made out of wood or the one made out of plastic bottles. There were so many trees and so many people that we were lucky to see at least the tree toppers. We finally shed a little humanity as well and ram-rodded people out of the way with Haiven's stroller. She had eaten a messy, crumbly sucker and made a mess all over the side of it and the dried result somewhat resembled puke so people were more than happy to bail out of our way. We covered maybe half of the trees that were there. I have never seen so many trees in one place! The kids liked looking at the trees, but as a family we all agreed that the gingerbread village was by far our favorite to look at.

Just Because

 I think I counted around 15 pull-ups total wrapped around his legs. haha

 I wuv this little spitfire!

 

He was NOT happy when I took this and claimed I "hut" his eyes.

These kids LOVE having their daddy read them a bedtime story. It is one of my favorite things to do at night: listen to Brannon read to them and hearing the two little stinks laugh and fight with each other.


I wanted to record this story since this is pretty much our family journal. On Friday this last week Brannon was in downtown Salt Lake City driving back to the office after having lunch with a co-worker. They stopped behind a few cars and a bus at a Trax crossing that had the arms down and red lights blinking. Brannon said he heard screaming and looked on the tracks to see a young man in a Jazzy-type wheelchair stuck on the tracks. NOBODY was getting out of their cars to help him, so Brannon threw the truck in park and jumped out of his truck to help. He ran to the man only pausing briefly to make sure the Trax train wasn't going to kill both of them and ran onto the tracks to help the man who was frantically jiggling the control switch on the chair. A homeless man standing nearby also ran out onto the tracks to help Brannon lift the high centered chair off the tracks and pull the man to safety. The Trax train was not able to stop until it got about 15 yards away from them. Brannon wouldn't want me sharing this, but I thought this was a true act of bravery and it revealed to me that Brannon's inner core is good through and through and selfless. Brannon didn't know if the train was going to stop, but he ran out onto the tracks anyway. The homeless man was also very brave. I would like to think I would have done the same thing. I'm sure a lot of us would, but I think most people are frozen in moments like that and hope that someone will come to the rescue. We are so lucky to have him in our family!

Home Improvement Before and Afters

 Basement Before-the color of the baseboard in that picture is the same color the entertainment center below used to be.

 Basement Before

 The entertainment center was painted Black Bean, which actually was more like Brown Bean.

 Worse than Before: I felt like I was standing in the Buckaroo Fan Club den. My school mascot colors were black and orange. Knockout Orange was definitely NOT the autumn-spice color I was going for. Standing in the basement with this color on was an attack on the senses and incited great waves of anxiety, nervousness, and paranoia. What made this even better was that Brannon hired two labor ready guys, Maury and Pablo to paint this awful color on. It took them 9 hours and I was sure that Maury was going to kill Pablo before the end of the day. Poor Pablo couldn't speak a lick of English and Maury was a know-it-all homeless guy with zero patience for poor painting tactics. I heard Maury tell Brannon that he had been arrested the night before for beating the crap out of another homeless guy. At one point I heard Maury start yelling at Pablo, and I feared that we would have a crime scene on our hands in the basement and that we would just have to sell the house and move away to forget the awful memories forever tied to the color orange. Thank goodness Brannon intervened and there was no crime committed in our basement besides that of the orange assault on our walls.

 This painting mishap occurred the weekend before Halloween and Brannon was leaving town on Monday, so I made him go to Sherwin Williams with me on a SUNDAY (I know, it was an EMERGENCY though!) and pick out a new color. Thank goodness my brother is a manager for Sherwin Williams and hooked us up with a major discount because this was a MAJORLY expensive mistake! I painted the entire 1st coat before Brannon got home on Halloween. Then we spent the next three nights painting until 2 in the morning. There is also a small bedroom that we painted the same color not pictured. We love the new color, called Drizzle. It feels very soothing and serene in our basement now and we have pretty much eliminated ALL traces of that dreadful orange.

 

 The weekend after Halloween we carpeted the three bedroom upstairs. I was tired of cold, creaky floors and we are absolutely LOVING it! Taj and Haivi spend a lot more time playing in their rooms now. Our rooms are SO much warmer now. We hope to carpet out basement too by the end of spring. It is amazing what new carpet and paint can do to update a home!

Halloween

 Brannon was on a business trip the week of Halloween and got back just in time to take the kids trick or treating. Thank goodness papa came to town and helped us carve a pumpkin the night before. Taj was very worried about the pumpkin guts and kept telling papa to "washa hands."

 We dressed Haivi as Minnie Mouse because we don't go anywhere without her minnie mouse "baby."

 I love her pose in this one!

 She dug into Taj's spoils and pulled out a few things for herself-that's my girl!

 We did buy Taj a fireman costume that he picked out himself, but he wanted nothing to do with it, so we dressed him in what he wears every day and figured people would think he actually dressed up for Halloween. Well it worked. It wasn't hard passing him off as a cowboy to the city folk.

 Taj's first house and he scored a king sized Snickers!

 Taj really figured out Halloween this year and I ran from house to house with him. He would run to the door, knock, and then ring the doorbell. He had to do it the same way every time and when people opened the door, he would rush right in their house and help himself to a piece of candy. At least he was polite and only took ONE piece of candy, haha!

Haivi having a Kit Kat.