Two and a Half Years Old!

It's hard to believe that Zed and Alice are 2.5 years old--it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that they were born. On the other hand, they seem to grow and learn more every single day, and sometimes it blows my mind that a little 2 year old can do and say the things they do and say.

At their check up this past week, Zed was 35.9 tall (50th percentile) and weighed 30.8 lbs (63rd); Alice was 35.4 inches tall (50th) and weighed 24.4 lbs (7th). The doctor was quite impressed that Alice had grown THREE inches in six months and that she'd hit the 50th percentile for height.


At two and a half Zed:

• loves to do things "all by my own self"--he gets dressed on his own and even tries to do a belt all by himself (he still needs a little help but he's determined to try it on his own every single time) 
• loves to color--he'll color for hours sometimes, and if Alice isn't coloring her pages, he volunteers to help 
• doesn't like to listen--he definitely has a mischievous streak and even once responded, "Listening is hard!" when Adam asked him if he was listening
• likes doing puzzles; that's another activity he'll do for long stretches of time and he's getting really good at doing even more complex puzzles 
• likes to make noises all day long--and ask "What's that noise?" or point out "I making noises!" to ensure that we notice 
• likes to make pancakes and waffles--he asks on nearly a daily basis to make "pampcakes and waffles"

At two and a half Alice:

• likes to repeat everything we say; she is very good at giving detailed explanations of things (if you be naughty, you go to time out and Mommy be sad and Daddy be sad and...and..and...)  and gives reports on what happened each day
• loves to read books and go to story time at the library 
• likes to sing and make up songs 
• likes to snuggle--she is an early riser and comes to snuggle with Adam every morning when she gets up 
•  likes to push her stuffed dog around the house in a stroller or shopping cart
• likes to hoard things--she loads up her purse and stroller with everything she can possibly fit in there!

We are working on potty training (kind of) and it's exhausting (for me at least). Alice and Zed like weekly visits to the library, like it when their friends Henry or Ella come over, and like playing with their cousins (although they are disappointed that Perry and Kylie are in school and therefore aren't around to play as much). They are learning to say their prayers and listen when we read scriptures. They like to sing "I Love to See the Temple" and "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man." They like to give hugs and kisses--to us and to each other. They are super, terrific, wonderful kids, and we love them so much!

Two Years Old!

Zed and Alice turned two in May, which is just crazy to think about.

At two, Alice:

• has brown eyes and brown hair
• it still on the small side--she was 32.3 inches tall and 22.2 pounds at her two-year check up
• loves to sing--she will sing songs around the house and she makes up songs of her own and she frequently requests songs from Mommy, with her favorites being "The Wheels on the Bus" and "I Love to See the Temple"
• knows her colors and loves to find things that match--a pink chair matches her pink shirt, and so on. While she mostly matches with colors, she will occasionally match other things; for example, a picture of a dog in a book matches her stuffed dog
• likes to "go walking"--she loads up her doll stroller with as much stuff as it can possibly hold and then walks from one end of the house to the other, and sometimes she recruits Zed, too; she tells him to get the toy shopping cart so he can "go walking"
• loves to eat noodles and cheese--but she is particular on the color; if we give her white cheese and she wants "orange cheese" instead, she will be sure to correct us
• talks and talks and talks and talks--and if I tell her I need "peace and quiet for a few minutes," she is quick to tell me, "No peace, no quiet."
• likes to go to the park and "swing up high" and go to the library and play in the swimming pool
• likes to give BIG kisses; she grab our faces in both hands and pull us in for a big kisses

At two, Zed:

• has hazel eyes and blonde hair that is getting darker
• is average in size--he was 34.5 inches tall and weighed in at 27.8 pounds at his two-year check up
• likes to climb on things and roughhouse
• likes green; he knows other colors as well, but he seems to get the most excited about green things
• does not like it when we stop at red lights or stop signs; when we do stop, he urges us to "Go, go" and when we tell him the light is red, he likes to tease us and insist that it's green
• likes his routines; for example, on Sundays, we usually share a pew with our friends the Waltons, and if they aren't there, or if they just haven't arrived yet, Zed will say "Ella" and "Audrey" over and over and over again, asking where they are
• likes to dance and thinks it's fun to turn on the radio all by himself and start dancing
• likes to yell! He just yells for fun sometimes, over and over
• likes to splash in the swimming pool and go to the library
• gives super awesome bear hugs

Both Alice and Zed continue to keep us laughing and shaking our heads at their antics. Adam and I ask ourselves on a regular basis, "Where do they learn these things?!" We love seeing how sweet they are with each other--like if one of them gets hurt, quite often the other will come over to offer a hug or a kiss. Of course they have their moments when they fight over toys or who gets to sit in which car seat or whatever, but usually they are pretty nice to each other. I guess I'm probably biased, but I think they're the cutest kids ever :)

19 Months!

I started this post right after Zed and Alice had their 18 month check up, but it's been busy around here with the holidays, so I didn't get anything posted 'til today--when they are 19 months old.
At their check up last month, Zed weighed 25 lbs, 5 oz (66th percentile) and was 33 inches tall (70th). The pediatrician was happy to see that Alice weighed19 lbs, 13 oz (14th--she's in double digits!) and was 31.25 inches (31st).

They both have grown quite a bit since their 15 month check up and they're learning a ton, too! They're both saying quite a few words: Mama, Dada, Zed, Alice, Grandma, baby, shoes, juice, cheese, thank you,  arf-arf, duck, etc. Yesterday and today they've been saying some of their relatives' names: Kylie, Perry, Elyse, Addi, Holly, and Cole. Alice is quite a little talker and says sheep, tights, coat, all done, all gone, more, milk, Mary (which she learned from the Nativity magnets on the fridge), snack, etc. Zed doesn't say as many words as she does, but he definitely understands. He is also SUPER observant; he notices how we do things and is quick to copy or to "fix" things. For example, there is a cupboard in our kitchen that has a door that rolls up and down. I usually have it down, but one day, I had used my stand mixer, which I store in there, and had left the cupboard open. Zed made Adam take him over to the cupboard so that he could shut it! It's interesting to see how he just notices these things--things that I haven't ever pointed out to him or tried to get him to learn.
Zed and Alice both continue to enjoy music and dancing. Alice also likes to sing sometimes and she has a pretty little voice. They like to play outside. Alice especially loves swinging--she's content to swing in her little pink swing for a LONG time--while Zed likes to run around and do lots of things--go down the slide, ride their trike, etc. Lately, Zed's outdoor routine includes asking me for a snack; he thinks it's fun to have me put his snack on his and Alice's picnic table.
Alice and Zed both give terrific hugs--to us and to each other. It's super fun to see when they get in a bear hugging mood and hug each other for dear life.They are so sweet with each other and take good care of each other--like tonight before bed when Zed tried to wrap Alice up in her blankets, or a couple weeks ago in Nursery at church when I left the room and Zed started bawling and Alice tried to hug him.

Adam and I absolutely adore our sweet, beautiful children and are so grateful the Lord has blessed us so richly!

The New House...and the Complications of Buying a Short Sale and Working with a Crazy Realtor

For those of you who wants the whole story (well, okay, this is actually the short version of it, particularly once I get to the interactions we had with our realtor, but it's going to be a long post...if you want the short version, what you need to do is ask Adam. He'll give you a very short version.)
Several months ago (I'm not sure on the exact timing but I do know it was before Thanksgiving 2013), I was talking to Sandy Watrous, a lovely lady from church who had come over to help out with Zed and Alice, and I mentioned how we were going to outgrow our little house faster than we anticipated. She said, "Oh, I wish you'd buy the house across the street from us!" Well, just out of curiosity, I looked that house up online, but then I pretty much put it out of my mind; I wasn't super impressed with the photos, and it was time to get ready for Christmas, and oh yeah, I had twins to take care of.

Well, as the weather started to warm up in 2014, I would take Zed and Alice out in the stroller and walk around the neighborhood, and I'd frequently see the sign in front of this house (which I will refer to from here on out as the gray house), so I knew it was still for sale. At some point on those walks, my curiosity was piqued again. Adam and I had talked about how we like our ward and don't want to move out of it, but there aren't a whole lot of homes for sale in our ward, and there are actually only a few homes in our ward boundaries that we'd seriously consider (a lot are no bigger than our house; others are twin-homes, and Adam and I aren't twin-home type people). So Adam and I had kinda talked about it a little, and we looked at the pictures online again, and we kinda wondered if we should go look at it

Then, on March 11, Adam texted me to ask if I thought we should go look at the house that night; I responded, "Idk. What do you think?" He said he thought we should go look and that they could show it to us at 5 that evening. Our plan was that we would have the seller's realtor show us the house, and then if we happened to like it, we'd call the realtor we used when we bought our white house...except somehow (to this day, Adam still doesn't know how this happened), the number Adam saw on the listing for the house wasn't for the seller's realtor but was for some other random realtor, who I will call CJ.  CJ showed us the house, and we were surprised; I think we both went into it thinking we would get over there and just know right away that it wasn't a good idea (the photos--and the condition the house was left in--didn't exactly inspire a lot of hope in us). However, as we were walking through the house, rather than being put off by it, we both thought that maybe it could work; it definitely needed work (painting and re-carpeting the whole house and some serious cleaning, among other things), but it was also do-able work.

Well, we thought about things for a few days and we talked to CJ about what selling our home would entail. He was VERY optimistic in what he thought our house would go for; we were surprised to hear he thought it was worth as much as he thought it was, but hey, he's supposed to be the expert, right? We decided to go ahead and put an offer in on the gray house and put our house up for sale. We knew that this could be somewhat complicated because the gray house was a short sale and the seller's realtor said that Wells Fargo (the bank holding the mortgage) wouldn't consider our offer without us having our home sold. (At this point, I will note that we debated whether to keep CJ or go with our preferred realtor, and we ended up sticking with CJ pretty much out of guilt, just cuz we felt bad that he was expecting us to use him...so it turned out to be like a several-months-long pity date, and it was a terrible idea.)

So, we put our offer and put our house up for sale, and we quickly realized that CJ had been way high in the price that he recommended we list our house for. So we lowered our asking price, and we got an offer that was even lower than that, but CJ reminded us we needed to have our house sold in order to be considered by the bank for the short sale. So, with that in mind, plus what turned out to be a communication error from CJ in which he made it sound like we'd be netting more money than we actually would (and of course we didn't discover the error until months later), we accepted the offer...only to find out that the seller for the short sale filed bankruptcy, which meant Wells Fargo couldn't even give us a decision on the house because the seller had to go to court and get the house discharged back to the debtor.

Well, CJ assured us that would happen just after Mother's Day...except, when the seller went to court, it took longer than expected so then the judge had 21 to 45 days to get through his case...and he took the full 45, which took us into the beginning of July. At that point, the debt was discharged back to the debtor and our realtor told us we should have an answer from Wells Fargo within 48 hours. Well, 72 hours later, we heard from CJ that we needed to extend until July 31st. When I asked him what the hold up was, he said there wasn't one (Really? 48 hours and the end of July aren't the same thing to me but apparently they are to CJ.) but that Wells Fargo's employee working on this was new and needed to have time to review all of the files. Good grief.

We did get the approval on July 24th, and we quickly got our inspection done and were ready to move forward, but then our buyers were slow getting their inspection done and then the inspector they used was INSANE. He was seriously really weird with the comments that he put on his inspection--like that the appliances (including our fridge which is 2 years old) were all marginal because of old age (but the swamp cooler that he estimated to be 35 years old and only half works was acceptable), that we probably had asbestos in the basement floors because of the age of the house (uh...Adam and I put those floors in and we've only lived here 3 years, and given that we barely use the basement, they certainly don't look old enough to have asbestos in them), etc. So then he kinda freaked the buyers out, and then our realtor made it sound like they might back out entirely. They ended up submitting a lower offer than we really wanted to accept but we accepted it, rather than countering since CJ made it sound like these people were completely unreasonable and weren't going to meet us in the middle and would just walk away if we didn't do exactly what they wanted.

Then it came time to close on the house, and we needed to get a rental agreement from our buyers, since they had said we could rent the house back from them while we were fixing up the new house. Well, once again, CJ made it sound like they were completely unreasonable people and were playing hardball here and were demanding a $900 deposit and $40 per day for rent  and wanted us out as soon as possible because they were mad that the whole process had taken so long because they had wanted their kids to work on fixing up the house over the summer and just wouldn't work with him on this at all. So, Adam and I were getting really frustrated and worried that if we went and signed all the papers to close, these people were going to show up at the door demanding we get out, since we did not want to pay a deposit and thought $40 per day for rent was a little high. But again, CJ is making these people out to be the devil incarnate, pretty much, so Adam and I are trying to figure out if we need to go rent a storage unit and if we can stay with my sister and how we're going to get the house finished super quickly, etc. (And in the middle of this, for an extra does of awesomeness, every member of our family got the stomach flu and threw up and had body aches and felt awful.)

Adam ended up talking to the buyers directly, skipping CJ and all his crazy talk, and they were super NICE people who didn't want a deposit at all, wanted a much more reasonable rent, and assured him that this is our home and we can rent from them as long as we need to while we're fixing up the new house. Adam said they apologize profusely for the confusion, made sure that he and I had both of their cell phone numbers and knew we could just skip CJ for any further communication, and said that we could take as long as we need to get the new house fixed up and we don't need to feel rushed at all. So, yeah, totally nice, reasonable people...not at all what CJ described. (And, we didn't ask them about this, but we did a little Facebook stalking, and considering that their five children range in age from about 5 to 15, I don't think they were going to have them do a whole lot of repair work on this house. Cleaning, maybe, but I don't think most kids are qualified to do roofing or electrical work.)

So, we went and signed the paperwork to sell our house and then signed all the paperwork to buy the new house, and the seller for the new house did NOT sign the paperwork to sell it when he was supposed to (OF COURSE!)...but he did sign it the next day, and finally, finally, Adam and I were able to purchase the house that we have been trying to buy since March. And I guess for a short sale, that's actually fast, but it still feels slow, and it was made worse by having a realtor who is either completely incapable of communication clearly or delusional...or maybe both.

And now we move onto the house repairs...

Fifteen Months!

I can't believe Alice and Zed are fifteen months old!  Both of them have had a good growth spurt since their 12-month check up.

Zed weighs 23 pounds, 2 ounces (58th percentile) and is about 31.5 inches tall (69%). He has six teeth (four top, two bottom). His hair has been getting darker (he's still blonde, though). He has turned into a little climber and tries to climb on the couches, the rocking chair,  his toys, anything that he can and especially anything we don't want him to be on. He likes to dance, and he is especially good at doing "twirls" (turning in circles). He will sometimes fold his arms for our prayers, although he folds them when he hears "Amen" as often as he folds them at the beginning. He is very good about making sure things go back in their proper place...except for with his toys; those he just wants out! But he's good about putting his shoes and Alice's shoes away and has even recently figured out where to put mine and Adam's shoes--when he's not encouraging us to put them on our feet.

Alice weighs 18 pounds, 5 ounces (12th percentile--yay, double digits!) and is about 29.75 inches tall (28%). She has four teeth (two top, two bottom). Her hair has been getting lighter (she's still a brunette, though). She likes to wave bye-bye and blow kisses and says "Uh-oh" and "thank you" (which mostly sounds like a-oo, but she definitely is saying it in the right context and mimics our intonation). She folds her arms when she hears us say "prayer" or "pray" and sometimes even when we put her in her high chair because she knows we pray before eating. She thinks it's funny to find her belly button; she also knows head, toes, and nose, but belly button is her favorite. She loves to dance, especially shaking her little shoulders, and sings little songs in her sweet little voice. She has a favorite pair of shoes already--her pink sandals with butterflies and flowers on them.

Both of my sweet children continue to bring such joy into my life. I love seeing how they are similar and how they are different. It's funny how almost everything they do is cute, just because they do it (I'm not a big fan of whining, but isn't it funny how your kid can look adorable even with his finger shoved up his nose?). I love seeing them together; they don't always share so well and we're working on "being soft" but those moments when Zed is crying and Alice comes over to stroke his head or Zed leans over to put his head on Alice's shoulder just cuz he loves her just make me melt. Ah, adorable. Love those kids!

Funny Adam

Me: KSL (a local news website) has the worst pictures. They have an article about an autistic boy who went missing and the blind dog who found him, and there's not even a picture of the dog!
Adam: Well, the dog's blind; it's not like he can see his picture in the paper anyway.



Adam: We'll have to check to make sure no snails have gotten in the baby pool. There are a lot out there.
Me (with a horrified, I-hate-snails look on my face): There are?
Adam: Yeah.
Me: But you killed a bunch.
Adam: Yeah. We'll have to get a stick and stab 'em and see how many we can get on the stick.
My mouth falls open as I stare at my husband
Adam: Zed and I are going to have a lot of fun in a few years. You just look at me like it's a stupid idea.
Me: I wasn't thinking it was stupid; I was thinking that's a gross, boy idea.
(little bit of chit chat)
Adam: Well, now that they fixed the irrigation, we don't get the water snakes anymore.
Me: We had snakes?!
Adam: Yeah.
Me: A lot?
Adam: Oh, like five or six. They were little. I chopped one's head of with a shovel. That one was big.
Me: We had snakes?! You didn't tell me that!
Adam: I couldn't tell you. But now that they fixed the irrigation so we don't have them anymore, I can tell you.

 

Primary

I teach a group of 4- and 5-year-olds at church each week, and I love them to bits and pieces. Every week, they say or do something that touches my heart or makes me laugh, and they ask such good questions. Here are a few recent examples:

We were discussing who came to visit Baby Jesus just after His birth--the shepherds and the wise men. One kid asked what the wise men did.
Me: Remember, they brought the gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Jane: And they built the house.
Me, looking puzzled as I try to figure out why Jane would think the wise men built Jesus a house: They built a house?
Jane: Yeah, the wise men built the house upon the rock. And the foolish man built the house upon the sand.
Me, beaming: OH!
Jane: What does "foolish" mean?
We then got to have a tangential but awesome discussion about how wise men follow Jesus and foolish men don't.

Me, as Dexter bounced up and down on his chair: What could we do to help you be a little more reverent and stop bouncing on your chair?
Dexter: It would help me stop bouncing on my chair if Alice sat by me.
Cute! So, I did let Alice sit next to him, and he did stop bouncing...but he was a little distracted from the lesson since he kept giving Alice hugs. However, seeing this boy give my little Alice hugs totally melted my mommy heart, so I just went with that.
Later in the class, we were writing a note to invite a couple of friends to come to Primary. The children were dictating and I was writing.
Me: What should we write?
Dexter: You should come to Primary.
Christine: It's fun!
Audrey: We want to be your friends.
Dexter: If you don't come to Primary, you won't get to meet Alice!
Haha--I love that Dexter thinks not getting to meet Alice would be a serious disappointment. :)