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. :)

One Year Old!

Zed and Alice are one! Crazy! It has been a wonderful/hard/amazing/humbling year. It's so fun to watch them grow and learn new things and see their likes and dislikes and personalities.

As a one-year-old, Zed 29 inches tall and weighs 21 pounds, 12 ounces. He is a blonde still, and looking at baby pictures of his daddy, I can definitely see some resemblances between him and Adam. His eyes are mostly green, with some blue in them. He has two teeth and we expect more any day now. He continues to be our sweet Snuggle Bear and gives great hugs.
Some of Zed's favorite things are:

• walking laps around the house
• swinging on the swings
• riding in his Radio Flyer wagon
• wrestling with pillows or Mommy or Daddy
• laughing
• playing Peek-a-Boo
• poking Mommy in the eyes
• eating pancakes!

Alice is 28 inches tall and weighs 17 pounds, 1 ounce. She's so tiny, but she doesn't seem to know that. She can totally hold her own with Zed and is very strong. She's our little brunette and also has mostly green with a little bit of blue eyes. She has two teeth. She is still our sweet little pretty girl and I love the fact that she really likes to sit on my lap a lot lately.
Some of Alice's favorite things are:

• riding in her Radio Flyer wagon, or the stroller, or a shopping cart, or a box, or a laundry basket, or anything that anyone will pull or push her around in
• pushing her toy shopping cart or a box or a laundry basket or anything that she decides needs to move around the floor
• playing in water--she likes the bathtub, her kiddie pool and sprinkler, and the local splash pad
• walking/almost running, especially when she can leap into Mommy's or Daddy's arms at the end
• eating pizza (she has actually only done this once, but she loved it and got upset that I wasn't giving her pieces quickly enough!)
• swinging on the swings 
• pulling Mommy's hair
• dancing! She just started doing this recently; she has always enjoyed music but now she is definitely swaying back and forth when she hears it. So cute!

Zed and Alice usually play really well together. Like all siblings, or small children, they do sometimes fight over toys or who gets to sit on my lap, but for the most part they are really good together. It's so fun to hear them giggle and babble to each other and see them reach out for each other. For example, sometimes when they are in their high chairs to eat, they just HAVE to reach out and touch each other's hands or arms for some reason. I love seeing them do laps--they just walk around and around and around. I love seeing them learn and am constantly amazed at the things that they've figured out--just when I think surely I've outsmarted them on something, they prove me wrong. I love holding them and hugging them, and I think they're both perfect in their oppositeness; Zed's my stocky, snuggler boy (and yes, my arms get tired holding him sometimes) and Alice is my tiny, monkey girl, but they're both just right exactly as they are. I love, love, love being their mom. It's been the hardest, most humbling, most amazing, most wonderful experience of my life and I love every little hug and smile and giggle.

Happy Birthday!

How on earth has it been one year (and three weeks, since I'm a little behind in blogging cuz I've been busy living life instead of writing about it!) since Zed and Alice were born???

Zed and Alice got to have two birthday parties, which was lots of fun. We did a star theme, with some dangly star decorations.

We also had cupcakes that we arranged into star shapes.You can kinda see both the blue and pink cupcakes here.

Zed does not look nearly as happy about his cupcake as you'd expect. He was a little nervous having so many people around.

We were worried Alice might try to grab the flame, but she actually didn't even try!

Our handsome little birthday boy! 

And our beautiful little birthday girl!

Adam Stories

Me: "They had Duck Dynasty stuff at Walmart, and they had cups, but they were GREEN!" (Uncle Si's ever-present cup is blue...maybe blue-ish green-ish, but definitely not the yellow-green of the Wal-Mart cup)
Adam: "Maybe his started out as green. They should do testing on that thing, if he's had it since Vietnam."

People from Juab County in Utah have a slightly different way of speaking. Some of the things I've heard from them: Chimley (instead of chimney), I've went (instead of I've gone), theirselves (instead of themselves), and ambleance (instead of ambulance). One day, Adam said something he learned in Juab and I sighed and said, "Before I die, I'm going to get the Juab out of you." His response? "Good luck."

Me (after looking from my plate to Adam's and back): "How is it that in the time you've eaten three green beans, I've eaten my whole meal?"
Adam: "Mm-hmm."
Me: "What?"
Adam: "I'm friends with Mountain Man.'" (from Duck Dynasty)
Me: "Oh, I see. Well, I'm not getting you a grape slush."

A couple days after that conversation, Adam and I were eating dinner. I had finished my plateful and went in the living room to check on something. When I came back several minutes later, Adam still had half a plateful of food.
Me: "Is that your first plate?"
Adam: "No, it's my second. I'm slow, but I'm not that slow." :)

Me: "What are we going to do for the babies for Valentine's Day?"
Adam: "I don't know. What does Pinterest tell us to do?"

Me, doing a little online shopping: "Twenty-nine dollars for a bath rug?!"
Adam: "I could paint a rug on the floor for a lot less than that."
Me: "Don't even think about it."
Adam: "If I told you about it, obviously I've already thought about it. And it's a good idea."

Nine Months Old!

Zed and Alice are nine (and a half) months old! At their 9-month checkup, Zed was about 27.5 inches (21st percentile) and weighed 19 pounds, 4 ounces (44th percentile). Alice was about 26.5 inches (15th percentile) and weighed 15 pounds, 3 ounces (7th percentile). So, they are both still on the small side for their age--in Alice's case, really small.
However, they are both healthy and happy and strong. They started crawling on January 3rd, within 30 minutes of each other. Alice crawled to reach a toy; Zed crawled when we put a plate of food on the floor and told him he could have some if he crawled to it--which he did...and grabbed a big handful of food. From there, they just took off. Both crawled over to see Ruby in her pen as soon as they got a chance. They quickly learned to pull themselves up to a stand and then, as long as they're holding onto something, walk around. They certainly keep Adam and me busy! They are fast, and Zed especially likes to have us chase him. Earlier this week, they each stood on their own for a few seconds, but they aren't doing that consistently...yet.
Both Zed and Alice like "real" food more than baby food. Zed is a little piggy and we're pretty sure he'll be a Chubby Bunny champ someday (Chubby Bunny is a game where you stuff as many marshmallows as possible in your mouth all at once) since he is always cramming as much food as he can into his mouth! Alice is better about waiting 'til she swallows to put more in. Her favorite food is ham, we think. Zed's favorite food is everything.
Both Alice and Zed have enjoyed moving from the baby tub to the big bathtub. They like to splash each other and kick their feet and have us hold them on their backs and help them float. They have lots of fun in the tub and we have lots of fun watching them. Alice especially is a little water baby and loves, loves, loves being in the tub.
Zed cut his first tooth earlier this week, and Alice looks like she's got two that will be here soon!
Both babies continue to bring so much joy to us. They are super sweet and cuddly and we love them to bits and pieces!

**Alice has her first tooth, too! It's just barely poking through as of this afternoon.