Zoe at Nine Months

Zoe, you had your nine month check up a few days ago and you are a whoppin' 18.3 lbs, ...meaning you are pretty petite but very healthy and somehow still very squeezable!  (Ellie likes to call you "bat-chubby!" ...but she really means FAT chubby.  Which is so much better). You are very interested in keeping up with your older siblings and have managed to figure out the stairs already.  Actually you started a couple weeks ago.  You can go up, but we are still working on going down.  You may be the fastest of all the kids to have caught on to these things.  Mind you, we don't have any gates in our house yet, so you have no choice but to be curious and want to follow everyone around!  I have given you no boundaries!  You also stood up for the first time all by yourself on Noah's birthday and have been standing a little longer with each day.  You already walk around with the help of the couches or whatever you can grab onto so I am thinking that walking unsupported will come sooner than I expect.  You also eat complete solids now.  Love the stage of Cheerios and cut up fruit and ripped up pieces of bread and cheese.  It's messy and I've never swept more (that's not true), but it's nice to be able to feed you most of what we are already eating as a family.  Sigh.  No more jars of baby food!  Your new thing these days that I love is "being shy."  You'll look at us and then your head will start to drop down slowly, but your eyes will still be on us.  Ellie has already taught you more than we thought.  We need to keep an eye on all that cuteness and knowing how to use it.  Do you know how cute you are?  Also, when we come to get you from your crib after waking up, you bury your head into the mattress in excitement and then look up to see if we're still there and than laugh even more uncontrollably and bury your head again until we pick you up.  It's so cute.  You still suck on your bottom lip to go to sleep, but one of my favourite things to do before I put you down for bed is snuggle you in the rocking chair.  Sometimes we just look at each other and "talk."  You are saying Mamma, Dadda, ba-ba, na-na (banana) and other gibberish.  It is so sweet.  You love to reach up and touch my face, or pat your legs.  You love when I do "This Little Piggy" to your toes and "great big bug, gonna get Zoe.  Bzzzzzzzzzz" and tickle you with my finger.  When you get really excited you love to give "kisses" which means contact with anything while your mouth is open.  For example, I took you swimming today and you kept getting really excited and would "kiss" my shoulder over and over and over.  I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself!  I was laughing so hard though.  Often you do it when we are sitting in the rocking chair together and you are jumping up and down ...and then you ATTACK!  I love it.  Oh!  And you are ALL about singing these days.  If you hear any music you like to "sing" along, which often sounds like screaming, but it's the happy kind so it's pretty cute.  Yesterday I thought I'd try to see if you would mimmick me, so we had our very first "vocal exercises" and you were hilarious.  I would sing high and then move an octave lower and you, indeed, would follow me.  Over and over.  It was adorable.  Grandpa Ord would be proud.  You love any attention from your siblings, which you get all the time because there are three of them AND me AND Daddy, so needless to say you are well loved, AND easy to love. 

A few days ago I thought I'd take some pictures of you in the back yard.  We have many dandelions which you were very interested in aaaaaaand now they are all eaten thanks to you! You are just barely tall enough to play with the water table and you love it.  Bless that beautiful water table.  I love watching you splash around and play with the boats.  I am sure there will be plenty of splashing to be had this Summer.  Love you my little Zoe.  Happy nine months.

It's a Pirate Party! ARRRRRG!

 
L-R: Sydney Solic, Ellie, Jackson, Noah, Callum, Liam, Caden and Pirate Mom.

Noah is five. Wow. This year I finally threw him an actual friends-party and everything went off without a hitch. Seriously, couldn't have come together more perfectly if I tried. I think part of that is due to our neighbour, Sydney, who is nine and much too old for these parties but came to be Ellie's buddy so that I could focus on the party at hand.  She is so sweet and plays with her and is so good to my kids.  I am so lucky to have her as a neighbour.  And no kidding, Noah did have her on his party list.  The only one not five years old.  Ha!  I am SO happy because Noah is such a good kid and deserves an awesome party.  At first I was worried that not enough friends were going to be able to come or that the activities wouldn't be fun enough or did I have enough dress up pirate stuff or maybe I burned the cupcakes and had to make a cake instead (thank you Sarah for your chocolate cake recipe.  It saved the day!).   Noah claimed he didn't want cupcakes anyway so it was a blessing in disguise. Note to self for future birthdays.  I had no clue what I was going to do with the cake decorating, but thanks to Pinterest I whipped up this pirate map cake the day of.  Cutting it close.  Noah thought it was so cool and asked to eat the skull part. I gave him the whole head. Ha! Ya gotta spoil your kids on their birthday!  I'm not gonna lie, the one on Pinterest looked MUCH better. MUCH. But mine has way more candies... so who cares if it looks a little convoluted? Candy wins out when it comes to kids, ...and when it comes to saving my artistic pride.
 
 We had a lot of fun.  After we got all our pirate gear on, we started off with a treasure hunt. In order to find the first clue they had to pop all the pirate balloons (I drew faces on them or skulls), and then we went to various places throughout the house and backyard to complete different "tasks" or activities, like pinning the X on the map and hopping across a pirate sea without "falling in." But the last one was the funnest. Bad Pirate Joe was protecting the final treasure and the kids had to throw bombs at him (water balloons) and chase him around and fight him with their swords. My husband is a good sport. Haha! He got so many points from me for that one.  We then enjoyed some of Joe's brilliant pizza.  He recreated our favourite pizza place, Famoso's, pizza.  It was delish!  Although the kids probably didn't give a lick.  They had no idea how blessed they should have felt that night.  All they REALLY wanted was my awesome candi-fied cake thankyouverymuch.  When I asked Noah what his favourite part of his birthday party was, he exclaimed "THE PRESENTS!"  Which is funny because he was probably the most "efficient" present-opener I've ever seen!  He went from one present to the next without any hesitation.  We had to keep slowing him down to remind him to say thank you and acknowledge his friends!  Ha!  Best gift?  Grandma and Grandpa Ord's card full of CASH!  he seriously laughed with excitement for quite some time holding his money around and feeling important.  Thanks Mom and Dad for thinking of him on his birthday!  A close second were the Lord of the Rings Legos we got him.  Surprise.  Surprise.  We were cutting it close on time (we literally had about five minutes to get through all the presents!), so I'm kind of glad that Noah was as quick as he was.  An hour and a half almost isn't enough time.  But any more time than that and I think I would have passed out from exhaustion!  Instead, ...I waited until AFTER all the Moms had picked up their kids!  Once the kids were in bed Joe and I finally got to eat and relax and had our own pizza party date night complete with cake and ice cream too!  Here are some of the pictures from the party.  Zoe was to DIE for cute in her pirate apparel.  Makes me kind of want to do a pirate photoshoot of her.  Seriously.  So cute.  I even tried a mustache on her, but she just kept trying to eat it.


Noah, you are such a tender, sweet boy. Just now you came out of your bedroom (when you should actually be sleeping) and said without any hesitation, "I love you Mom."  Was it because I threw you such an awesome party?  Or was it because you wanted to sit on my lap and stay up an extra five minutes past your bedtime and you knew that I would melt if you started with, "I love you Mom?"  I'll never know.  Whatever the case, it DID melt my heart, so I don't even care if you had five year old motives or not!  The best is that you still want to sit on my lap and snuggle me.  It was honestly such a tender moment just now.  We looked through your birthday pictures and talked about your day.  It was really sweet to have time just me and you.  It reminds me that I need to be better at slotting that kind of one on one time with you and each of your siblings.

Noah, when I look back and think of how you've changed in a year, there are many things that are still the same, like your love for Lego guys, playing XBOX (Batman, Indiana Jones and Starwars), building block towers, dressing up and your rough and tumble boyish ways.  But I will say that going to school has increased your love for crafts, drawing and spelling.  Just today you looked at a word on the television screen and read it out loud without any help and you actually WANTED to read it without me asking you to.  You have such a desire to learn and grow these days.  It's wonderful to see that in you.  Sometimes it surprises me.  For example, we like to go to the library after swimming lessons and Jackson will want to dress up and play, but all you want to do is grab a book and sit next to me and read for a while.  As if that isn't the cutest.  You have a quiet nature about you.  The word I most like to use to describe you (which I've used a few times already in this post) is tender.  Sometimes at the end of a long school day you like to have your alone or quiet time to de-grumpify and it is pretty adorable.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, you love, love, LOVE your baby sister Zoe.  You guys most certainly have a special bond and I love watching you try to make her laugh or play with her, etc.  I think you were besties in the pre-existence.  Seriously.  That being said though, you play much easier with Ellie these days as well and Jackson is your constant companion when it comes to most anything.  You may like your alone time occasionally but you also love your brotherly time.  It makes me so happy that I chose to have you two boys so close together in age.  No regrets there.

I am friends with the pianist in Primary (Brittany Fuller) and she said that you are just the cutest in class.  I guess last week you were all singing, "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" (which is one of my favourite church songs that I always used to sing to you as a baby) and the teacher went around the Primary room and asked each child what they are grateful for that Heavenly Father has given them (it's a small Primary), and most of the kids were saying things like family, or silly things like zombies, but then it came to you and you said, "Jesus."  Now THAT melts a Mother's heart.  It makes me feel like I'm doing something right.  Or maybe I just got really lucky with having YOU as my child.  I sure love you!  I hope you can keep your sweetness and five year old innocence as long as possible.  It has been so fun having you be a cute little four year old who says adorable phrases like "butterflies come from butter" and it is like torture knowing how quickly you are growing into a young man.  Sometimes I look at your face and can already tell what you are going to look like as a teenager.  Please slow down.  Desperately as your Mother, I just hope you can always feel like you can talk with me and your Dad.  About anything.  I know I had that with my Mom and she never judged me when I didn't know something that seemed like an obvious thing to know, etc.  Anywho, I'm getting off track here.  I'm pleading with you as though you are already a teenager, but I still have an adorable, sweet little five year old boy sleeping in the next room who still wants to sit on my lap and tell me he loves me.  I'll take it.  All I can think of right now is that darned book, "I'll Love You Forever" that makes me cry each time I read it.  "As long as I'm living my baby you'll be...."  Darn that book.

I love you Noah.  Above anything I hope you will always remember my love for you, your Father's love for you AND your Heavenly Father's love for you.  You are so special to me.  Thank you for being you and for loving me so sweetly.

-Mom

Go-Getter

Jackson is my go-getter.  If he wants to learn how to do something, he will work hard until he gets it right.  Last week Joe took Jackson out to work on his two-wheeler riding skills.  He worked a bit on it towards the end of last Summer, but then Fall happened to us, so alas, we had to wait.  Here is Jackson officially riding a much anticipated two-wheeler for the first time thanks to his determination and his Daddy.  (Shortly after this picture was taken, he managed to crash right into the side of our car.  Ha!  At least it wasn't someone elses....).

The thing with Jax is he is super competitive and gets down on himself if he doesn't do it perfectly on the first try.  Even after Joe spent a substantial amount of time with him, he stayed outside for an extra hour just to practice and get it absolutely just right.  Every once in a while he would fall, but he'd get right back up even if he was crying or frustrated.  That is just his personality.  After a while I had to force him to stop and take a breath and eat a cookie so he would stop stressing over not doing everything perfectly the first time.  Be a kid!  The funny thing is, he was doing a fantastic job already, but he would kick himself anytime he would make any sort of small mistake.  Joe turned to me and said, "Sorry.  That's a bit of me coming out of him."  It certainly is NOT me.  Although I am a perfectionist about a few things, I am not nearly as determined as this boy.  It is a gift and a curse.  Allow me to tell a story about the "gift" side of his determination.  A couple Sundays ago, Jackson and Noah were challenged to bear their testimonies in church by their friend's Dad (Jake Bootland's Dad, John).  Jackson asked me a lot of questions about what a testimony is, etc, that finally I decided it would be a good idea to have our own little Testimony-Meeting for Family Home Evening the following day.  I explained to them that a testimony is something we know or believe to be true and then proceeded to give them an example of one by bearing my own.  Then they each bore theirs to me in return and did a really great job.  Jax told me that he really wanted to bear his testimony at church, but since testimony meeting only happens once a month, we had to wait a couple weeks.  Well yesterday after taking the sacrament I reminded Jackson that it was testimony meeting and asked him if he still wanted to bear his testimony in front of every one thinking that maybe the excitement had worn off.  He said yes, so apparently he was still really excited.  It felt like an unusually active meeting with a string of people waiting to bear their testimony.  Each time Jackson would be ready to get up, someone else would beat him to it so he'd sit back down.  I told him if he was too nervous he didn't have to do it and reminded him that I couldn't come up to stand beside him and that he'd have to do it all by himself.  But he said that although he was a little nervous he still wanted to.  (I think I was more nervous than he was.  Sheesh!).  So finally towards the end of the meeting we decided if we wanted a turn we would have to sit on the front pew.  I was so proud watching Jackson walk up there on his own even though he was nervous and give his simple testimony.  In essence, he said, "I want to Bear-y my testimony, I know the church is true.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  I know that President Monson is a prophet of God.  In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."  It was so tender and so sweet.  What a fantastic example of doing something that you may have the desire to do because you know it's right, even when it is hard.  How many times have I side-stepped doing something because I was too scared or nervous, even though I knew it may have been the right thing to do?  I feel like I need to give Noah more credit because after the meeting was over he turned to me and said, "Now can I bear my testimony?"  I had no idea that he even wanted to!  Ha!  I guess that's the difference between my kids.  Noah has a more quiet and subtle approach, but both have righteous desires.  Love these boys.  And I am so proud of both of them and their examples to me.
 

Can't Be Alone

So, knowing that Joe was going to be leaving me for an entire EIGHT days I couldn't stand the thought of being alone at night for that long.  So I decided, "What the heck? Why not go visit Jenny again? I don't need to wait another six months to plan a trip!" So, I asked Jenny if we could come crash their place, ...and crash their place we did! They are used to a quiet house, ...and well, we changed all that!  It was such a beautiful week there! I almost didn't pack the kids' swimsuits but I'm so glad I did! It was a roasting Summers day in July for Edmonton, ...maybe even hotter because of the humidity!  And this is SPRING?!  We spent most of our time in Jenny and Brett's back yard playing in the water, on the hammock swing, playing soccer, bean bag toss, and having picnics.  My kids will now be forever bored with our back yard!  Thanks a lot Jenny.  Time to spice it up I guess!  (Garage sales here I come!)  I love the view from Jenny's patio, too!  She also has a neighbour across the street (Meghan Loveless) whose kids are around the same age as mine, so we spent some afternoons there as well and really enjoyed our time together.  It made me feel happy for Jenny that she has such good friends surrounding her and it made me wish I could move in along their block.  What a lucky gal.  I didn't whip out my camera as much as I usually do, so I only have some pics of the kids playing outside and NONE with me and Jenny.   I am realizing that there is probably a reason for that!  Haha!  We either looked super sweaty/greasy outside, or we were in our pj's hanging out on the couch visiting.  It was seriously a much needed trip for me.  I hate that most of my family is so far away and after Sarah went home a few weeks ago I got really sad.  I thought to myself, "Jenny is so close, there is no reason why I shouldn't be visiting her more often!" But the reality is, without Joe there to help me, some situations can become rather stressful when it's not your own home.  Even though I am comfortable around Jenny, it's not the same as being able to let your kids run wild and free in your own home.  Jenny and Brett got to see some of my true colors I'm sure.  Anywho, minus the stress of trying to make sure my kids weren't entirely destroying their property, it was a really fun trip.  I think what I treasured most were our conversations on the couch late at night after the kids were in bed and we could just relax.  I feel like Jenny just gets a part of me that is so hard to explain sometimes.  We talked about music for a solid two hours one night and how much it fulfills us.  Anywho, it really got me thinking about how seriously I want to take my musical.  I feel like people laugh at me a little bit or don't take me seriously when I tell them I am writing a musical.  What a fun "hobby!"  No.  I am dead-serious when I say that I am going to finish it and I am going to be pleased with it and it will be heard and seen on stage.  And not just once.  In all honesty, I have been treating it like a part-time job and I feel like I was meant to do this.  Now I am going off on a tangent, BUT it's one of those tangents that Jenny is happy to listen to because she gets me.  She knows how much that stuff means to me and how serious I am about music.  We were watching "The Voice" and she asked me if that sort of show makes me sad a little bit, because I used to sing professionally, etc.  And it does.  I really miss singing live.  In fact, I did a fireside for the youth in Orangeville a couple weeks ago and it felt SO good to perform again.  Am I completely out of practice to the point where my callouses are gone and my fingers hurt and I had to practice and was a touch nervous even?  Sadly, yes.  But I loved the feeling.  (On a side note, the best part about performing is being able to touch people.  One of the youth came up to me afterwards and told me that her testimony had been wavering and she has been back and forth with her activity in the church, and she really needed to hear what I said and sang about that night, etc.  I love being able to be that instrument in God's hands to do that for someone.  What a blessing).  However, I WILL say that even though I love the feeling of singing and hitting a note just right, etc, I think I love writing and creating more, which is why I feel so passionate about my musical.  Okay, I think I'll stop there!  Anywho, thank you Jenny for letting us take over your home for a few days so I wouldn't have to feel so alone all week long!  It was so nice to snuggle Abbott who is the sweetest little lump of a man-boy.  He is so timid and sweet and cuddly!  It made me so happy that he would snuggle with me, especially as I am missing my Zoe so much!  And I loved spending time with Milo and seeing him around my kids.  There is a picture of him on his brand new trike (which he loved) with Noah splashing him.  Any time he would get close to the pool Noah would drench him and he would giggle like crazy.  It was adorable.  Almost as adorable as his goodbye kiss to me.  That's right.  I got Milo to kiss me!  On the lips.  What a sweetheart.  Love that boy!  He is such a good-natured, sweet boy.  His Spirit is so huge it fills a room.  I don't know how else to explain it.  It's just when I see him being so happy it makes me want to cry because he fills the room with so much light whenever he smiles or laughs.  You're raising good boys Jenny and Brett.  Anywho, ...I will miss those kids.  And MAYBE Jenny.  A little.