Opal Dawn 3 Months

I really can't believe it's been three months since this little girl joined our family!! She'll be 1 before we know it!!

 Dia gets pretty jealous sometimes and decided she needed to be in the pictures too!!

Addie said to me, "Now let's take one where we are looking at Opal."  Maybe we take pictures too often?? 

March...

First smile caught on camera!

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Johnny is seriously, genuinely terrified of his room and the whole upstairs. Most nights he refuses to stay in his room unless all of the lights are on and/or one of us sitting in there with him. More than once we have found him asleep like this on the stairs!

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Addie loves to draw and paint!

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We had a few sunny days last month. One afternoon the kids were begging to go play on the playground at the elementary school. It was nice out so we stayed for a little while and by then I didn't feel like going home to cook dinner so Daniel picked up Subway on his way home and we ate it outside!

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Crazy how fast 2 months flies by!!

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The little Children's Bookstore by our house was closing (so, so sad about this). Everything in the store was on sale so I snatched up a few fun things! I bought this set of blocks/shapes that you can build in to 3 different robot type things. It is a little too tricky for the kids but I was determined to figure it out! Addie and Johnny like to make their own designs with it!

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While we are doing school, Dia loves to get in to everything. I mean every.thing. She really wants to do what we are doing and tries so desperately to get my attention. I have done a lot of reading on blogs and Pinterest to try and find things for her to do. She loves our Do A Dot markers, until she starts rubbing them on her clothes. We tried pipe cleaners in a water bottle, then they end up all over the floor. I bought a big magnetic thing for her to put magnets on, she loves the Geoboard. For about 2 minutes. I am looking forward to next year when she is a little bit older and *maybe* we can find something that will entertain her for more than 1 minute!

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One of the projects that we/Daniel completed in March was the stairway lighting! The lights come on automatically when it's dark (so basically they are on all day!). They look really nice and I don't worry about the kids falling down the stairs in the middle of the night!

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Another project is my living room wall! I have had this vision since we moved in of what I wanted to do. It's finally done and I LOVE it! We had to design laid out with papers for awhile because I wanted to make sure I really liked it before we started putting holes in the wall. The finished picture below doesn't show my pictures in the frames. I only have 3 more frames to fill then I can say the project is officially complete!

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One of my main goals for Addie this year was to get her reading. She fought me so, so, so much in the beginning of the school year. For some reason she just didn't think she could do it and wouldn't even try. We used a book called 'Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons'. She finally completed the 100th lesson last month! She was super excited to be done. And when she looked back at the first lessons in the book and compared it with what she can read now I think she is really proud of herself. Now she is trying to read everything! We are to the point where we can't spell things out anymore in front of her because she knows what we are spelling! To celebrate her completion of the book we went out for ice cream! It was supposed to be a family thing but Johnny was absolutely rotten all day and even though I gave him more than enough chances to make better decisions, he still was horrible. So it ended up being just Addie and me!

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Some days are really long. Some days I want to sit in my chair and hold a sleeping baby and not get up. So some days the house is a wreck, toys are every where and the kids are shooting nerf bullets at my furniture. And everyone is happy! :)

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Smiles in her sleep. :)

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We had a field trip to Roach Gymnastics! Johnny was so fast I didn't get any really good pictures of him! They are all blurry! I did take some video but I can't find them. :(  He really loves it there and I think he would be very good. We did go in for a free class so he could test it out and he loved it! After the class the teach came up to me and said, "So he has done gymnastics before?". When I said no she said she just assumed he had because he was pretty good! I'm not sure if this is just a tactic to get us excited to sign up or what, but I seriously I think he would be great! If he wants to do parkour he needs to be able to do flips and stuff!

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Dia's new trick every morning. No more zipper pajamas for her!

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Last year we had a family of ducks that crossed our yard once or twice with their babies. They are back again this year! We have seen the mom and dad several times already (we are still waiting to see babies!). Of course we go outside to see them and the kids love to feed them bread, which I am sure we are not supposed to do! By now it's like they expect food from us. One afternoon they came up to the window and were staring at us like "Where is our food?!". Dia loves them and gets really excited when they come!

February...

This girl is like a tornado blowing through the house. Constantly. I would go insane if I went around cleaning up after her all day, I am trying to learn to let some things go until everyone is in bed and I can keep it clean for more than 5 minutes!

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We watched a parade on TV (I don't remember which one now. Maybe for the Super Bowl?). Addie and Johnny set up their own 'parade' with all of their toys!

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One last picture with my parents before they left to go home!

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Our first snow of the year!

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An ordinary day at 'school'. Who doesn't wear a belt on their head?!

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Johnny's Valentine's for his classmates!

My smallest Valentine. :)

The kids love food cut in to shapes!

All 5 of my Loves on Valentine's Day!

Silly faces!

Our *fancy* dinner!

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My mom thinks it's cruel to wrap my babes up like this but they really do love it! They seriously sleep soooo much better!

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The Daffodil Princesses come to the library every year to do Story time. I guess I missed some memo about a time change because we got there just as they were finishing reading! I wasn't the only confused parent who showed up late though so I didn't feel too bad! The princesses were nice and kept reading to the kids from books that they picked out!

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Diapering 2 babies is a workout. I feel exhausted after I am done with both of them! It is nice that we are getting our moneys worth from these cloth diapers though!

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I was not so organized when Addie was little and I put all of her clothes away. I had all different sizes in the same box. So, in an effort to look less hoarderish, I took on the task of re organizing all of the girl clothes! It took me 2 weeks to finish it because it's not something I can do with little people in there 'helping' me!

It's done! And our attic is more organized and with 2 more girls after Addie it is nice to know where all of the clothes are!

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Poor kid took a fall off of the unfinished steps. :(

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I think I've mentioned the spit up. It's bad.

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During the Olympics, I pulled out my sewing machine and made some burp cloths at night while we watched the events!

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The preschool took a field trip to the Tacoma Children's Museum. We parked in a garage and rode the light rail. The kids thought it was great!

Addie reading to Johnny and Brody!

They were literally running from place to place inside the museum so it was really hard to get any pictures of them!

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While Daniel's parents were here for Opal's blessing, Johnny slept in Addie's room. On more than one night we found them like this. Both in Addie's bed! 

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Art! We used paint and a salad spinner to make these. I found the idea on Pinterest and it took us a few tries to figure it out but it was really fun!

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For a family night activity, we decided to try ice skating! After watching the Olympics the kids kept begging us to go! Thanks to Daniel's parents (who watched the little ones) Daniel and I were able to skate! They did really well. I think they fell down a few times. Addie took me down once and I was sore for a few days! I guess the Monday that we went was the first time they had open skating at that time and no one knew about it yet so no one was there! And it was buy one get one free! They had so much fun they convinced us to sign them up for skating lessons!!