so its been a while

he got blue and black basketball shorts from mom mom, and him and abby both have Guatemala shirts now! his is what he is wearing, and abbys is just like that only orange and smaller. cute!!! he LOVES his new shorts. wore them yesterday, and today. and probably all week he will be wearing them except for going to the gym or the store when i make him put long pants on. they are long on him , he says "where my knees?" so he makes me roll them up around the waist until they don't cover his knees. because any REAL player doesn't wear shorts over their knees! at least according to andrew.

i love how snug as a bug in a rug she was here! i have a tire that keeps going basically flat so our walk was only 10 minutes and only consisted of going to the mailbox but she was out as soon as we went out the door. how could you not fall instantly asleep in here?! it looks so cozy!

he wanted to push his car. i told him he wasn't riding in the stroller. (i wanted him to get lots of energy out!)

yesterday andrew was "Fireman" and dressed up in his halloween costume for a while. he had to have gloves so i gave him mine... i thought it was funny he had to have GLOVES to be legit, but was just fine without pants or boots or a harder hat (he has a hard one, which i actually stepped on this morning because he had gotten it out during "fireman" and i cracked it... so i am kind of hiding that for now.)

he wanted his picture taken. he actually is asking a lot for his picture to be taken when the camera is around, and he is SMILING for me! sometimes when i look at his pictures or see his clothes when i am doing laundry i forget how small he really is. i mean he is still only 2. it just seems like i've had him forever.


just playing...
wahoo!!! andrew pushes her around in circles in this all the time...


checking out her arms and hands. still a little amazed that she has a body she can control. it is a pretty amazing thing. (no sarcasm here. seriously- our bodies are pretty amazing, don't you agree?)
haha i am not sure what she was doing here. it just was funny.




once andrew saw her over in "his" territory, he quickly came to reclaim his spot. he still drives his cars on the tv stand, i thought the train table would fix that habit...but no...
haha abby doing what andrew always does...driving cars on the tv stand.
trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get abby to take her first step. she is too scared to try without a hand. she just dives for whatever she wants rather than taking a step.
standing girl!
so proud of herself and pleased with the results of getting what used to be "out of reach".
she just figured out last week how to climb up to the lovesac to get andrews balls out of reach....
tickle tickle... a fun game but always seems to have a bad ending. usually abby getting piled on the floor face down...

library time had an alligator theme. he made this little hat that he was excited about coming home to scare daddy with, which he did, only to his surprise daddy wasn't happy about it. daddy had been rocking abby to sleep and so it also really scared abby and woke her up... another funny thing, last night dan was eating honey bunches of oats with some cool whip (he doesn't drink plain milk.) and andrew said "what that dad?" "cereal" . "abb eats cereal!" "yah. do you want some of my cereal andrew?" "No, andrew eat BIG BOY FOOD." haha. andrew totally thought dan was helping himself to baby cereal, and wasn't about to be fooled into baby food!


i don't remember what he was doing here. might have been being a dinosaur or alligator. the other day he did something for the first time. we were driving and he was making me call him dinosaur. so it went like this. "andrew do you see the mountains?" "no say 'dinosaur do you see the mountains' ". so i said "dinosaur do you see the mountains?" and i had to say dinosaur every time i would address him. by the way he is mentally exhausting to ride in a car with. he is constantly saying "what that?" but i have to try to figure out what he is seeing. he never seems to ride in a car without his mouth talking a mile a minute.
she is standing all the time now! here i had gotten my camera because she was only holding on to the very top of the table top, trying to peek over to see andrew. she had stopped though before i got the camera...but still standing of course. loves to stand.


So i realize its been a while, it feels like forever, since i have posted. just been busy. dan's been busy and so that means i don't have much computer time with the kiddos around. abby (abba or abb as andrew calls her), is all over the place. she is starting to stand without support for up to like 10-15 seconds at a time on her own!!! she is too scared to take a step though, even for a toothbrush! (one of her favorite items to have. she fell asleep today holding her toothbrush. must feel good on her gums or something. maybe thats why she's such a biter...always teething.) so but i haven't been up to really anything new lately, just life as i know it around here. hoping to get a second car by the time it warms up so i can go to a good park and get out of the house! its been not so bad in the winter because its too cold to go anywhere outside, and going anywhere inside is not that fun with 2 kids because of all the bundling and hassle that brings...so my sister mary came home from her mission. my parents and siblings (except tom) and her boyfriend and one of her best friends went down to Guatemala for 2 wks to pick her up. it looked PRETTY cool! and warm! so go check out maarets blog for a slideshow that was pretty fun( at leats for me) to watch. Today we weren't up to a much, sorry to have not that much to report... I am almost done with my first 3 wks of maintenance for the diet. going alright. one day i didn't do a steak day when i should have and so i'm trying to lose that pound. i will. i worked too hard to lose them all and i will not be flexible on gaining! i allow 2 lbs up or down, but thats it... andrew got a fun package yesterday from my mom and family up north with some basketball shorts from guatemala and shirts, and my sister audrey sent abby some cute clothes. i haven't really taken many pics lately though, partly due to preoccupation with our desktop being down, finally we got it back (but after much time and a good chunk of money spent on programs and finally a new hard drive). so i'm back in business. i'm not sure i'm all her mentally right now though, its just so hard to sit down for a post, i just haven't had the energy or time for it right now. andrew is hopefully going thru some sort of jealousy phase. im not sure its a phase but i'm being optomistic. every time i turn my back he has hit her, kicked her, literally tackled her to the ground, stolen her toys, hit her with the toys she tried to steal, or whatever else he feels like doing to her. poor little lamb is the sweestest little baby girl and she gets such a beating from him all the time! it is so frustrating for me to literally not be able to control him. and honestly because he is physically not capable (that part of the brain just isn't developed yet.) of restraint its just a struggle. if i am hovering over him sometimes they do ok. i literally mean HOVERING. i feel sometimes like a broken record "careful andrew, soft andrew, gentle. GENTLE. no pushing. don't lay on her. be soft." yah like that over and over...but probably you reading this who have more than 1 child are pretty bored here. so i'll move on. this weekend is valentines! i love the cookie decorating, and last year we did heart shaped pizza's, which i loved doing. because i love pizza's, and because i thought it was fun. abby will be 11 months old on friday. i cannot believe it. i cannot believe she is almost ONE. she just still seems like my new baby. today i showered with her, and it just HIT me when i was looking at her that she is my little GIRL. like my daughter. i think i've always just thought of her as a baby girl, i think emphasis on baby. unintentionally... i guess it just kind of hit me today that soon i will be learning to actually do cute girly hairstyles, and she will be playing with dolls and girl toys... anyways. well, i think this is good today. i'm ready for bed. maybe thats one reason i haven't posted much, because abby is still waking up quite a bit, and many times i am up by 5 or 6 am... usually going to bed at like 11. which for many people works just fine. but i'm big into my sleep... i need like 9 hrs or i feel sort of tired. although i've been doing really well i feel for not having great sleep, because i never take naps and i do pretty well with not feeling tired. also, i love to cook. i just figured that out. i thought for a while that i just liked to have good food. but lately, where i've been on the diet, and dan lots of times just wants something small or simple, i realized i really love making big fun meals. and when i saw a house advertised somewhere i saw it said "it has a COOKS kitchen" and showed a huge kitchen with tons of counter space and nice appliances and i was like OHHH just loving it. then i realized. i think i like cooking a lot more than i thought i did. it really gives me something to do during the day besides be the mom and do laundry, diapers and refereeing/ defending the helpless and innocent. anyways, well i'm going! i'll add some pics and video. in the video andrew seems so innocent. and he can be so sweet. this post was sort of venting a lot of frustration for him, but overall he's still a pretty good kid. abby just seems to really bring out the worst in him a lot. even though i think a lot of times he really means well, he just gets way too rough. then there are times he looks right at me and knocks her over. that is no accident...but when abb is asleep he is the sweetest kid most of the time. SOOO cuddly, and loves to cuddle up on my lap to read, or help me cook. i know most if not all of his frustration he takes out on her is only because she gets more attention. and he LOVES attention. especially anything physical- wrestling, cuddling, helping me do things, playing catch. so i have been making more and more of an effort to do more with him. he helps me cook a LOT now, dumping this and that, stirring, anything. he LOVES being a little chef. i need to get us a couple "Chef" hats, because without the hats, he actually doesn't let me call ourselves little chef's..he's seen Ratatouille more than once! we really like that one ...oh and one of the video's abby is saying "uh oh" after me at the end.