33!

Levin turned 33 and we discovered an awesome dessert! I made a Reese's peanut butter cheesecake that was hands down the best dessert I've ever eaten and therefore obviously the best I've ever made. Thank goodness we could invite over Oliver, Amber and there kids to share the calories because the cheesecake (just a standard size) had a total calorie count of 12,000. Yes, that's right, not 1200, but 12000. Whoah! But it was soooooo gooooooood!

Where We've Been

It's been a while. Here are some cute pictures of the kids and then I'll start posting about where we've been. Not pictured is that the end of May we packed up our entire house into 5 separate categories, luggage, air shipment, sea shipment, storage, and maybe most importantly TRASH. We are moving to a 1000 sq ft apartment and downsizing is important. Anyway, here we go.

Isn't he just the cutest boy you ever saw??

I saved this picture because all of the kids look, uh, . . . . horrid?? My sister-in-law had a horrible time with morning sickness so we had Ryan over a few times. He looks like he's been smoking pot, Oliver looks like he is confused, and Leah looks like a girl who has been eating pixie sticks all day.

In early April we went to Philadelphia to visit Levin's sister. We went to this awesome place called Moon Bounce and the kids got to play on these fun toys. Calvin is in the far left. Leah was a little too scared which was unfortunate because I thought it was great fun, but felt a little foolish going down without Leah.

Meet Leah's Babies

Leah is not a super girly girl, but she does own some baby dolls. She never paid them much attention until before Christmas we went to New York and had no room for a pack n play so I slept with Oliver in my bed at the hotel. That has posed a big problem with Oliver's sleeping habits, but has also created challenges with Leah's. After that Leah would not go to bed until she had her babies. I need my babies!! They don't have names, just baby and 'nother baby. "I need my 'nother baby!" One night we couldn't find her babies. Oh no! Leah cried and cried and I searched the house and even recruited Levin's help. Finally I let her out of her crib and she ran and got them right out of this bench. I would have never found them.

Not too long ago Leah's Aunt Allyson came to visit and brought Leah another baby! Leah was convinced for a short time that this baby's name was Sally, but now she is just lumped in with her other nameless babies. She now has a third baby to sleep with. Her bed is getting kind of crowded since she went to a Build-a-Bear birthday party and now has her teddy bear in there too. The teddy bear is named Pinky, but Leah never calls her that. Maybe it's our fault as we often refer to Oliver as "baby." I am working with Leah on calling him Oliver, not baby, but we are not having too much success. We need to lead more by example. I think we will once we are not living so close to Uncle Oliver.

Jealousy Works

These pictures are old so I honestly can't remember what I was doing, but I decided to get out the play pen and let Oliver play in there so the toys couldn't get away from him and he could be happy. Leah in her jealousy couldn't bear to see him having fun without her so she climbed in too. It worked because whatever I was doing I needed her trapped too. She couldn't climb out you see. This worked for a couple of days to get me lots of time to work! My nephew came to visit and needed it for a bed and I never got it back out, but going through my pictures I realized I may have to get it back out again.
I have a video, but there is no way our slow internet will load it so I'll just tell you about it. Leah loves a bath once she is in, but getting her in initially can be a little rough. So my new tactic is just to put Oliver in and when Leah sees him having so much fun she starts climbing in. I just have to catch her to take her clothes off. They have a lot of fun together splashing around. It's pretty cute.
Leah tells me often when I'm holding Oliver, that "Daddy wants to hold baby Oliver. Hold me!" Maybe I'm just happy that she loves me, but so far her tinges of jealousy haven't been a problem, just cute.
Leah is a good sister. As I mentioned earlier, Oliver hates being alone. Just this morning as I was coming down the hall to rescue a crying Oliver and I heard Leah say, "it will be alright baby, it will be alright."

Oliver!

This is Oliver's favorite position. No matter how mad he is, if Levin puts hom on his shoulders he is instantly happy.

Another picture of Oliver sitting. That is because he still isn't crawling. I guess average is 9 months and he just hit 9 months a few days ago, but I think it is going to be some time before he crawls. Until then I'll have an unhappy baby who pushes all the toys away from himself and then gets super angry that he can't reach them. On his brave days he lunges towards them and falls on his face and then we have a super angry baby again.

On a positive note, I'm not chasing him around every where keeping him out of things.

I swear I wasn't trying to take his picture this way. He was being so happy so I pulled out the camera and suddenly he made his horribly sad face that precedes a cry and well, I still decided to push the button.

For some reason my children HATE being alone. I blame Levin as he too hates being alone. So this is the way I get ready in the morning. Luckily we have two sinks.

Pig Tails

Here is Leah sporting her new rain boots. I haven't mastered our new camera yet obviously because it's blurry, but she looked so cute that day I thought. It took about 5 tries to get a decent picture because whenever she sees the camera now she shouts out CHEESE, but sticks out her bottom teeth funny when she says it. So we say, no just smile, and she shouts out SMILE and her mouth doesn't look like a smile.

We reached a major success! Leah finally allowed me to do something with her hair and not pull it out - well, I had to learn to double rubber band so that it's kind of impossible for her to, but she does have to sit still for me to do it as I'm not the best hairdresser. When we get the part that pulls as I wrap the teeny tiny rubber band around I tell her to say her ABC's to get her mind on something else. It usually works. As you can tell they're not perfectly straight, but I do the best I can in the short window she'll sit down for me.

Terrible Twos

Leah loves to wear my shoes and walk around. I guess she thought the bread pans would work too.

She got the sugar container and made a wonderful mess. Unfortunately, this wasn't the last time this happened. Just this past Sunday we left the baking cupboard open again and I came in to find her making piles of sugar on her dress.

This was probably the messiest of her recent kitchen nightmares. Butter smashed in the head. Don't you wish you could know what was going on in her head when she decided to do this? It took quite a few washings and was still greasy the next day.