Sasha's First Birthday

Sasha's First Birthday Cake

I did cupcakes since i thought the cake would not be enough, and well, I wanted Sasha to have a smaller piece of cake than that giant flower!

Sasha LOVED all the attention!  Here she is just soaking it all in during the birthday song.

Here's a photo of Sasha blowing out the candle. THAT's RIGHT! 

She blew out a candle at one year old!!!

And of course everybody cheered once she blew it out, so she had to scream her excitement!

Like most one-year-olds, Sasha was a little confused about having a cupcake placed in front of her.  Daddy gave her a few little tidbits that she enjoyed...

Then she just dug in.  She ate most of it...

And wore the rest.

Sasha got so many presents from friends and family (You guys are AWESOME!!), and she enjoyed opening all of them!

She also liked smacking the wrapping paper to open each one!

She wasn't such a big fan of being one of the presents, though.

 

 Sasha has loved each one of her toys... it's now just a matter of which one...

But of course, her favorite is probably the Iphone... or should I say EYE-PHONE? 

GET IT?!?!  EYE-PHONE!!  THAT's a joke, son!

But I think Kaleb enjoyed Sasha's birthday even more than she did!

SASHA IS 1 YEAR!!

That's right, my little baby is now a toddler.  She is growing up so fast I often wish I could stop time.  ALMOST.  At her doctor's appointment she was 30.5 inches (90th) and 20 lbs, 4 oz (25th percentile) which is the same height but 5 pounds lighter than Kaleb was at the same age.  So she is tall and thin, but no matter what the stats say, I still think she is the prettiest little girl I've ever seen!

 

 And of course because she is so tall and weighs so little, it just encourages her climbing habit!!

 

 Every day, she finds some new way to scare her parents, or at least she tries to. 

Maybe it's just that she wants to be just like her Daddy!

 

All of the walking she is doing means A LOT of running into stuff.  A funny quirk she has acquired is patting the right side of her face with her hand whenever she bumps her head.  It's like she's saying, "Shake it off!"

 

Lately, we love to tickle her ribs and her belly so of course, she has gotten so much more interested in them.  She does know what her "belly" is and will peek at hers whenever we ask her about it. 

Sasha has grown out of the baby tub. Not because she is too big, but because she will attempt to escape it throughout her bath-time.  We just decided it's easier to just let her bathe in the big tub.  She has been pretty good about not standing up too much, but since she is such a squirmy little fish, it's often hard to bathe her no matter where she is. 

It turns out Sasha knows how to kick a ball, and she is better at it than I am (not saying much),   I see a future in Soccer!

It still shocks me how fast she is learning to speak.  She can say "Bah Bah" for Bye Bye (although often she will just blow kisses) and "All Bah" for All Done.  She often likes to make little monkey noises, but will bark whenever there is a dog around.  She has also learned to do High Fives on command, and Kaleb is in the process of teaching her "Knuckles."

This little girl is SUCH A HAM!!!  She just loves attention, but continues to be difficult to photograph since she is constantly changing what she does.  ALWAYS on the move!

 

So SILLY!

Ammon got this shot on a spontaneous photo shoot with her.  It made us laugh so hard, cuz she totally looks like she is modeling her diaper "with attitude!"

There is still no problem with STRANGER DANGER.  This girl loves EVERYBODY!!!  Her doctor, random people at church, elderly flirts at the grocery store.  She also still loves to cuddle, which I greatly enjoy!  One downfall to this is that she now prefers to have company in bed with her, which is usually this butterfly pillow pet (thank you, Llama and Eric) or her purple bear. 

Here she is giving me a good squeeze!

 

One of my favorite things is to watch my kids dance!  And the great part about Sasha is her variety of moves at such a young age.  She can do the classic twist with her arms and hips.  Then she can also stomp her foot (almost to the beat), but my favorite moves have to be her Maniac Dance (basically running in place, kinda) and YES, she does the Head Banging!  It's awesome!!

 

AND OH, does she love bubbles.  For those of you that came to her birthday party, you witnessed the awesome power of her lungs as she declared that joy for bubbles!!

Here is an awesome shot of her catching one that's popping on Ammon's leg

Of course becoming a toddler means eating big-girl food and whole milk.  She is transitioning just fine, and so far the only food (other than the occasional baby food) that she has rejected is eggs.  Egg salad was a big nono (I think it was the mustard), but she also doesn't like to eat plain eggs.  Ironic considering it was one of the few protiens I liked while I was pregnant with her.  Go figure!

Sasha's first birthday party deserves it's own post, so I will put something about that soon. 

Kaleb - 3 &1/4 years

Kaleb continues to grow like a weed, and lately he seems to be going through his "EATEVERYTHINGINSIGHT" phase which means he is always asking to eat more and more and more and... well you get the picture.  He also has been SUPER DUPER weepy the last few months.  I wondered if this had to do with the fact that he almost never got naps anymore, so we put the child-proof cover on his doorknob, and that seemed to help a lot.  He has taken 2-3 naps a week for two weeks, whereas before he would just keep coming out of his room to go pee.  Unfortunately, this also prompted him to figure out how to open his door in spite of the doorknob cover (dang smart kid!), but he gets the concept that the door is not for him to open. 

 

Potty training continues to be successful.  He has occasional accidents, and he still isn't ready to go through the night without pull-ups (his naps have made that clear), but overall good reports.  With potty training have come more comments and questions, including Kaleb's habit of talking about the size of his bowel movements.  The most popular is to count them or to say, "That's a big sucker!"  Funny at home, but a bit awkward in public.   

 

Lately Kaleb has taken to chewing his fingernails.  I'm not sure if it's a nervous habit or what.  Occasionally he does take it a bit too far, and we hear complaints that his fingers hurt.  Of course we give him the "Well if you didn't chew your fingernails..." speech, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.  I've been tempted to use a deterrant, but haven't done enough research to really move forward with one yet. 

 

Of course, the best part of Kaleb getting older is that he is learning to say more and more things.  His speech is constantly improving, and it's becoming easy to understand what he's saying... sort of.  Now that we can understand his words, it's become obvious how little we understand (or he understands) the meaning behind what he says.  One really difficult thing is trying to communicate the proper use of what, why and how.  He is still trying to figure out what "Why" even means, and sometimes he will ask us after dinner, "So... what's your day?" as if to ask "How was your day?"  It's stinking adorable when he says it, but frustrating when we are trying to ask him WHY he does things.

 

Some other funny things he says:

"Boo-yah!" (When he does something really well)

"Old McDonald!" (Just a random exclamation he used for a while)

"That's the way it goes." (Said matter-of-factly just like a parent, shrugging shoulders and all)

"This is a holy crap stick" (Anything that's big is dubbed "holy crap")

 

He has told us (Ammon and me) that he doesn't like us at one time or another, often for no reason, sometimes it's because we are "Creepy."  He also told me once that I was beautiful, and when I asked him what beautiful meant he said, "It's... like a garden."  I was pretty happy with that answer.

 

Kaleb has gotten more particular about his entertainment choices as well.  He loves Looney Toons (whenever it's on), and other favorite shows include Word World, Sid the Science Kid and the Neverland Pirates.  He always asks for "Spongebod," but since Ammon and I find it repulsive he never gets to watch it. 

As far as songs go, he has gained quite an ear.  His favorite right now is "Call Me Baby" by Carly Rae Jepson (sp?) and "Good Time" by her and Owl City (my personal favorite as well).  The other day, my sister Jess played Taylor Swift's newest "Never Getting Back Together" and Kaleb has recognized it almost instantly ever since.  He calls it the "Like Ever" song.  He also likes a song on our Children's Silly collection dubbed the 'Funny Song' since Ammon and I do goofy actions with it and crack eachother up.   

 

 

Here are some fun pics to remember the last 3 months:

 

 

Playing kickball at the park

 

Dunkin it!

 

Walkin in the rain

 Swimmin with cousins

 

Kaleb got to spend some time with by brother's kids this summer.  He's in the Navy so we hadn't seen them in 18 months. Glad he finally has some experiences to place with the names/pictures.

 Aaaaah... matching games

 

 

 

So Ammon and Kaleb started this game where they would throw the giant koosh at eachother like a dodgeball.  The koosh is really soft so even I couldn't complain.  Plus i got these AWESOME photos!

 

Kaleb throwing:

Kaleb dodging:

 Oh my goodness!  Kaleb can spend HOURS with a good whoopy cushion!

 

 Especially if Sasha's around to PTHB her in the face

 

 BUBBLES HAVE TO BE ONE OF THE BEST INVENTIONS EVER!

 

Tornado in a jar: SHAKE

 OBSERVE

 LAUGH WITH A MANIACAL GRIN

And of course, helping to dust

Teller Camping Trip 2012

A few weeks ago we went on a family campout with a good chunk of the Teller Family.  Here is an image of our very tightly packed van from the front passenger seat.  BARELY fit everything, but Ammon, through his Official Tetris Training was able to wedge everything just right!

I don't mind camping with the Teller family cuz they are uber prepared with a giant canopy, cooking stove and utensils, and we don't have to worry about much except our bare essentials.

This year, since Sasha wasn't walking terribly well, I inspired Ammon to build this super-friggin awesome outdoor playpen for the kids.  It's 9 foot by 6 foot and kept Sasha content during most of the week (yep, we went up Monday, came home Friday), and gave us a clean place to keep all the toys.  It's not that I cared about Sasha getting dirty as much as her always falling down, eating who-knows-what-and constantly wandering off.  This playpen was a huge success... so much so we're thinking of marketing it!!!

Ammon also built our community toilet.  Only cost about $30 to make (compared to $90 for other portable, reusable toilets).  Just dig a deep hole, line it with a bottomless trash bag and surround with some type of privacy cover. In this case we had a bottomless tent.  It would have worked great except by the end of the week it had become the ultimate fly breeding ground (in spite of moving it halfway thru the week).  We put up sticky fly strips but they would get coated within hours and then often get stuck to our hair... When we left Friday there must have been hundreds lining the ceiling of the tent.  YUCK!

We also had a community hammock.

 Overall it was a successful trip (i don't know if I personally can say "fun" per se).  The only major complaint was that it rained a LOT, thankfully between the canopy and a bunch of tarps we stayed pretty dry, but it just made us feel a little claustrophobic after four or five hours.

 Another damper was when Ammon cut his finger while sharpening an axe the second day.  He got four stitches at the Payson hospital, but was a trooper the rest of the week!!

One of my biggest fears (because of our first family campout) was that the kids would not sleep well.  However, they went to bed like troopers, feel asleep well and stayed asleep until 6ish every morning.  Even the last night which had pounding rain didn't seem to bother them.  Ammon and I had bought some great cots so that even I slept well!!

Of course Kaleb had a great time.  He followed the boundaries pretty well and even had an emergency whistle in case he 'got lost.'  The hardest thing for him was going to the bathroom in the bottomless pit of a toilet that didn't flush and was constantly swarmed by flies... but who could blame him?!

I loved watching his imagination emerge.  Here he is in a spontaneous SHOVE-YOUR-FACE-INTO--TREE-AND-COUNT moment... I assume he wanted to play hide and seek with me, but well, there was no place to hide.

He also loved to help out the men whenever possible.  Here they are digging the toilet hole. 

 Occasionally Kaleb got a little bored, so he had to just kill time doing whatever... like playing with Blokus tiles. 

 

He was REALLY good at cowboy golf... much better than me, even at his young age.

   Gramma and Tashina bought a few kids games for Kaleb, and he loved them... but so did everybody else.  My favorite part was when they were playing a "try to get rid of your pieces" type game, and Kaleb kept getting more and more, so everybody played like he was doing a great job.. after a few rounds he said, "I'm always winning this game."

 

 

They also brought a bug-catching net for him to explore with and by the end of the week, he got really good at catching critters.

 OH MAN, I LOVE THIS PICTURE!  WHAT A CUTIE!!!  Anyway, there's a little inch-worm on the right side of the his stick. 

Here is one of his prize grasshoppers, caught by the net.  Daddy told him to kiss it... thankfully he didn't. 

 Roasting marshmallows was one of Kaleb's favorite parts!

And the s'mores were SOOO good with the giant mallows!

 

By the end of the week it was obvious the lesser quantity of sleep was taking it's toll, and this little glare was a popular expression  on his young face.

As we were packing the van to leave, Kaleb took a well-needed little nap

As for Sasha, she did spend quite a bit of awake-time in the huge play pen, but enjoyed most of it.  We had to watch her more and more closely by the end because she would find new and better ways to get into trouble, like climbing onto the toy bucket to get out or grabbing someones water cup and dumping it all over.

 We did let her walk around in the great outdoors at least once a day.  At first, she just stood there,but once she saw Kaleb and the dog running around she couldn't help herself.  She didn't mind falling as long as there was someone else there to motivate her to get up again!

 Grandpa liked to take long walks up and down the trails and a few times he took our kids. 

 I think Sasha's favorite moment was when Daddy bundled her up in his coat.  It had been so rainy and cold that afternoon she had a blast being warm and snuggled!  Then she would do little head-popping turtle motions that made us all love it too!

 And she also liked the roasted mallows! SOOOO Sticky!

 I love this shot of Sasha and Kaleb in their chairs by the fire early one morning. 

 

Stinking cute little camper!!

All bundled for bed!!

 Since there was a little cafe at Clint's Well, near where we camped, Ammon and I had a little lunch date.  The food was GREAT!! and it was fun to actually spend time together (since we really hadn't the first few days.)

 Overall, I didn't have a fantastic week, but since everyone else had a pretty dad-gum good time, I will willingly admit this campout was a huge success!