First Birthday

Well, it's taken me long enough but she turned one last month. Take notice of the shirt, I made the number one (thanks Erin for the idea). I also made chocolate ice cream bowls (not that she noticed, she was pretty intensely focused on her ice cream). Her newest thing is to cry and hang on my legs whenever I'm trying to get anything done, if I'm sitting, she's happy to play but the second I get up she's at my feet, begging to be carried. Hopefully it's a short phase.

a walker and a singer

On Sunday, she just decided to take off across the room

Singing her favorite song

Pinkalicious

My daughter has a new favorite book, it's called Pinkalicious, it's about a girl who loves pink, eats tons of pink cupcakes and turns pink. Thanks to aunt Heather who gave it to her for Christmas. (it does come in handy to be related to a librarian.) I decided for fun we would make pink cupcakes. The pink food coloring I have is very pink, very exciting.

Here are the girls as we were mixing things together.

(also fingerpainting, not such a hit)

Typically, Janie only wanted to look at the pictures on the camera, not smile for them.

While we were making them Janie asked if Daddy was going to tell her she had had enough. (Also part of the book) I told her we'd have to ask Dad later and see, he of course was obliging.

I only had a few paper liners so I decided I would just liberally grease the pan for all of them, since I was getting the pan dirty anyway. Mistake. They all stuck to the bottom of the pan. I tried to be careful and cut them out with a knife but they completely broke apart. Luckily, I have some plastic containers about that size, so I stuffed all the broken stuff inside and set the rest on top. Some of them turned out ok looking, I made pink sugar and dusted the top with it. A few were just crumbled cake with lumps of frosting mixed in.

Also part of the book, the girl puts on a pink fairy princess dress, Janie mentioned putting hers on and I thought about it but didn't do anything. Fortunately, (or not depending on how you look at things) she peed her pants in the middle of everything and had to change all of her clothes, so I put on her pink dress.

Did I mention that I don't actually even eat cupcakes anymore? So I only made six, (luckily because they sort of bombed) but it turned out to be pretty fun anyway, at least I feel like a good mom for being crafty and stuff, and including my kids.

Also, there's not much chance of Janie turning pink herself, because she only licked the frosting off the top. I admit to doing the same thing myself and leaving the cupcake part for my husband. (I know, I know, no cupcakes but frosting is okay?) Next time I guess we should skip the whole cupcake thing and go strait for the frosting.

40 hour work week

School is over for the semester. So my husband has a break of about a month where all he has to do is work 40 hours a week. It's so amazing! He works eight hour days (can you believe it? we're used to twelve hour days)

Sometimes, he's still home in the morning when the kids wake up.

He comes home from work and he has time to play with us. After the girls go to bed we do whatever we want. Like read books together or play games. Not that there's nothing else to do, there are still applications to graduate school that have to be finished soon, and callings and other things, but basically, it's amazing.

I have a feeling that this is not ever going to be normal for us. And I'm okay with that, busy is good, but man, less busy is REALLY nice (at least for a little while.)

I just have one thing to say

Mid November Update

So my two year old has an imaginary, well friend isn't the best description. She has an imaginary dinosaur. Sometimes she'll be crying about something and she'll say, 'the dinosaur scared me.' Then, sometimes right after that she'll say, 'the dinosaur made me happy' and she'll start laughing. It's kind of disturbing how quickly she can turn her crying on and off, even when she seems to have a legitimate reason for crying. And the dinosaur is green, in case you were wondering, but we don't know much else about it except it seems to be controlling my child's mood.

Also, my novel is coming along a lot better than I thought it would. I have written about 21,000 words so far, so I'm almost halfway. I guess I have more creativity than I thought I might because I am somehow managing to keep my story going. At least so far.

Finally, Leah has just barely started crawling in the last few days. It's taken her nine months, but she's much more interested in walking. I can't wait to have her underfoot all the time :) :| :(

My Novel

So my sister told me that November is National Novel Writing Month. There's a website that sponsors writing a novel in thirty days. (NaNoWriMo.org) So, I'm going to write a novel. Yes, you heard me, I'm going to write a novel. Sure, the only real reason is to say that I've written a novel. It's one of those things like not eating candy anymore that is satisfying just because it's hard (and out of the ordinary). I am supposed to start Nov 1 and I have no idea what I will write about. I'm pretty sure it's going to turn out lame and sappy, but that doesn't really matter (I have to keep telling myself) all that matters is that if I finish in a month I will get a great certificate saying I am a certified novel writer. Hmmmmm. That didn't sound as impressive as I thought it might. Oh well. My sister is doing this as well, and we've promised each other we won't back out. 50,000 words in a month. I can do it, even is it's trash. The way I see it, a lot of stuff out there is trash anyway, so I'll just be in the norm. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some idea in the next three days. I'll keep you posted.