Things have been crazy around here since the tornado hit my town a week and a half ago. Doctor's appointments have been cancelled, Vivian's shots have been delayed, and more. But through it all, this town has come together and proved to the world that complete strangers can show love and support when times are hard.
I've put off posting about Easter, so I'll update everyone on what our girls did for Easter, then catch up with what we've been doing this month!
The Saturday before Easter, Caitlin and I colored eggs together! Rosalie is still to little to participate, but I'm looking forward to coloring eggs with her next year! I decided to make the color for the eggs this year. (check out the recipe on my craft blog
here!) I let Caitlin color some eggs with crayons while I got the colors ready!
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| The face she made when my tea kettle started to whistle! |
A while ago, I found an idea on Pinterest to use a whisk to dunk eggs into the color water. I thought I'd give Caity a chance to try it out and see if she liked it or not!
Turns out, she wanted to use spoons instead. She wanted to put the egg on the newspaper to dry and she couldn't get the egg out of the whisk on her own. So we took the old-fashion route and used spoons! The colors turned out FANTASTIC!
We were going to have a small hunt with them in our backyard, but we ended up getting too busy and by the time we got home, it was already time to get the girls ready for bed. But that was just fine! As soon as we got the girls to bed, we set out their Easter Baskets!
I loaded them up with the candy they asked for! Eggs filled with jelly beans, Peeps, Peeps Bunnies, Ring Pops, and some Easter straws! I set them on the table and had my camera ready to capture their faces the next morning!
Easter morning was a little different than usual. Rosalie got up before Caitlin. This NEVER happens. Usually Caity wakes up first, yells for me, and wakes Rosie up in the process. But this time, Rosie called for me quietly and I gave her her basket first!
Rosalie got to pick the basket she wanted! She took everything out of her basket and examined each candy filled egg while shouting, "EGGGGGGGG!" at the top of her lungs! I should have had the video camera ready instead!
Caity woke up almost and hour later, and to avoid Rosalie attacking Caity's basket, I had to put Caity's on a chair in the middle of the floor and corral Rosie behind me. But Caity didn't even notice her basket until I told her about! But when she found it, she shouted, "EGGGGGGGSSS!" Too funny!
We got the girls breakfast and dressed them in the Easter dresses Grandma A made for them! But in the picture below, Caitlin is wearing cousin Shelly's dress that Grandma made about 13 years ago! Caity's dress still needed a button on the back, so Grandma brought her dress to church!
When we got back from church, I put the girls down for nap and made colored deviled eggs and cupcakes for our family dinner that night! (Also on my craft blog!)
As soon as I was done making all those goodies, we loaded up the girls and went to Grandma's house for an Easter Egg hunt in her yard! The girls were WAY pumped! It was Rosie's very first egg hunt! My niece and nephews hid the eggs around the yard, but they hid the golden egg really well. Guess who found it!
And the GOLDEN Easter Egg was found by:
VIVIAN!!!!!!
It was hidden in the trampoline net so my hubby had to get it. He had Vivi in his hands, so she found it first! Vivian = WINNING! She even tried to eat it! She didn't let go of the egg for quite a while!
Vivian has been growing quite a bit this month! She's doing the same thing my other girls did. She'll be tired so I feed her, burp her, and try to rock her to sleep. But she won't... so then she gets BEYOND upset because she's so tired that I have to set her on the couch with her binky and walk away. When I come back to her once she's quieted down, these are a few examples of what I find:
The funniest photo I took was when I thought she was gassy, so I gave her some drops and laid her on the couch with her bink. She was calm, so I watched a movie. I looked over at her after a few minutes and this is what I saw:
I almost woke her up because I was laughing so hard! She used the dropper as her bink! She can fall asleep in the most random positions and places!
Another milestone for our baby this month was that she ate baby food for the first time! She owned an entire jar of applesauce and wanted more! Seems crazy that she'll be eating on her own soon enough!
A friend of mine had shoulder surgery this month and asked me to watch her two kiddos while she recoups. I agreed and her little girl and little boy are so great to watch! Caitlin has made a new best friend!
Her little guy is so, so stinking cute! He just loves on Vivian all day! And boy does he LOVE marshmallows!
Rosie (our Ninja) got her first birthday present in the mail! It arrived early, but I couldn't wait to give it to her! I found a cute site on Etsy called
Twistyfishies. The lady behind the store is Kristie and she makes handmade Amigurumi, Kawaii Plush, and original art. She is TALENTED! And Rosalie LOVED her little pink Ninja!
We went to a friend's reception last Friday in Lenox. The girls had a blast getting ready for it. I asked Caity and Rosie to pick out their outfits and this is what they picked:
The girls had a blast at the reception, too! Fruit, juice, running around, and dancing! Oh, and last but not least, CAKE! Caity wanted to stay until they could have a piece of cake. We got home late, but both girls ate the entire piece of cake they got!
The next morning, Caitlin kept trying to climb on top of Vivian. I had to stop her each time. After the 100th attempt, I asked her, "Why do you keep doing that?!" She responded, "Let me show you!" So I let her climb on top of Vivian and Caity shouted, "SISTER SANDWICH!!!!" I lost it! I laughed so, SO hard! I told her to do it again for the camera and this is the shot I got:
Caitlin cracks me up! She's so, so funny! And she just adores her sisters! I'm still working on getting her to WANT to potty train. She has gone on the potty and will if I ask her, but most of the time, she just doesn't want to. I don't want to force her and make going to the potty some kind of punishment... but I'm running out of ideas. I've taken her every few hours for her to sit on the potty for 30 minutes and not go, put on her diaper, and finally go. We have tried putting her in just panties and that didn't work... we've tried rewards with no success, naked training with no success... She's over 3 years now. She knows the entire alphabet, she can count to 20, and more, but she just won't potty train. HELP! I need some ideas!
This past Sunday I switched the girls' clothes around since each one of them needed to bump up a size. It took me ALL. DAY. It was ridiculous! But I sorted through all their clothes and I now have a keep pile and a garage sale pile ready to go! In moving the girls up, I realize Rosalie and Vivian had some matching clothes! And boy did Rosalie love wearing the same thing as her baby sissy!
So now that we're caught up on the girls, I thought I'd give an update on Charles and I. We've both been dealing with seasonal allergies and they are kicking our butts! It's made it hard to go to sleep at night and hard to wake up in the morning. So most of this month has been spent using up a ridiculous amount of tissues, eye drops, and orange juice. But we are getting better.
We have also decided that we want to start losing weight together. We have said this before, but it is time. Time for a change. Time to start focusing on bettering our lives so that we can live to see our kids grow up. We have started eating less and walking more as a start, but once we get our allergies under control, we're going to start working out again. It's just kinda hard to work out when I can't breathe while sitting down!
I'm still having issues with my postpartum depression. I've tried weaning myself off of the pills only to find that I really should be taking them right now. And it sucks having to admit that I need them in order to not sit and cry all day, or move and be super angry all day. I hate the highs and lows. More the lows than the highs. I started have major anxiety/panic attacks. My pulse would race all day long. So even though I'm mentally ready to not be taking any pills, my body is saying, "NOT YET!"
I look forward to the point in this journey when things will be better. I pray each night that tomorrow will be that day. I will know when it's here. I will know. And it will be GLORIOUS!
