Both My Babies

Yesterday afternoon Unc called and asked if Noelle could come over for a sleep over. It took us all of about .03 seconds to respond, "YES!" It has been a while and they were long over due for some quality time.

After he came to pick her up, M went down for a nap. I closed my bedroom door on my messy, dirty house and did the same. It felt goooooood.

Then Aaron came home from work early, Liz watched M, and we went to see a movie. Can you believe it!? In the theatre. Not from our couch. On a Wednesday night. We walked into the theatre holding hands and not worrying about anything else. It was fantastic. We have not been on a solo date since child #2. Ridiculous.

The highlight of my story:

When I picked up Noelle today she heard me coming and came running into my arms. When I picked her up she started rubbing my arm with her little hand and said, "Oh, mommy now you have both of your babies again."

Totally Irresponsible...

Yep, that's me!

The last thing I should have done was to buy myself a new camera. But I did it anyway.

I've been desperately wanting one for a good year. I've scrimped everywhere possible while saving my babysitting money and pulled a few strings...

Thanks to my darling husband who helped make it happen.

The pictures are amazing and I've yet to spend time learning.

Yesterday playing in the backyard...

I love it when I can just hang back, observe and watch them play.

My favorite part was when Noelle looked up and said, "Look Mommy! The Sky has polka dots!"

My Grandma had her shoulder replaced so she spent a few days at a rehabilitation facility, while we were outside visiting Noelle was jumping and dancing around.

Oh, how I love the care free life she is able to live

Madeleine LOVES apples.

She doesn't want little baby pieces, either.

Give her the whole things and she will work it to death.

Our ward had the Primary Program on Sunday. It was awesome. All the kids did great!

Noelle's line was, "Mothers nurture the family."

I seriously need professional help. I knew her turn was coming...I saw her step up to the microphone and heard her sweet little voice. I almost lost it. I looked over at Aaron - his lip was quivering and his eyes were brimming with tears. He whispered,"Oh, Mom. She's getting too big."

Little stinker would not cooperate for pictures...these are the best I could do.

I actually think they're pretty funny.

11 Months

On the October 26th Madeleine turned 11 months old.

In 3 weeks, on Thanksgiving Day, she will be one year. Unbelievable!

We are so in love with this darling girl.

She has the sweetest face, softest skin, and is just plain irresistible.

Want to know what else? She waves. Constantly. At everyone.

It all began when we were saying good-bye to Amy & Joseph in Texas...she waved good-bye to them. So tender. A week or so before it I thought she did it to someone else but had yet to do it again. Then as we were walking through the airport she was waving at all the people walking by. On the plane as people were coming down the aisle, once again, her little hand flapped up and down at each person. Precious is a huge understatement.

Now, no matter where we are as soon as someone starts cooing at her, looking her way, smiling or whatever she starts her wave. If she doesn't, I tell her to say, "Hi!" She breaks into a big grin and starts waving. Some old ladies have even gotten teary over her.

Sleeping has been a challenge lately, plus daylight savings. Let's just say I have not slept past 5:00am in almost two weeks. Some mornings it has been 4:00am. But, she 's so funny and cute it's hard to hold it against her. Even Aaron who HATES mornings starts to laugh when she crawls on top of him (in the dark), starts her giggle/growl and pulls on his nose.

She is getting even better about going off and playing on her own, even made a few messes along the way! But still follows me around crying while I try to side step her a lot of the time. Sometimes I just have to get a few things done! But eventually she gets a hold of the back of my legs, pulls herself up and I am stuck. She'll be walking soon!

We love you Sunshine Girl!

Thank you for all the love, fun, and laughs.

Amazing

Madeleine fell asleep on the way to pre-school this morning and she slept in her car seat all the way until.....you're not going to believe this....11:00!

I think I had to most productive 2.5 hours of my life!

4 loads of clothes washed, folded and PUT AWAY

Picked up whole house

Cleaned kitchen counters

All the floors swept and mopped

Removed, washed and replaced all the bed sheets

Dusted downstairs

Cleaned bathrooms

Made phone calls

Scrubbed out the kitchen sink

Had you been at my house you may have confused me with:

Noelle-ism

I have not been good at writing down these lately but this made me chuckle and melt inside at the same time.

I do believe I have spoken of how Noelle likes to talk about her, 'bodily functions.' When something on her body makes a noise she giggles and asks me, "Who/What was that?"

A couple of nights ago:

Noelle: *Giggle* "What was that?"

Mommy: "Did you burp?"

Noelle: *Giggle* "Noooooooooooooo!"

Mommy: "Did you pass gas?"

Noelle: *Giggle* "Noooooooooooooo!"

Mommy: "Well, then what?"

Noelle: "My tummy squished. That's all." *Giggle*

Trick-or-Treat!

Man-Oh-Man, was this year FUN! We had all kinds of festivities and Noelle was having the time of her life at every single one. Madeleine spent most of her time hanging out in the stroller, but next year she'll be right in there.

Tuesday night started out with our ward trunk-or-treat. We began inside (the decorations were awesome!) with a chili cook-off (I won 2nd place!) & hot dogs, an awesome slide show, carnival games, and a spook alley. Then the kids had a costume parade and finally it was CANDY time. Noelle did this last year but did not really remember, it took her all of about 3 seconds to get it again. Poor little M had not really gotten a chance to nap during the day and was miserable. I finally got smart and put her to sleep in her stroller. She missed out on all the fun. :(

Noelle could not wait for Friday to come so she could dress up in her Pony costume again for school. She loved everything about it - the hood, the mascara, the pink nose. It was so much fun! Parents came for the last 10 minutes of class for a costume parade (to the tune of Ghost Busters) she was so excited to see me there she almost burst!

Saturday was finally the real deal. She talked about dressing up all day but fell asleep in the car while we were running errands. I could NOT get her to wake up, I tried everything. It finally took us walking out the door without her. We had a soup pot luck (yum!) with some friends and then were off to terrorize our neighborhood. It was a big undertaking going out with 10 kids and their parents but the memories made were fantastic!

I love living out my suburban fantasy life!

Our Halloween Girls

My darling friend Kelsi made her daughter Georgia, my girls, and Melanie's daughter Norah matching Halloween skirts. They are to die for. I've taken pictures to post but my blogging habits stink these days. So here's this! We took them to Picture People and this was the best shot we got, can't see the skirts too well, but under the circumstances not bad.

Can you stand how cute they all are?

Some Fun Times...

We've gotten to eat out a couple more times at Friends & Family nights at brand new restaurants that Aaron sold. The only thing better than eating out is eating out for free!

No, Aaron would not be caught dead wearing this hat. I mean, seriously, that would mess up his hair. Noelle begged him to put it on and I snapped this before he could get it off.

Noelle asked our server if she could have a pink balloon and he gave her the whole bouquet. It seriously made her life! She was so excited she fell asleep holding onto them.

Murmuring...

Last Wednesday when Madeleine woke up from her nap and her little body was on fire. I took her temperature and it was 104.8, GASP! The raging fever continued through Friday and although she had no other symptoms and Motrin would knock it right out, after 48 hours of it, I wanted to error on the side of caution. We called the doctor but she was out of town so they sent me to her back-up, it was just a virus (always!) but he asked what our doctor thought of her heart murmur. "Uh, What? She doesn't have one." He said he absolutely heard one and they can be brought on by fevers (because the body has to work extra hard putting off all that heat) but at the time she'd had Motrin so was her fever was down. He said to make sure we talked Dr. Kasel about it.

It was a slightly disconcerting but I knew it was somehow related to the fever, plus kids have harmless murmurs all the time. And, she had an Echo done the day after she was born because her PDA did not close right away. So, her heart is fine.

Let me just give a shout out to Dr. Kasel's office. She was out of town at a conference and her office manager called back at 7:00pm Friday night to say that she had gotten a hold of her in Boston to ask her how she wanted to handle it. Who does that? Seriously awesome. She thought it was probably fever related, give her a couple of days to get better and have us come in.

We followed up yesterday, I thought for sure it would be gone but nope. We see a Cardiologist on 11/13 for another Echo.

Wish us luck. Madeleine can't stand for me to hold her still to change her diaper let alone this!

Pumpkin Patch

On Monday Noelle's preschool had their first field trip - to the pumpkin patch! Noelle had the best time ever.

After she picked out her perfect pumpkin she could not get the stinkin' thing in the bag. But, she did NOT want any help from me. Oh, this age is such fun.

Noelle loves her friend Sean. She is so glad they get to go to school together (and he now lives across the street.) We tried to get them to stand together for a picture but it wasn't easy. Eventually Noelle just went straight for her man. That's my girl! :)

Here is a not so good mothering moment. Madeleine was miserable pretty much the whole time we were there and I did not have a stroller so my arms were killing me. It was tough for everyone. At breakfast I tried to feed her some banana and cereal and only wanted a couple of bites so I figured she wasn't hungry. While we were there I tried to give her some of Noelle's sandwich, again, after a few bites she was done. I chalked the misery up to her being really tired. After she slept in her car seat for a little while and we got home she was almost inconsolable. Crying, crying, crying. Finally, I put her in her chair and fed her some some dinner I had blended from the night before. She inhaled two bowels of it and was my happy girl once again. Poor girl was starving.