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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Littles Update.

I haven't updated on the girls for a while, so here is a super boring post for everyone to skim over!

Lexi is going to be 9 months old on the 29th so I'm just thinking up some ideas for her 9 month photo shoot. I was going to try and incorporate Valentine's day and possibly get a few shots with both girls. Scarlette is NOT into photos anymore so good luck to me.  Lexi is honestly such a different baby from Scarlette. It is like night and day. Scarlette was always such a puzzle to me. Other people's babies were doing things that I couldn't get her to do if my life depended on it. Like eat. I always felt like such a failure when it came to the eating scene. To this day, I have no idea how she survived. She still is an extremely picky eater and doesn't eat much in a day. She won't go near fruit unless it is mixed with whip cream, she never eats veggies, her diet basically consists of toast, yogurt, muffins and kraft dinner haha. She also wouldn't have very many bowel movements as a baby and once she started drinking homogenized milk at 1 years old she was ALWAYS constipated. I finally had that DUH moment and realized that she has got to be allergic to something in milk. Once we switched her over to strictly water and diluted juice she hasn't been constipated once. Poor experimental first child haha. Lexi on the other hand is such a BIG eater. She will eat anything that is put in front of her. She eats every little crumb she can find on the floor and often she will eat 2 cans of baby food and a bunch of ritz crackers in one sitting. I am buying baby food almost every week with her and I think I did two hauls of baby food in 6 months with Scarlette (Again, how did she survive??).

On the sleeping front they are also very different. Scarlette and I co-slept for the first year. She was always an awesome sleeper in my bed and would hardly wake up but once we put her in the crib she would wake up multiple times a night. She napped perfectly well in her crib for 2-3 hours in the afternoon so don't ask me why she wouldn't sleep there at night. Lexi co-slept with us till we finished our basement and for the past 2 months was waking up like every 45 minutes ( I almost lost my marbles). First night in her crib she was down for 8 hours with a quick snack and back to bed for another 4 hours. Since then she has slept for 12 hours every night. AMAZING. She was SO ready to be out of our bed. Scarlette has been sleeping in her big girl bed for the past few weeks but she comes upstairs around 3-4 am every night and says "Mummy, we cuddle?" ...I cannot say no. She is just so CUTE.

Personality wise, I haven't quite figured out Lexi yet. She is always happy when she wakes up and her needs are so easy to distinguish, I know exactly when she is hungry, tired, needing cuddles etc. I don't know if that is just a second time mom thing or what. She is very active and I can tell she is much more adventurous then Scarlette. She started crawling at 7.5 months which isn't too terribly early (Scarlette was 8 months) but a week after starting to crawl she was doing the stairs, pulling herself up on things, getting into trouble!

Quick side-note/hilarious story---Scarlette and I had gone grocery shopping one evening and she requested a burger, when we got home she was eating it on the stairs as I hauled the groceries in. I thought she ate it all but she had left a small bite at the top of the stairs. The next day (when I thought Lexi was only crawling) I was editing some photos, Scarlette was playing in her new big girl room and Lexi was playing at the bottom of the stairs. All of a sudden I hear Lexi choking, I knew there was nothing to choke on at the bottom of the stairs so I booked it over there to find her at the top of the stairs eating Scarlettes hard-night-old burger. hahah. Mom of the year right there.

Lexi is around 20lbs, at least that is what she was a few months ago and I feel like she is still around the same. She has leaned out since starting to crawl. She got her two bottom teeth around 7 months and her one top tooth just popped through this week, the other looks like it will follow right away here.She isn't drinking out of a straw yet which is annoying because Scarlette figured that out at 6 months old. Both my girls REFUSED to take a bottle or soother. So it's still hard to go anywhere for a lengthy period of time. I am counting down the days till she is one and I can be done breastfeeding. It's definitely something that I am so grateful I am able to do for them and also that it saves us lots of money haha but I wouldn't say I love it. It just isn't something that I will miss doing haha. Anyways,  Lex is a great baby, I can't believe we are headed towards the first birthday already. She loves putting her little arms around your neck when you pick her up and giving a little squeeze. She plays with Scarlette like a dream! The two of them just play with the toys for hours. My toy room is heaven. They also would play in the bath together all day if I let them. Something they have in common for a change!

Scarlette is almost 2 and a half and this is by far my favourite age! She is a hoot!!! She has way too many words to list now and we are currently working on her connecting words like " Can I have juice please?" as opposed to "Juice please!" or "I want to watch cars please" as opposed to " Mom watch cars please". She has known her colours and numbers for a long time now but we are working on identifying what a 6 looks like written on a page or what word corresponds with the colour, if it's light pink or dark pink etc.. She is getting really good at identifying shapes but those dang rectangles always look like ovals to her haha!! She now counts to 25 and sings about a billion different songs. She is definitely my child. Such a performer. I do feel however, that she is quite a bit behind what other kids are doing physically at her age. She runs and plays but she is scared of everything. She won't go down a slide without someone with her. She doesn't climb or get adventurous at the playground. She definitely is a wall-flower at nursery and is very passive when playing with other kids. It's kind of a catch 22 because I would love for her to get more involved with the kids around her and socialize a bit more but at the same time she is so sweet with kids that are younger then her, especially with her sister. I have never once been worried about leaving them alone together. I run around the house doing chores as they are playing downstairs together. Scarlette is definitely a shy and sensitive soul but when it's just our little family she comes out of her shell and is really quite funny! I love both my girls to death! They are just my dream come true!! I couldn't ask for better kids. Anyways, here is a few photos of us at my cousins wedding.














Sunday, January 4, 2015

Christmas 2014

Christmas this year was pretty different from most other years! We had to try and get to a million different places while still trying to have a few moments together as a little family. It was crazy at times but we made it all work out. Christmas Eve we spent time together just the four of us. I wrapped the remaining presents, cleaned the house, made sure the girls had their Christmas PJ's on and let the girls unwrap a present each. Scarlette opened her "Anna" doll and was super excited about it! 
While I was upstairs putting a memory card in the camera, Scarlette took it upon herself to open one of Lexi's gifts, what a nice sister. 




The girls with their "Christmas Eve" gifts.





mmm... I love babies!! Especially my own hah.



Please ignore my frazzled appearance...cleaning my whole house took ALL day lol.


Lexi with her "flap" books and Scarlette with Anna.


Lexi absolutely loves books with flaps! 




After they played with their gifts for a bit, it was time for bed! Santa didn't get finished at our house till 2am last year and he didn't want to make that a yearly occurrence. Thankfully, I am pretty sure Santa was done at 11:30 pm this year. 

Growing up we always got either a CD or a DVD in our stocking.  We would then watch our movies after all the Christmas festivities were over and continue the movie marathon on boxing day. Definitely a tradition I wanted to continue. 

Scarlette got Cars 1. 

Lex got Pirate Fairy...correction...Scarlette got Pirate Fairy

Mom got Pocahontas...correction...Scarlette got Pocahontas. 

Dad got Guardians of the Galaxy and Quality Street. Dad was in charge of Mom's stocking and she got squat haha.I should have known.

Santa brought Lexi some drums. 

Scarlette got a Frozen Guitar, lip chap and a microphone from Santa.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Christmas morning we had to wake the girls up around 8:30. I still don't think they really "get" Christmas. Scarlette never asked to open any gifts before Christmas and she didn't go to bed excited hahah maybe next year... 






















So here is the list of loot for journaling purposes. Skip ahead.

Scarlette: Anna doll w/Sven and mini olaf, Anna and Elsa bracelet + Socks, Frozen guitar + microphone, Anna and Elsa magic clip dolls, Ariel barbie that changes color in hot/cold water, matching game, grocery cart + Frozen purse with necklace and rings inside from Great Grandma Lyons, Kitchen set and food from Grandma Hendry, Pink rocking horse from Grandpa Hendry and a beautiful church book from Grandma/Grandpa Maclean with music and pictures. Spoiled rotten. 

Lexi: Drums, books, monkey toy with gears that stack and spin, a beautiful red Christmas dress from Great Grandma Lyons, shared kitchen set from Grandma Hendry and shared rocking horse from Grandpa Hendry. Lexi kind of got the short end of the stick this year....too many baby toys already haha!!

Me: Piano bench....anyone in the market for two computer chairs haha?? Also, a new TV that we bought on boxing day haha. Grandma Lyons got me this super cute mustard clock that I had been eyeing. My mom got me a Lulu jacket and PJ's that matched her and my sister. My dad got me a Bose speaker thing that uses bluetooth with my iPhone. Andrew picked out a cute little ring that said love on it for me.

Andrew: Sweat pants and a new hoodie (we call it his lounge wear!) TV and food storage from his parents. My Mom and Dad both gave Andrew money which we put in with our money for the TV....he totally looks like he is also getting the shaft as far as gifts go haha. 


OK so my sister in law Anna had her baby right before christmas and my in-laws went to be with her while she had the baby. We decided to do a little get together with the Macleans on Christmas day in place of the dinner my in-laws usually have. After the girls opened their gifts I started making parts of the meal that I was in charge of and also listening in on my brother Austin, who was skyping my Mom. I wasn't going to have time to get all the way over there, make the meal and get all the way back so I had to FaceTime with Ciara in order to hear what he was saying. My parents had split time with him so the second half of his call was made to my Uncle Ron's and Aunt Paula's house ....seeing as they live in Riverstone we quickly drove over there to see him for that half of his Skype date while my part of the meal was cooking. He looked AWESOME! I was SO excited to see him. Scarlette sang him twinkle twinkle and he thought that was adorable. She has changed so much since he left and it was nice that she wasn't being a grump face while he called. Lexi was just a newborn last time we skyped him so he was pretty excited to see her too. After we were done chatting with Austin we came back home and had Joe, Sam, Miram, Barry and Emma over for lunch/dinner. We had ham/funeral potatoes/buns/salad and cheesecake. The Maclean's are definitely the type of family that just likes to chill out and chat which was nice. I had a bit of time in between dinners to clean up the kitchen and get the girls ready before heading over to my Grandma's for dinner. The girls played while we ate and had treats. Anyone who knows my grandma knows she makes a spread for any get together...and by spread I mean...like 15 different dishes haha! She had a huge turkey which was delicious, as well as a million different other things to choose from. We visited for a bit over there and then headed home so I could spend some time with my Dad. Scarlette started coming down with croup that night so instead of staying home we loaded up Lex and left Andrew and Scarlette at home and headed over to my Uncle Ron's house for dessert and games. I absolutely love it over there. If anyone ever wants to know why I want a bunch of kids it is because of them. Their family is so awesome. I hope one day that I have my 5 kids come over with their spouses and have big games nights like they do. We played five crowns, had dessert and chatted a bit. It is so fun being over there. When I got home Scarlette was sleeping and Andrew was watching his new movie. I love that guy. I can get him to do a few Christmasy things with me but in the end he always ends up in his lounge wear, watching a movie, stuffing his face with Quality street. This is 5 years running people haha!! Anyways, that was pretty much it for the day! I did learn an invaluable lesson though that I really wanted to record. It is basically the reason why I was so anxious to get this post down. Christmas can be such a stressful time and I admit that I always get wrapped up in the running around, picking the perfect gift, trying to get to a million places and see a million people all in one day. BUT. Christmas is about Christ. It is about Family. It is about LOVE. As I was running about Christmas eve and Christmas day, trying to get my house ready and food on the table for our guests, I couldn't believe my ingratitude. Some people have absolutely NOTHING on Christmas day. No Christmas dinner, No presents under the tree, No family to share it with. I had a million different options for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I had invitations to a bunch of different places and I was getting stressed out trying to make it to every single one. I then changed my thinking. I am SO blessed to have all the family I do. To top it all off, all my family lives close, so I get to see everyone. Andrew and I have been blessed by the Lord and were able to get Christmas gifts for the kids and each other. We had so much food stuffed into our bellies that day that we could have exploded. Next year I am definitely looking at Christmas differently. I am blessed to have an amazing family, blessed to have so many material things, blessed to be able to bring joy to my children and blessed to be able to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my home. I'm so excited for what this new year will bring for us Macleans!