Crazy Boy = Crazy Mom

Steven is a little bit of a crazy boy, which in turn makes his mom feel a little crazy most of the time too. He is always into things, climbing things, pulling everything out or off of every shelf or container, and the list could go on. Last week he even fell out the window of the TV room. Thank goodness it was a first floor window. He just climbed up in the sill, pushed the screen out and toppled head first out the window. He had a pretty good raspberry and even a black eye for a few days to show for it. Ugggghhhh! Like I said this boy makes me a little crazy. Here are a few pictures of his war wound, although I should have taken a picture the next day when it was really good and bruised up.

And a few pictures of both kids playing in the bath. My camera went kaput, so these may be the only pictures I get to post for a week or two. I am trying to decide which camera I want to replace it with so it may take me a couple of weeks to actually get one. Actually, I know just what camera I want, but I guess I am trying to decide how much money we want to spend. Should I be practical, or just get the camera I want? Chris surprised me when he told me to just get the camera I really wanted and be done with it, but my practical side is still fighting it a little bit, so we'll have to see which side wins out.

Playing Outside

My kids have this little routine when I send them outside. I always say to Elise, "Make sure you shut the gate so that Steven doesn't escape." So, the first thing they do is run for the gate and Elise shuts it and latches it while Steven rides on it. They are funny! The next thing they do is go straight for the scooter and the toy push lawn mower. Elise rides her scooter up and down the driveway, and Steven follows her pushing his little lawn mower. Then they end up on the swings and the slide, and then they come in. It is funny to me how they do the same thing every time. Here is a picture of Elise latching the gate while Steven "rides" on it.


Lately Elise only wants to sing in her "beautiful voice." This is what she calls her singing voice when she sings like an opera singer. If I sing anything normally, she'll say, "No Mom, use your beautiful voice," and she is just not happy until I sing like an opera singer too. While she was outside playing the other day, she insisted that I take a picture of her singing in her beautiful voice. I really should take a video of it sometime though.

The last couple of weeks when I tell my kids to put their shoes on, at least once a day one of them will come back with their rainboots. So, I guess they weren't such a silly purchase after all. They love them and are getting lots of wear out of them... rain or shine.This is a picture of Steven finding some treasure in the bushes. He finds things all over the yard when they are outside and either carries it around in his pocket or puts it in his mouth and carries it around in there. Gross! No wonder he is always sick.

Vrooom

Lately, Steven is very into Cars. He has two Lightning McQueen cars, a big one and a little one, and he constantly has them both in tow. The other day he kept walking around with the small one in his mouth and the big one in his hands. I kept trying to get him to take it out of his mouth, but for some reason that is just where he wanted it. He even would make the car drive on my leg while still in his mouth and make it say "Vrooom." Sometimes kids just do the strangest things. I wonder where they get their ideas from.

Sick

Elise has been sick the last few days. No fun! Of course, she had to get sick at 2:00 am and need to throw up. I think it is like a rule around here... if you are going to get a case of the throw ups, it must happen between 1:30 and 4:30 am. She came into my room, poked me in the arm, and said "Mom, I think I'm going to throw up." I jumped out of bed, ran her into the bathroom, and told her to aim for the toilet since I was not prepared with any sort of bucket or anything. She got a panicked look on her face and said, "But Mom, I really have to pea." So I told her to sit on the toilet and I grabbed the trash can and pulled her hair out of her face." As she was throwing up in a trash can at 2:00 in the morning, she looked up at me with the saddest face ever and says,

"Aw Man, I guess I'm too sick to go to preschool!" What a nut. Let's just say that preschool was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment. Elise just loves preschool so much though. So for the last day and a half she has been laying on the couch watching cartoons with her barf bucket not far. And the funny thing is, Steven usually just follows her around so if she spends the day watching cartoons, I can't get him to do anything else either. He just sits on the couch next to her, and once in a while he gets up,walks over and pats her on the hair and says, "Soft Elise, soft."

California Adventure

This past Friday the kids and I took a quick excursion to California Adventure. Our passes expire in the beginning of March, so we have been trying to get as much use out of them as possible for the last month or so. Since Chris didn't come and I was chasing two kids by myself we didn't stay long, but it was fun anyway.

We of course had to have a churro, which may very well be Elise's favorite part about going to Disneyland.

We watched the parade. It's funny that as often as we go, we have never just sat and watched any of the parades with the kids, and it amazed me how much into it they both were. Steven was just in awe of everything going by, especially Buzz Lightyear and Lightning McQueen. Here's a picture of the kids waiting for the parade to start. I wish I would have gotten a few pictures of the very excited looks on their faces during the parade. It was classic.

We rode the fishy carousel, and while on that ride ran into both a family from our ward and one of Chris' cousins there with her three kids. Small world!

Thinking of Sunnier Days...

I was looking through some old pictures this morning, and besides noticing how fabulously warm and sunny these days look, I was also thinking, "Could these two get any cuter?" Maybe I should say these three, since there is a picture of Chris in there looking pretty cute as well. Anyway, they made me smile, so I just thought I would share.

In fact, they were looking so cute in these older photos, that I had to look at a few more recent photos to remind myself that they are still cute on warm days

.....and even on rainy days when I have to dress them in full raingear to go anywhere ......and even on days when I have to let them run outside between the pouring rain to jump in puddles so they don't drive me crazy ......and even when they beg me all day to go out in the rain and play, but I am way too much of a party pooper, so they have to wait for Dad to get home and take them outside for "toothpick races." (Isn't he a good Dad?)......and even when they want to come tromping back in the house freezing, wet, and probably a little muddy, so I have to take their shoes, coats, and pants off outside to bring them in and wrap them in warm blankets to get cozy, right in the middle of trying to make dinner.

And it is a good thing that we have another baby on the way, because I don't even have to feel sad about these cuties not being babies anymore, but I can just enjoy them for the fun kids they are today. And to end with, a cute hugging picture. Aren't they really just too cute? Alright, I may be a little biased, but that's okay.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Elise has had this obsession with rainboots for a month or so. It started when she saw a pair of Hello Kitty rainboots at Target and thought she had to have them. Since it rarely rains here, I told her no and left them on the shelf. Well, everytime we go to Target she begs. Then yesterday when it started raining, she looked at me and said with her hands on her hips, "Mom, it is raining. I NEED Hello Kitty boots! How can I even go outside without them?" It is supposed to rain a lot all week, and she had a little bit of money from Christmas ($5.00 to be exact), so I told her if she wanted to use her Christmas money I would chip in the rest. So, we went to Target to get the boots. But of course, she saw several kids coming in and out in raincoats. So, then she had the idea in her head that she also needed a raincoat. She tried one on, and she just looked so cute in it that I couldn't resist. Steven has a thing for shoes and of course kept grabbing some boots off the shelf for himself. So, when all was said and done , and a trip to both Target and Old Navy later, both kids had a new pair of rainboots and a new raincoat. I'm still thinking it was a little bit of a silly purchase given the amount it actually rains here, but they do look darn cute in them, and they love them.

This morning at breakfast, Elise ran and got her boots and was playing dress up with them while we were eating. Before I knew it, both kids had their full rain gear on and we're having a great time wearing it. Steven LOVES that his raincoat has cool buckles on it that he can buckle himself, and will sit and buckle it over and over. Once they are buckled he says, "All done Mom," and then waits for me to unbuckle it so he can start over with the buckling. And Elise just cracks me up when I get the camera out. She is such a natural at "striking a pose" for the camera. The minute the camera comes out, she becomes a total ham.

Busy Days, and a new haircut...

A lot of my family came to visit the week after Christmas, so we have been quite busy and I have had no time to blog. It was fun to see everyone. We went to the Rose Parade, visited with family, had my nephew Blake's first birthday party, and made a visit to Travel Town. Of course, I somehow found myself without my camera everywhere we went, so the only pictures I have are a couple from Travel Town. And even then, on the one day I remembered my camera, the

battery died after about two pictures. Oh well. The pictures are not super exciting, but I decided to post them anyway because you can see Elise's new haircut. My sister Kathryn cut five inches off of Elise's hair while she was here. I think it turned out pretty cute, and Elise loves it. I also had an ultrasound while my family was in town, so I now know the sex of the baby. However, Chris says he doesn't want to know what the baby is, so the deal we came to is that I could find out, but I can't tell anyone because Chris doesn't know what we're having. Less than a week has gone by and I am having a VERY difficult time keeping it to myself. I haven't decided if Chris actually doesn't want to know or if he is just doing it to bug me because he knows I can't stand to have a secret I can't tell, and he thinks it is funny. Oh well. I hope everyone else had a great holiday!

How do you know when your kid has an ear infection?

When he is being so cranky at the doctor's office that the receptionist gives him a sticker to try to make him happy, and he peels it off and sticks it over his ear like a bandaid. Sometimes Steven just cracks me up. Turns out he does have an ear infection. And of course it is in his right ear, the one he put his "bandaid" sticker on. Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but I didn't happen to have my camera with me at the doctor's office, so I had to capture the moment with my phone.

Christmas Morning

We had a great Christmas this year. We spent time with family, saw Santa at my grandparents house Christmas Eve, and ate way too much food. Here are a few pictures of the kids on Christmas morning. I love that at their age they are sooooo excited to see what Santa brought.

The kids in their Christmas jammies before we let them down the stairs:

Steven loving the building blocks Santa brought him. Maybe he will remember this next year and be a little more friendly when we visit Santa.

And Santa must have known that Steven is a huge sticker fan, because he brought him a Cars coloring book filled with hundreds of stickers. Steven has been covering his feet, belly, ears, hands, and everything else in stickers ever since.

Someone forgot to tell Santa that we have a no pet rule at this house, and so he lost his head and brought Elise a fish. She has been begging for a pet for a while now, and I'm thinking Santa felt bad that she actually named the ants that had invaded our kitchen and called them her pets. She would pick them up and say they were so nice and they tickled when they crawled on her. Yuck! And perhaps it may have put Santa over the edge when she asked to keep the mouse in the basement for a pet, even after we explained to her that it had been trapped and was dead. Now she has a pet fish named Crilly, and we hope she doesn't die anytime soon for that would surely bring trauma to the Miller household.

Elise was also excited about the pink hula hoop Santa brought her. This was the only thing she really asked for, and we are not quite sure where she got the idea from, but she loves it.

Santa must have known that these kiddos had way too much junk food leading up to Christmas, because he left bananas in their stockings instead of candy. And they couldn't have been more excited about candy than they were for their "Santa bananas". It is amazing how anything Santa brings is exciting, just because Santa brought it.

When all was said and done, both kiddos collapsed in the mess around the Christmas tree ready for a nap. Santa and Santa's helper felt like they needed naps too.

I hope everyone else had a fantastic Christmas too!

A Climbing Disaster

Steven is such a little crazy man that I have always thought he would be my child to break a bone bofore the age of five. Well, he hasn't broken that bone yet, but we did have a little disaster last week.

I had to run into Target to pick up a few things, and being the week before Christmas I knew things would be crazy. I just wanted Steven to stay in his stroller so I could get in and out quickly, but he was having none of it. He kept climbing out of his stroller and pulling everything off of every shelf. I decided I would outsmart him and buckle him in his stroller so that he couldn't get out. Ooops. The buckles proved effective for keeping him in the stroller, even when he was so mad he was buckled that he tried to jump out and tipped the whole stroller over, while still buckled in. I turned the stroller back over to see blood all over the ground and his shirt. He had split his chin open on something.

Unfortunately, the urgent care wouldn't do stitches so we ended up at the emergency room, which is really such a fun place to be. Steven was so cooperative that the ER doctor told me maybe I should consider making him my last child. I didn't mention that I was already pregnant so it was too late for that. But then, who could blame Steven for flipping out when they put him on a papoose board, velcroed him in, and had a nurse hold his head down. That might put me over the edge too.

When it was all over, instead of heading home like I should have, I decided to try to get into Target again and get my shopping over and done with (minus a stroller). Everyone kept looking at us funny, and I looked down to notice that both Steven's and my shirts were covered in blood. And of course, I was wearing a brand new shirt for the first time - just my luck.

Climb Every Mountain

Steven's philosophy in life is "climb, climb, climb." Either that, or it is, "Make my mom crazy." Several times a day I find him in interesting situations where he has climbed somewhere that he really should not be. One of his favorite climbing venues is the closet with chairs and games. He uses the chairs as a prop to climb up to where all the highest games are, pull them down and throw them on the floor. Chris put the safety door handles on several doors including that one, but for some reason on that one door only he has figured out how to open it anyway. Doesn't that just look so safe? Sometimes he makes me crazy! The other pictures are of him climbing on the dining room table to retrieve a balloon that had gone up to the ceiling. That is mild compared to many of his climbing adventures. I think I had better hope for another girl this time around, because two boys like Steven might just put me over the edge!