Baby Battles

'Kayla bug is the latest nickname.

I like to think I'm teaching her how to eat.

But really, she's teaching me how she's going to eat.

Subtle difference.

She sweetly smiles as I get a spoonful of baby food. She sweetly opens her mouth and takes it, then spits moving her head from side to side. Still smiling of course.

You would think she would cry when I give her baby food. She doesn't care, she's just not going to eat it. She wants our food. She had cereal this morning with me. I was worried a little about the milk, but oh well, she had ice cream yesterday and seemed fine:)

Ignore the blue, she's a girl.

Also, she literally gets insulted if I try to give her a bottle not a sippy cup. And she's not real interested in nursing during the day anymore. And when she does nurse it's almost like a battle. She continuously reaches for my face with her hand and once she finds my cheek, lip, nose etc she grabs and rips as hard as she can. I have scratches all over my face from her lethal grip. She tries to rip out all my hair if it's not in a ponytail too. I have to be ready to defend myself!

I think she's getting even more teeth.

Cody scored again this week! I wasn't able to go, Macey had a fever, but Ben got to go.

Yesterday Macey fell asleep with a fever on the living room chair. All at once she shot up and said, "Fantastic! I'll have one of those." Then laid back down.
We have the "Amazing Action Alphabet" cd that teaches sounds to letters. At the end of each letter they say a word that starts with the letter such as W-wonderful, F-fantastic. Macey asks what every one of them means and lately she has been using a variety of those words. At dinner tonight she said "This is amazing." It's fun/funny to hear her new knowledge in action.

A New Favorite Recipe

Macey and I made granola this morning.

I approach cooking much the way one of the famous inventors (I cannot remember which one it is!) approached inventing. Try everything that doesn't work until you figure out what does work. Was that Edison?

Anyway, this was an incredibly healthy recipe from my mother in law, that I have very slightly tweaked because it was ironically too healthy. Yes, I graduated in fitness and wellness. Why?

Granola

Actual recipe:
2 c. brown sugar
1 c. honey
1/3 c. water
3 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt

I substitute half of the water with butter! It makes it taste really good. And after paying an arm and a leg for one cup of honey I had a hard time using it all for granola, so I used half honey and half karo syrup. Now this is sounding like caramel popcorn:) and it is as good.

Microwave in large bowl for 5 minutes.

In a huge bowl combine:

10 c. rolled oats
6 c. nuts and seeds (almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flax, millet, quinoa, wheat germ, etc.)  (I use almonds, walnuts, flax, quinoa, and RICE KRISPIES, again, because they're good)
4 c. shredded coconut

Pour hot caramel mix over and stir. Spread over ungreased cookie sheets and bake 275 degrees for 30 minutes. Don't forget to bake like I have! Store in airtight container in fridge.

We ate it right out of the huge bowl together. Yum:) All the ingredients separately add up to a considerable amount of money, but considering how much a small bag of granola costs, it's actually quite a bargain.

Macey got dressed all by herself today! She has been capable before now, but actually doing it was another matter entirely-a battle I didn't care to fight. But she decided she can do it now!

Score

 There's nothing better than having grandparents visit, even if it's just for a day.

 Macey was so excited she was talking a million miles an hour all day. "I can't wait for lunch {breakfast} at the hotel. I love hotels. Grandma Bonnie and Papa Jeff are coming. When are we getting them...etc. etc." I'm sure Cody would have been like that too, but he had school that day! 

They slept at the hotel with them, their favorite event:) 

They treated us to Ted's, our favorite restaurant and Cody got to show his swimming skills. He can swim across the whole pool frontwards and backwards!

 Cody and Macey got some little seaworld creatures and cars and haven't put them down since.

Then Bonnie and Jeff headed out driving back Kevin's car for him. We bought it from them four years ago and now they bought it back. How's that for a trade?!

We do wish we lived closer. Just over a month until we are able to see everyone again!

Cody is loving soccer. He scores here (sometimes you just gotta steal the glory I guess:)),

and almost scores here 

and as for other big news of the month:

Mackayla got her teeth!!!!!

The bottom two

It took nearly a month of no sleep (terrible) and a bit of irritability (not too terrible) when I first felt those bumps on her gums, letting me know the fun was beginning

I almost lost my sanity a couple times (or was that from Ben being gone or me just being me?)

Either way

I am so happy.

So is Mackayla, she took two long naps today.

Welcome to Oklahoma

Last night at 3 am our neighbors knocked on our door. I answered and he said a tornado was headed our way so come over to the storm shelter. Ben was just pulling in from work. As we ran over there our other neighbor said "Welcome to Oklahoma." I feel like now we've been inducted. The storm shelter was small and with that many kids and adults, a little claustrophobic- and I don't usually get claustrophobic. All in all, not that scary because the weather wasn't bad and nothing got close to us. Tonight is supposed to be worse, but it's almost over!

Update: the next night wasn't worse, although we stayed up once again to make sure. They finally took away the warning/watch around midnight. Of course I checked a couple more times just to make sure:) but no tornados here! knock on wood.

Tornado Watch

We have tornado watches tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow night. Looks like another sleepless night! I have everything we need sitting close by and I'm staying up watching the news. They show it almost street to street so we know if/when to go. This seems even rough for Oklahoma, (as if I knew...) so we'll just see. Outside doesn't seem bad right now though.

Material Girl

If I literally want to make Mackayla's whole day I take her to my closet and let her grab my clothes and run her hands (and head) through them. If I'm holding her while I get something out of our kitchen cupboards she will inevitably grab the curtains next to us. Or in the bathroom she grabs at the towels and shower curtain with amazing speed.

She LOVES grabbing material. She is obsessed with it. I have never seen anything like it and haven't quite figured it out. Maybe she will love clothes?

Watch this video for about 25 seconds and you get the idea. The quality is subpar but I am filming it myself (in a face mask no less).

{video to come shortly}

Cute little material girl, no?

She is eight months old today. Still teething with no luck but lots of pain and anguish. Still no crawling (woohoo-less chaos with packing!). Still incredibly happy and mild, even though this teething bout has given us a little grief.

I play the piano in primary and she will either sit on my lap while I play, or play on the floor until she gets tired (Ben usually has treatments during primary time). If I take her somewhere with just the two of us she is the easiest baby on earth to take care of and never makes a peep.

She is loving all the new food she tries and is getting so chunky. I love it. I usually just give her some of what we eat for dinner to try plus a baby food. She is getting pretty good at feeding herself...I am remembering quickly what my floors will look like for a while with a messy eater!

Cody has his preschool program today and I took a video of it but it's a little too long to post. Pretty cute. I am excited for him to go to kindergarten next year! It makes finding a place to live a little more complicated too...because you also have to consider the school district too. I have never been nervous to move before, but everything seems to change with kids. Will they like their school, will they make good friends, will they have a place to play, etc.

Supposedly Ben will not have to do treatments at OSU. woot woot! He has had to get up and go in at crazy times to do those. This has been a busy year. I'm not sure it is worse than 4th year vet school, definitely as challenging, but we were in a new place and I had a baby so it just had a few different additions. This year Ben is not out of town he is only ten minutes away, we just don't see him when he has long hours.

Speaking of Oklahoma, there are warnings that tomorrow and the next day could bring tornadoes. Some of them could be at night so we'll have to watch the news, apparently while we're sleeping. I know people that live here don't get too worried, just take precaution. But this is kind of disconcerting, to say the least, to me.

Wow, I'm getting chatty on this post. This video is never going to upload.

Here's the kiddos and me with a face mask:

Gaining and Losing Teeth and other spring events

Cody said his tooth had been bugging him yesterday morning. I brushed it off since we had been talking about them getting their teeth checked and figured we could address it then.

We went to our friends' for dinner. While we were there I realized his tooth was really loose. Weird, he's still seems so little! Jason is a dentist and checked their teeth. Then, before I knew it, he pulled Cody's tooth right out!

Cody was so brave and was pretty excited! I don't know why this makes me feel old, but it's like I've graduated to a new stage of motherhood now. I have a child who has lost a tooth. Honestly I'm so glad it was a dentist who pulled his first tooth out, it just seems right and I'm such a baby about things like that.

I was a TERRIBLE tooth fairy. Ben double checked with me to make sure I wouldn't forget to put money under his pillow. This morning I heard Cody get up (REALLY EARLY) and go into the living room where Ben was getting ready to leave. Then I SHOT up in bed, ran into the kitchen where the neat pile of change was sitting, sprinted into his room, stuck it under his pillow, and tiptoed back into bed. Then Ben got Cody to go double check to see if the tooth fairy had come and she did! phew. He was SO excited!

(She is looking up at me) Speaking of teeth, this little girl is getting some and it has been a painful experience for both of us. More for her. Neither one of us have slept much at all this week.

Simple things like doing dishes and remembering people's names have fallen by the wayside.

On a happier note, it was Easter this weekend! We had easter egg hunts; Cody at preschool, and Macey with some ward friends.

Before the hunt all the kids lined up for pictures. Except Macey. Picture all the other kids to the right of Macey smiling and looking generally cute. Then notice Macey on the side crying and whining about how she doesn't like this. I got a video of it to show to her when she's older to wish her luck rearing her own.

Once I went with her to help her find eggs, with candy, and her sweet friend came along, she really enjoyed it!

Then, she REALLY enjoyed life opening each egg and finding more and more candy.

Easter morning:

We actually were able to get ready for church and have a few minutes to spare so we got easter pictures in our front yard.

I love this one:

I hope my kids remember that Easter is about Christ and not candy. I'm not sure I did a great job about reinforcing that, but I am really going to try next year. I'm not sure I'll be any less tired, but here's to hoping and then I'll have brain power to try.

The rest of the pictures are of random things we've been up to lately:

Cody and Macey are playing soccer.

Macey had her first game last week. She did awesome at practice and is quite the little dribbler. Then at the game she was going to do the kick off after some serious coaxing by the coach. She got ready and they told her to go and she stopped looked around and burst into loud tears. That's the last time we got her on the field. We'll try again though!

Here's Cody at his game, plus a video at the end of him. He loves it!

Here's Macey and Mackayla in little matching outfits, thanks grandma Sylvia!

All drinking from sippy cups:) Mackayla is obsessed with them right now.

We've taken a couple trips to the zoo lately.

Cody did a lot of this:

I don't know exactly why.

Macey did a lot of this:

Mackayla surprised me. She honestly loved seeing the animals!

Evidence of young children always pops up in random places:

Who knew shoes were train stations.

Last, but not least, here's Cody at his last game:

Cody Said

"What is a treaty?"

Me: "An agreement between two parties."

Cody, matter-of-factly: "So, a candy party."

Cody, drawing a monster: "This monster can kill a man. Or two women."

Outside playing in the mud with sticks: "These are the bridges and roads."

Me, picking up a thick stick that is bent in an L-shape: "Here's one."

Cody, shocked. "Why would I put my gun in the mud?"

Giving me a "book" that we made out of three pieces of paper: "Mom, will you please write everything you know in my book?"

Yesterday Macey looked at my belly and asked me if I was having another baby. I worked out today.