I really do love my child

I feel bad that I always post bad things about Ada. She really is a sweet, fun, smart, funny girl. This post is dedicated to Ada and all the great things about her.

Ada has always been lots of fun. She started smiling at a very early age and continues to have a gorgeous smile. She loves to laugh and be silly. She loves to play and use her imagination. Lately she has been making up games and songs. She plays very well by herself and with others, including Kate. She has recently been asking Kate to play different things with her and she gets sad when Kate doesn't want to or doesn't understand what Ada wants her to do. I need to let her play with more people her age. She has always been a good sleeper and still sleeps in. If only her sister would take a few lessons from her! She is extremely smart and has a fantastic memory. She loves going to school and learning new things. She loves to color and draw and has made vast improvements in recent months. When she draws people she actually gives them bodies instead of making their arms and legs come out of their heads. She is very girly but likes to play with boys. Her two best friends are in fact boys. She can be challenging at home but she is always good away from home, whether it be at church, school, Grandma's, a friend's house, or with a babysitter. She has gorgeous eyes and hair. I miss her curls, but her hair is thick and has natural highlights. Lots of people ask her if they can have her hair! Ada loves to make people laugh. She is so funny and I love her so much.







I miss this hair! What a cutie she was.

The good, the bad, and the hideous

I am so behind on blogging. I was going to post about Christmas, but that can wait since there's a lot on my mind lately. We'll start with the good.

Good:

My decorating project is coming along nicely. I gave up on the bedroom for a while since nobody sees it anyway, and I've moved on to the upstairs family room and the living room. I bought some nice, cheap accessories from Ross that I really like. I did a little organizing and rearranging of the shelf in the family room and added a few new accessories and it looks much better. We have big plans for the living room that we plan on starting this week. It gives me something to get excited about.

I love watching the Olympics. There are always inspiring stories and I love cheering for the good ol' US of A. I've been staying up too late every night watching, but I love it.

We went on our annual La Verkin trip with Tyler's family last weekend. The weather was awesome (60s most of the time)! We did a little hiking, made fondue, played games, watched the Olympics, and went swimming. I enjoyed shopping in St. George, visiting a good friend, and napping on Sunday. Tyler and the guys had a chicken nugget-eating contest at McDonald's since they're having a deal on them this month. They bought 150 nuggets and they were all eaten! The girls ate a few, but the vast majority were consumed by the men. In fact, Tyler ate exactly 1/3 of those. He had a goal to eat 50 since the deal was 50 for $10. He killed the competition, with the next closest eating 32. It absolutely disgusts me! They're not even good. Anyway, it was nice to get away and enjoy some nice weather.

Kate is good most of the time. She is a bright light in my life. She is so sweet and just keeps getting cuter as she learns more stuff. She continues to amaze me with her knowledge and her vocabulary. She constantly says things like, "There she is!", "I wanna dip it.", "Oh no!", "I want Daddy.", "Don't!", and "Here." She has the cutest inflections in her voice when she talks. She knows the names of all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins. She loves music. She sings "I know you" from Sleeping Beauty and the beginning of The Hello Song from nursery. It's adorable. She loves to give hugs and be held. She makes me happy.

Ada is one funny girl. Here are a few gems she's come up with lately:
-She was pretending to marry her friend Ashton and was dancing on the coffee table. She exclaimed, "It's my Christmas wedding transformation."
-In La Verkin, we always stay at an old house owned by Tyler's grandparents. As we were getting ready to leave, Ada hurt herself and asked for a Band-Aid. Tyler found a box of plain ones in the bathroom. When he gave her the Band-Aid, she said, "This is ugly, just like everything else in that house."
-Today she was sitting on the toilet, and after a few minutes she yelled, "Mommy, why do the other animals want to dress the owl up like Prince Phillip?" Talk about random!
-She is obsessed with her baby cousin Brynlee. She talks about her all the time and loves playing with her. She told me she wants me to have a baby girl and name her either Sleeping Beauty or Brynlee.
-She gets mad quite often and says some pretty funny things. A few examples are, "I don't like princesses!", "I don't like any of the clubhouse friends! I don't like Minnie; I don't like Daisy. They're not nice; they don't share!", "I don't like Kate! I don't ever want to see her again!" (I'm afraid this may not be the only time in her life she says this one.), "I don't like anything! I don't want to go anywhere!" Oh, that girl...

Now to the bad:

Ada also falls in this category. I am having some serious struggles with this girl. I'm afraid I'm doing everything wrong, but I don't know what to do. She is back to throwing regular tantrums, and they come at the most random times. When this happens, it's impossible to reason with her. It you're trying to get ready to go somewhere, you can forget about it. I'm working really hard on staying firm so that she doesn't get rewarded for throwing a tantrum, but she is really stubborn and it is hard. I'm afraid I lose patience and yell too often. She talks back and tries to say the same things to me that I say to her. Sometimes it's funny, other times not so much. She won't stay in time-out and has lately resorted to hitting. I get so frustrated and just don't know what to do. I feel so bad about it. On the bright side, her anger sessions don't last as long as they used to.

Finally, the hideous:

We left for La Verkin last Thursday evening around 7:00. It's about a four hour drive, so the girls slept most of the way there. Kate woke up around 11:00 p.m. when we got there, and boy was she wide awake. We kept her up for a while and then tried to put her down. It was in vain. We couldn't let her cry because there were people sleeping in the room next to ours. She wouldn't sleep in bed with us. She'd let me hold her for a while, but then wanted to run around. I played with her for a while upstairs and gave her some food, but that didn't help much. I was so done and at 2:30 put Tyler in charge of her. She doesn't like him to hold her at night, so she wasn't happy about that. He took her for a drive in the car and she fell asleep, but woke up when they got back. He tried to put her in her bed, but that didn't work and she just wanted me. So I got to hold her for the last remaining hours of the night and she did sleep in bed with me. It was one of the worst nights of my life (the other two happened in La Verkin when Ada was a baby). I was brought to tears and told Tyler we're never going back down there. We'll see about that. Thankfully, she went down fine and slept well the remaining nights of the trip.

In Ada's naughtiness, she has started wetting the bed. It has already happened four times this week. Some of the blame obviously lies on us, but this is getting ridiculous. She is at the moment sleeping in her own pee, and it happened less than an hour after we put on clean sheets. She was out of control before bed, was shut in her room, and she got in bed and went to sleep. After a while, Tyler went in to put a diaper on her (she hasn't worn Pull-Ups at night in months) and he was too late. I tried to change her clothes, but I only succeeded in taking off her undies. It was a lost cause. She's gotten to the point where she won't even tell us until morning. We always try to limit her liquids at night and make her go potty before bed, but she has been fighting us at bedtime, and when she gets mad she refuses to go potty and get her teeth brushed. She gets so out of control that we can't do anything with her. I can force her toothbrush in her mouth to brush her teeth, but I can't force her to pee in the toilet. I always feel like I'm walking on eggshells with Ada. I hope this soon passes.

For the sake of posterity

Tyler and I failed to send out our annual Christmas e-letter in December. I thought I'd write something up and send out a New Year's letter instead. Since Tyler didn't even read it until the last day of January, that didn't happen either. I guess only my faithful blog readers will get to see the run-down of 2009 for the Squires:

Happy New Year from the Squire family! 2009 was a great year for us. In May we went on a vacation to Disneyland with some friends. Ada was in heaven. We will have to go back when she and Kate are older. We have enjoyed being a family of four and spending time together.

Tyler:

Tyler continues to enjoy his job at Spectrum Engineers. He had opportunities to travel to Milwaukee twice and Wyoming for his job. He also passed the test to become a LEED AP, which is a big accomplishment. His job and church have kept him busy all year long. He had the opportunity to teach a nine-week finance class at our church, which went very well. He sat in the MUSS for every Utah home football game even though he hasn’t been a student for over a year-and-a-half. He lost 20 pounds and then gained most of them back.

Alison:

Alison enjoys being a stay-at-home mom, though she loves getting away once a month to attend book club. She started a joy school with two other moms. She teaches once every three weeks and enjoys preparing lessons and helping Ada and her friends learn. She also participates in a babysitting co-op where she watches other people’s kids in exchange for them watching hers. She ran her first 5k and would love to participate in more races. She had the opportunity to attend one rock concert, see two plays, and go to three movies in the theater. Maybe she can get out a little more this year.

In October we left the kids behind and took a much-needed vacation. We flew to Florida where we went to Everglades National Park and on a day cruise to the Bahamas. We then went on a five-day cruise to Key West, Cozumel, and Belize and had the time of our lives. We wish we could afford a cruise every month! While at home, we’ve spent time watching sports, reading, and most recently playing Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Ada:

This year Ada turned three. She learned how to use the toilet and started attending school. She loves preschool and joy school and is learning a lot. She has made lots of friends in the neighborhood. She refuses to wear pants because “girls wear dresses”. She is obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Disney Princesses, and the color pink. She has a great sense of humor and makes us laugh every day. She loves feeding our pet fish and frog every day.

Kate:

Kate celebrated her first birthday. She learned how to crawl, walk, and talk. Her favorite things to say are, “What’s that?”, “Who’s that?”, and “I want…” She is so sweet and happy but has a mischievous side. She loves to torture her sister by taking her toys and throwing them down the stairs. She loves juice, music, books, and giving hugs. She also loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and watching our fish. She loves to climb and make messes. She still takes antibiotics every day. (This has already changed. Yay!)

When Ada and Kate aren’t fighting, they love spending time together. Ada can make Kate laugh like no one else can. They love to chase each other and run around the house laughing. We’re excited for this year where Kate will be able to play more things with Ada.

We hope everyone had a great 2009 and will have an even better 2010. The last decade has been good to us: Tyler graduated from high school and served a mission, we both graduated from college, we met each other and got married, we had two beautiful daughters, and we bought our first house! We are so grateful for all the Lord has blessed us with.