TWENTY!

(Has anyone seen or listened to 'Mamma Mia' [I'm NOT talking about the movie]?)

My, where has the time gone? Little Kate is now 20 months old! She is still affectionately known as Baby Kate. I just can't get enough of this girl. She definitely has her moments, but she always brightens my day. This little girl has a lot of fire in her for being such a sweetie. She definitely has a mischievous side. She loves to climb on the kitchen table (or anything else she can get on) and run around waiting for us to snatch her off. She loves taking the dish towels off the oven and throwing them down the stairs. She loves to take Ada's toys and run away with them. She loves being silly. Ada used to be the one who could always make Kate laugh, but now Kate is the one who gets Ada laughing! They like to play together, though they like to fight a lot too. Kate plays really well by herself, however. If you give her Ada's princesses to play with (she always points to Ada's top shelf saying, "'incesses!") she's happy for a long while. It's nice that I don't always have to turn on a show when I need to take a shower.

She got her two front teeth after she turned 18 months, but last week Tyler discovered two molars on top. Whoohoo! Six teeth and counting! She's a tiny little thing (her weight was in the 1st percentile at her 18 month visit), but I like to say that she's deceptively small because her tummy is so big. That girl is definitely front heavy. I love it. It's funny that I'm not in love with my body, but my girls both have my exact frame (small, long torso, no hips, big bellies) and I love everything about them!

Kate is the sweetest little thing ever. It's impossible not to be in love with her. She is so happy and good. I wish she would stay little forever!

Awesome!

This may be my favorite music video ever. The song isn't too shabby either. The girls and I can't get enough.

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.

Letdown

January is such a downer! It has been a blur of sick kids (including the hubby), poor sleep, and no motivation. One day was especially rough. It started with me getting my first ever shiner--Kate threw the phone at my eye. She then dumped an entire bag of Marshmallow Mateys on the carpet/couch and dumped my powder onto the bathroom floor. Later I was getting a game out of the closet and a bunch fell down on my foot. I haven't been sleeping well either. Between Tyler, the girls, and my bladder (I'm not preggers, I just have the smallest bladder known to mankind), I wake up a lot and have trouble falling asleep. I've been taking naps almost every day, which means I don't get much done around the house. Thankfully this month is almost over.

Tyler and I have made some personal and family resolutions that have helped with things a bit. Possibly my favorite is that Tyler has resolved to make dinner one night a week. He has been faithful so far. All of his meals have been tasty. Most nights there have been leftovers, so it is great to have two nights a week where I don't have to worry about what to make.

Tyler also encouraged me to learn a new skill this year. After much thought, I decided to pick something that is more like a project but will hopefully help me learn new skills along the way. I want to learn more about decorating and organization so I can give my house a makeover. I'll take it one room at a time (starting with my bedroom) and we'll see what happens. I'm excited to learn new things (I want to make curtains for several of the rooms) and hopefully have a better-looking house at the end. I am open to any ideas, tips, books, websites, blogs, etc. that can help me in the process. Wish me luck!

Christmas dresses

I love the Christmas dresses I found for the girls this year. We got some pretty good pictures of them sporting their fancy new outfits. Love these girls.

A long December

December was, of course, a busy month for us. We had family parties, Christmas concerts, yada yada yada. I'll make shorter posts about some of these later. Christmas was great. The girls loved it. It gets more fun as they get older. I especially love Christmastime because my entire family is in town. We had everyone over to watch the Las Vegas Bowl and we hung out a lot. One fun little story from the holidays: we went to the Larry H. Miller Christmas Carol Sing-Along at ESA the Monday before Christmas. I started feeling ill beforehand, but we were already downtown at a party at Tyler's work. The arena was crazy packed, but we had good seats and sat with some of Tyler's family members. Something just wasn't right with me, and about halfway through the concert I knew I was going to barf. I ran up the stairs and knew I didn't have time to make it to a bathroom, so I ran outside and immediately puked on the pavement. People were walking by saying, "Ma'am, are you okay?" I mean, vomit was spewing from my mouth as they were asking this. I felt a little better, but I was glad to see Tyler out there with the girls by the time I was done (luckily we stayed just long enough to get our free Jazz tickets). As we continued back to Tyler's work, I started feeling worse and knew there was going to be trouble. We had two cars there, but there was no way I was going to drive home. I'm so glad we left a car, because Tyler had to pull over before we got home so I could puke again. It was a long night of sitting on the toilet and puking. It finally stopped and I got some sleep, but I didn't feel myself for over a week after that. I hardly felt like eating, especially treats, which is very unusual for me. The sad thing is that two days later Ada started puking, and that night in her bed, Kate started puking too. Ada puked seven times and was done. After barfing twice in her crib, I had to cover myself with towels and hold Kate while I awaited it to come again. Luckily she only barfed two more times and was done with it. They both seemed normal the next day. It was so sad with Ada because after the first time she was just dry heaving and it was so hard to hear and watch her. All I could do was hold her hair back and hold the bowl up to her mouth. Anyway, that was our pleasant week before Christmas. I'm glad it came when it did. Poor Tyler caught it two weeks later, but luckily we all made it through Christmas and New Year's unscathed. Pictures (of Christmas, not puke) are forthcoming.

The Katester

Ada is officially 3 1/2 today, which means that Kate became 1 1/2 twelve days ago. I am way behind. There is a lot to report on little Kate, so I better get crackin':

On the day of the 10th, I FINALLY felt a third tooth poking out of Kate's gums. We're slowly getting there. Maybe one day she'll be able to eat like a normal person. She loves to talk, and she's good at it. I can't believe how many words she says and how many she can put together. It's adorable, but it makes her seem so darn old! Every day she grabs all the Sesame Street books she can find (we have a lot) and brings them to me so she can sit on my lap and identify all the characters. She loves to be read to. Poor little thing has been sick a few times this winter. When she's not feeling well, she likes to cuddle with Mom. I love it, except that it makes it hard to get anything done. For a while (like right after Daylight Savings) she was waking up at ridiculous hours. She slowly started sleeping longer and then was consistently waking up between 7:00 and 8:00. Now she's been waking up in the night and the wee hours of the morning, but she's been going back down and sleeping until 8:30 or 9:00. She is a crazy climber. We have to fold up all chairs so she doesn't drag them around the house and climb onto things. She especially loves to stand on chairs so she can turn the lights on and off. She is so sweet and happy. She loves to play, laugh, and have fun. She dances whenever she hears music and often prefers to run instead of walk. She loves going to Nursery. We took her a few times before she was official because she was getting so hard to take to class. I was a little nervous about her going, but she does well and has no problem leaving us. She comes home and tries to sing the 'Hello' and 'Sunbeam' songs. So cute! Her hair is now long enough for pigtails! It can be a chore to do, but it's adorable. She loves to give kisses. We'll be reading a book and she'll suddenly bend down to kiss someone on the pages. She kisses the toys she plays with and people she sees. I love it! Now for the best news of all: Kate doesn't have to take her antibiotics anymore! If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, you can read here and here. We took her to Primary Children's last Friday for another VCUG. It was an unpleasant experience for little Kate. She did much better when she was five months old. She cried the whole time and Tyler and I had to try and comfort her while she laid on a table hooked up to a catheter, with dye being pumped into her bladder and an x-ray machine over her. After the whole ordeal they gave a her a little teddy bear and told us they'd let us know the results. On Sunday I got a message from her doctor saying that everything was normal and she didn't have to take antibiotics anymore. Hallelujah! I hated giving those to her every day, and getting refills every month. The only plus is that she has never had an ear infection. Anyway, we're thrilled because we know other kids with the condition have had it a lot longer, and if it hadn't have gone away on its own then she would have had to have surgery.






We just love this sweetie!

Family photos

We got family pictures taken last month by a friend from our old ward. I had been wanting pictures for a while, and worked hard to put our outfits together. I got my inspiration from here. I love the color combination she used. I did my best to replicate without breaking the bank. I would have loved to buy new outfits for us all, but I went the cheap route instead. I borrowed my sweater, Ada's shrug, and Kate's skirt from family members (I also borrowed a yellow headband for Ada, but we couldn't find it on picture day. I later found it at the bottom of Kate's laundry basket). I wanted to buy Kate a red shirt with white stripes but I couldn't find one anywhere, so I used this red shirt she already had. I also already had the red shirt I'm wearing, Ada's skirt, and all of the flowers. I found Tyler's sweater at Old Navy for a whopping $4.74. I purchased Kate's shoes at Kid-to-Kid for $6.

My problems: I wanted the pictures to be taken outside, but I waited too long and we had to find an indoor place last minute because it was during the time in December when the highs were in the teens. Also, I didn't think to have the photographer take full-body pictures of us all, so you can't see the girls' full outfits very well. Also, the girls weren't cooperating! Kate wasn't feeling well that day, and Ada had a hard time looking at the camera. Despite all that, I think they turned out really well. We'll have to call her back in the Spring for some more.

This is the one we selected for our Christmas cards. It's the best one where we're all looking.

I love this one of Kate, but who knows what Ada's looking at!

This one's not bad, except that Ada's doing something funky with her tongue and Kate looks drugged up

Another one where the kids aren't cooperating. At least Kate is looking, though she looks troubled

She's good for the individual shots

This is the only picture that shows Kate's shoes, and they're just in the background

The best one of Kate

Aww...except that after this picture was taken she said something like, "Look like you're happy to be together!"

That's more like it! I think our natural smiles were getting worn out by that point

She took a few of the girls together but none worked out! Hopefully we'll have better luck next time.