Happy Mother's Day!

p.s. The "baby clean game" Tillie likes is on Huggies' facebook page.  I had to play it to get a wipes coupon.

Mother's Day 2013

Hello, this is Tim writing. In honor of Mother's Day and Amber, I present:

My Mom

By Tillie Leugs

I really love it when my mom plays the baby clean game on her computer.

My mom likes to wear dresses.

My mom always tells me, “Tillie, time for bed!”

The best thing she does is eat.

It makes her happy when I play with Teddy.

My mom loves to relax in the sunshine.

I like it when she makes puzzles with me!

The best thing she cooks is spaghetti.

When my mom shops she likes to buy Cheese-its.

My mom’s favorite household chore is cleaning the floor.

My mom’s favorite TV show is grown-up shows like house and food shows.

If she could go on a trip, she would go to school with me.

I love my mom because her hair is brown!

I disagree with some of these, but hey, there's truth. Brown hair surely is lovable.

Happy Mother's Day, Amber!  Love you!

Tim

Before, During, After

Hi!
  It's Amber.  An online message board that I'm part of had kind of a "challenge" to post a picture of you in the morning, right when you got up and compare it to your "ready" self.  I thought it was kind of interesting, so you're in luck.  I'm sharing the pictures here too.  I have some pretty awesome bedhead going on, but really, this isn't bad for 7am.

This is me mid-getting ready.  I've combed my hair(I wash it every other day, this was an other day.) and gotten dressed.  But looking at this picture, it's better than I think I look sans make-up.  Although, I'm realized this sweater doesn't fit me very well.

Freshly make-uped and hair straightened.

Just for kicks, here's the side by side comparison.  This is making me feel confident in my choice to sleep and extra 10 minutes at Camp and going to breakfast with just fresh clothes and a ponytail.

4 Years Old

1. What is your favorite color? Red [This was a surprise to me; I would have guessed pink or yellow.  That does explain the red star shirt she picked though!]
2. What is your favorite toy? Legos!
3. What is your favorite fruit? Apple 
4. What is your favorite tv show? Lalaloopsy
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Oranges[She must mean Mandarin Oranges.]
6. What is your favorite outfit? Bunny Dress [This one.]
7. What is your favorite game? Candyland
8. What is your favorite snack? Fruit Snacks
9. What is your favorite animal? Parrots
10. What is your favorite song? Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
11. What is your favorite book? Pantone: Colors [This one.]
12. Who is your best friend? Mama
13. What is your favorite cereal? Cap'n Crunch
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Drive my pink car!
15. What is your favorite drink? Milk
16. What is your favorite holiday? Halloween
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Aggie.  And 'Pink' and 'Brown'. [Pink and Brown are her two blankets. This is Aggie.]
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Cereal!
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Spaghetti and Broccoli.  And cupcakes!
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Maybe a nurse.

So Much To Do, But Not Yet

The first week of June is going to be crazy busy for our family.

• It's Tim's last week of school.  He has a half day on Thursday the 6th.  He still has to report for grades, cleaning, etc on the 7th.
• My cousin Leah is getting married on Friday the 7th.  The wedding is in Grand Haven.
• Saturday is Camp's 100th Anniversary.  Tim is on the committee(he actually told them no twice because he knew I was already stressed out about this week 6 months ago.) and I'm helping out at one event.
• Somewhere in there, we have to move to Camp.  In the past we've moved in on that Saturday.  Obviously that won't be an option this year.

So, Tim has a lot of things to do for the last week of school, but a lot of it I can't help with and can't really be done before school ends.  He will get it all done though, because if you haven't realized it, my husband is awesome.  I'd feel better about it all if Wednesday was the last half-day of school though.  Too bad I don't get to make the schedule.  (There wouldn't be Parent/Teacher Conferences on Valentine's Day, that's for sure!)

Leah's wedding is going to be awesome and fun.  It's not great timing, but she got the date to me first, so she wins. ;)  I love weddings, I love the beach and I love Leah and James.  Win-win.  I've had a babysitter booked for month.  Date night!

The Anniversary will be fun, but it's a freaking ton of work(for everyone, not just my family).  Hopefully the weather will cooperate and a ton of people come.  It's the grand opening of the new rope swing!

All of that is going to work out.  It's the moving to Camp that I'm most stressed out about.  It's been so warm lately(finally!) that it seems like I should be packing for Camp, but I can't do that yet because we still need everything this coming month.  The weather's just tricking me.  We're actually living in the same apartment this year -- the first time we'll live in the same place twice at Camp.  I'm very happy about that.  I like the location(quiet, away from Campers), amenities(bathtub, internet, three bedrooms) and general feeling(newish -- no mold!).  With all the craziness of that week in June we'd actually decided to move to Camp before school ended this year.  Then we found out that our apartment actually won't be available until June 1.  My mom is a HUGE help when we move in.  She does the most of the cleaning, if I'm completely honest.  We had planned on doing the cleaning the last week in May when Tillie was done with school.  So, now we'll do it on June 1 -- except my mom has plans that day and I submitted Tillie to be in a local designer's photo shoot on that day.  (It's a pretty slim chance on that photo shoot, but I once won a "trash the dress" session that I couldn't do because of work so going forward I'm going to keep dates like that open.)  Tim says he'll clean the apartment instead of the nature center that day.

It will all get done.  It will be okay.  I've been anxious about this weekend since the anniversary date was announced.  I think it's just that I can't do anything about it at this point.  I have to wait for the busyness to start.

I mostly just needed to type this out so I could see it.  I don't know that it helped.  It still feels a little overwhelming. ;)

Here's a picture of my cute kids, just because.  These are the kinds of outfits I have to wear now because they don't work so well at Camp.

"Backpack"

Yesterday morning I dug in Teddy's closet to find a new pair of shoes for him.  As I did that his suitcase was left in the middle of his room.   Immediately after seeing it he pointed and yelled, "Backpack!"  He proceeded to drag it all over the house.

When I said was time for church he continued on to the door, got it down the steps into the breezeway and was ready to take it out the door.

Tillie asked me why Teddy was ready for vacation.

Macaroni Patterns

You may have seen that Tillie and I took a necklace making class at Dreamspun during Spring Break.  It was geared towards younger(but older than Tillie) girls and focused on patterns at knot tying.  I did most of the work when we were there.

Today when I picked Tillie up from TLC at church she was wearing a pasta necklace.  She excitedly told me something right away, but I didn't really listen because I was trying to get her to say thank you and give her the star cookie I picked for her.  When we got to Tim he noticed the necklace and admired it.  I said, it looks pretty good, you can kind of see a pattern even.  To which Tillie replied, "I did make a pattern Mom!"

Sure enough.  She did.  An ABCC pattern, which wasn't even one we practiced.  You can see where her supplies must have run out of the colors she needed so she started a new one.

This makes me so happy.

Semi-Famous

(Dale G. Young / The Detroit News)

On Monday when we went downtown a photographer stopped us to ask our names as they took our picture.  I had been checking mlive.com for it, but it turns out they weren't from the Grand Rapids Press, but the Detroit News.  I'm even quoted.  Read the article, here.

A '100 Year Flood'

I'm not going to lie, I don't 100% know what that means.  I do know it means that the Grand River is crazy high and a lot of people are having MAJOR flooding issues.  Our house is just fine.  I took the kids downtown today to see the flooding there.  It crested yesterday, so it's already receded a bit.  It just seemed like they should have pictures to "prove" they lived through it, like the pictures my parents have shown me from the blizzard of '78.

For kicks, here I am on the river path(It's in between the river bank and light posts.) with Tillie during ArtPrize.

Ruffle Shorties

Tillie has a few dresses-turned-tunics that I'd like her to be able to wear this summer.  It can be too hot for capris or jeans and shorts just aren't always cute enough.  Enter the Ruffle Shortie!

Companies like Matilda Jane and Georgia Grace sell them for $30+, that is if you can get them.  Depending on the brand they can sell out nearly instantly.  I saw a tutorial online on how to make them out of Target leggings.  I took that one step further and bought pink polka dotted leggings at the thrift store -- on half off day. So yeah, I paid 50¢ for these, plus about 30 minutes of time.  That's more my style lately.

Are they well made?  No, not really.  But they should last her the summer.  This week I found some co-ops where you can order some for under $10, but I hate how long co-ops take.  I'm certainly tempted though!  I'll probably just end up making her two more pairs in navy and red to complete some other outfits I have in mind.

Tillie loves them, so they're definitely a win. (Please excuse my daughter's blindingly white legs.  It's been winter for the past 10 months or so.)

Growth

Teddy's 18 month check-up was on Monday.  He currently weighs 22lbs 5.5oz which is the 25th percentile. That's up from 10% at 15 months!  He weighs pretty much what Tillie did at 15 months.  He was measured at 30.75 inches, but he was fighting it so much that I think he's actually taller.  His pants are more than half an inch shorter on him than three months ago.  Anyway, his height is in the 5-15th percentile.  His big ole head is 19.25 inches, which is the 85th percentile.

18 Months

Happy year and a half, little man!

You are a funny, silly guy.  You love animals, trucks and books.  I thought you were going to jump out of my arms when you saw an excavator knocking down a building in the Nordstrom Rack parking lot this morning.

You started walking last week and every day you walk more.  I think you may have walked today more than you scooted.  You use a lot of words including up, dinosaur, thank you, please, more, all done, truck, dog, cheese, happy and bye bye.

Your favorite toys are Tillie's Little People dollhouse, balls, tractors and Legos.  Your favorite foods are bananas, fruit snacks, marshmallows and smoothies.  You dance around whenever you hear music.

Your sister has finally realized that you're fun to play with.  She tells me she doesn't want you to take a nap so you can stay with her.  You steal her water bottle whenever yours is empty.  She does the same thing with yours.

We love you little Ted!  I can't wait to see what the next 6 months hold for you.

Easter "Family" Photos

With mom.

With Dad.

And as an added bonus, my favorite picture of the day.  It's my kids with my cousins Renee and Rachael's babies.  They're pretty much exactly a year younger than Teddy.

Dia - Tillie - Teddy - Soren

My Baby Walks!

After a handful of times "making" him walk, yesterday night he randomly started taking steps across the room.  On his own. free. will.  And was grinning about it.

He's still cautious, but he walks quite a bit during the day.  At least at his 18 month check up in two weeks I can say he's walking now!

Harmonica Dance Party

Since Teddy actually took steps today (multiple times!) on his own free will, I thought I should quickly post this video of his "dancing" skills from last night.  I'm assuming that as soon as he really gets going with walking I won't see these awesome moves as much anymore.


Yes, that's my daughter on the harmonica.  She already has an agent.  Please no calls. ;)