April Showers Bring May-hem!

I know, I know... you want to see more baby pictures! I promise I will show them to you. I have 1,574 photos in my month of May photo folder - so there are a lot of photos coming your way! But first I want to recap what we did in April prior to baby Skye joining our family. I have a ton of funny quotes and stories to share with you that I don't want to forget!

Lately Jaide has been picking yellow a lot (glow sticks, band aids, etc). I think the only reason is cause it bothers Siena so much! Stinker! Siena is really into order (OCD?) and she knows that yellow is her color. Well for April Fool's Day I got them to switch bows for a quick picture. Jaide liked it and Siena thought it was funny for like ten seconds then threw the green bow on the floor. I quickly put the proper bow on the twirls and they crawled away like happy little puppies.

The twirls will yell yes-no-yes-no back at each other over nothing. They sometimes just like to disagree. It reminds me of the kids on Emperor's New Groove (see here).

We were driving somewhere and Scarlett told me: "I don't know how many minutes till we get there. Kids don't have a sense of time." bwahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!! What 5 year old says that? She cracks me up!

One morning Scarlett's hair was straighter than normal. She said "My curls are out of curly business today!" Another day her sinuses cleared out and she said "Hey one of my nose pipes is open now!"

Jake and I were in bed one Saturday morning. Scarlett came in our room and around to Jake's side of the bed. She then exclaimed "I was thinking it was time to get a motorcycle cause I can do my turns really well and look how fast I can run!" *sprints around room* Jake was so proud. He was ready to buy here a motorcycle that day!

Toward the end of my pregnancy I couldn't sleep. I was just too big and uncomfortable to slumber. Then if I did fall asleep I'd have to go potty minutes later. Ugh. So the girls would wake up and charge in my room trying to get me out of bed. They would pull my eyelids open and say "bake up [wake up] mommy!" then they would peel back my warm covers like I was a teenager or something! Thank goodness Jake started making them CM (chocolate milk) before he left for work. Then all I had to do was turn on a cartoon while they drank and I got a few more minutes of blessed rest.

Scarlett was playing makeup with her sisters: "Come on, let's make ugly people into pretty people!"

Taking turns playing baby in the nursery. And little treat bags so I could take a shower in peace.

The twirls are darling with each other - sometimes. Other times they can be a bad influence on each other. I have caught them several times egging each other into doing something against the rules. Like turning on the bath tub, locking a bedroom door, or touching the TV screen. Most of the time I find it's Siena talking Jaide into doing it. But not always. They are little shoulder devils for each other but no one is their shoulder angel! We need Matt from Studio C!

Playdoh fun. And the twirls taking turns sitting on each other after showering. Because, why not?

I showed you how we fix owies Karate Kid style. But we didn't really have a name for it. Now if they want us to fix their boo boo, they ask for "Miyagi?"

Siena will ask where everyone is - even if they are just in different rooms - sometimes when they are in the same room! Often she'll ask "Where'd daddy go?" And I ask her what she thinks. "Werk? Scub scouts?" [work, cub scouts] She likes tickles and will tell me if she wants slow tickles or fast tickles. Most of the time it's both.

Siena loves this hard copy book of 101 Dalmatians. She will pack it up and down the stairs so it's with her all day. The funny part is that she always flips it open to the inside of the front cover. Apparently she likes to look at those pictures and only those pictures.

We had a Honeycomb cereal incident one afternoon that quickly turned into Honeycomb-Angels! Thank goodness they like vacuuming!

There are several words that Jaide says that sound like the f-bomb and they make me chuckle to myself every time (words like frog and fork). Lately Jaide will tell me when she's coming down the stairs "a big step and I brokea my arm." I don't think she remembers (I hope not!) I think that maybe Scarlett told her the story!?! Jaide is Miss Independent. She's ok doing things on her own. Even when I paint her nails it's a power struggle "No, I do it!" She also likes to put stuff in her mouth, like toys and huge handfuls of food (we're working on that).

When the twirls are upset or very tired they will call each other "yucky":

I took the girls out on a walk (it was more of a waddle for me).

Watch Jaide fly on the Strider bike:

We are excited for babies around here! They also figured out the swing looks like giant headphones!

We had a playgroup meeting at a local gym. The girls and I showed up a few min after the open gym time but the lady at the desk said they were all full. Laura came out and spoke with her and she let Scarlett in to play. I sat out in the waiting room with the twirls - it worked out great cause they were too scared to go in anyways. I think they were afraid I was going to drop them off and leave cause once we got inside they both started crying and made me hold them both (with my huge belly - I was so sweaty!) Luckily my friends who were in there with their kids sent me some great pix of Scarlett having a ball...

The twirls calmed down and were fine in the waiting room. Then about 15 min before it was over the lady said they could come in if they wanted. They were shy and timid at first, but warmed up. They really hit a groove about 5 min before we left. Which made it that much worse when we had to leave. Lots of tears shed that day.

One of my friends from the BYU Formula SAE team (2004-2006) told me that he would be in town for the SAE conference. Jake and I thought it would be fun to go to dinner with him in downtown Detroit. We had a blast hanging out with Charlie (I was sad his wife - also an engineer - was back at home with their kids, I love their whole family! They were the ones who introduced us to Blaze and the Monster Machines!) But Jake and I had a great time. Emily Layton was a champ and offered to watch the girls - including bath and bed time!!! We got these great photos from her while we were at dinner:

Ironically the last 3ish weeks of my pregnancy the nausea started to get better (still needed Zofran but it worked so much better) and I felt like a person again! So right before my mom flew out we scheduled a bunch of play dates with friends. I felt like we hadn't seen them in forever!!!

The older girls organized these games all on their own. So fun to see them all playing so well together!

Rachel told me that Blake wanted to know about DNA. Then he asked her "Why does my DNA make brown hair and not black, pink, and blue hair like Miss Jenni?" haha!

Coloring themselves with chalk - caught red (and blue) handed!

Like I said, my 9th month of pregnancy I felt great. I had to drink baking soda water at night for the heart burn and I wasn't sleeping, but so much of my awful symptoms were better. We even went on a family hike! This trail is right next to our church building.

There is an old, random tile floor out in the middle of the woods:

Jake sent me this convo he had with Scarlett. We love her little science mind.
Scarlett: I need a bandaid.
Dad: Are you bleeding?
Scarlett: No but my foot hurts.
Dad: Some times we give them to little kids because it makes then feel better, but they really don't need them. Band-Aids are only for when you're bleeding.
Scarlett: Why?
Dad: They stop your bleeding.
Scarlett: I want to understand how that works.
Dad: Well, blood is really neat stuff. It isn't like water. When air touches blood it makes the blood get hard and the band-aid helps stop any more blood from coming out of your skin while this happens.
Scarlett: *Looks up amazed and feels a scab on her elbow.* That's exactly what happened to this elbow!

Family picnic outside (lasted all of about 5 minutes before the kids thought it was too cold and windy and we ended up back inside at the table!)

Jake replaced out sump pump - always some project to work on. Never a dull moment!

I just love these little rompers - how cute are they!?

Jake lifting both twirls together:

At night the twirls have used their glow sticks as magic wands, pointed them at Jake and said "Abracadabra! You are a stinky diaper!" They think that's soooo funny!

The girls love to play London Bridges - which got more and more difficult as my belly got bigger!

One thing I love about Michigan is all the little wild life we have in our yard. Ducks, squirrels, and geese showed up this past month:

Often I will look at the weather on my phone rather than opening the back door and just figuring out the temperature myself. Despite my "indoor" attitude, the girls have had lots of backyard time lately. In fact, the twirls showed me how they can close the back door together:

I went to Kroger one evening by myself. I happened to have makeup on and look more put-together than typical for a grocery store trip. Anyways, there was an older guy stocking the chips. He looked at me and said I was glowing! I thanked him and told him it was probably just from being 9 months pregnant. At the end of our convo he told me again that I was "truly radiant". Probably just looked gleaming from the sweaty nature of pregnancy. But it made me feel great. Something that doesn't happen often in the "woolly mammoth" phase of pregnancy.

And last, but not least, I had the opportunity to design a wedding invite for my cousin Emily. She's been living at my parent's house this past year so I have got to know her better through stories from Jami and my mom. Her fiance is great and Jami has had so much fun hanging out with them. Well, for her wedding she wanted lemons, yellow, green, and something fresh. She sent me a link to some lemon art that she liked and that was it. I used the artwork to make a border and I came up with this design. I thought it was fun to play off the fact that they were having receptions across the US! Luckily they both liked it!!!

My mom took their engagement photos and Emily sent me their favorites. I did my normal photoshopping stuff to the image. But I thought it would be fun to play with the colors a bit. So I muted Blake's shirt a little and I modified Emily's sweater to match the lemon invite a little better. I gave them several options to pick from, but this was their fave. They were way easy to work with! Congrats to the newlyweds! (see before/after)