Happy Birthday Siesa

Siesa turned one today. She is still a little ball of energy. She is (like Jensen) petite she is 28 inches long and weights 17 lbs 7 oz. She does do a few signs, the important ones anyway like eat, water, milk and she says Ba (ball), Mommy, ha (hat) and uh oh. She now eats most everything but she really likes strawberries, yogurt, cottage cheese, potatoes and squash but really she enjoys playing with her food much more than eating it. Siesa loves to be in the middle of the action. No matter what is going on she wants to be involved. Siesa also enjoys being out side. If there is a puddle anywhere near she will find it. She also loves to slide and swing. Siesa is still very much attached to her thumb and walks around all the time sucking it. She will often come to me flop over, suck her thumb for 20 seconds jump up and start playing. She is a very destructive child and loves to figure out how to get things open. I can always tell where Siesa has been because there is a trail of stuff everywhere. Hopefully, soon she will not get so much enjoyment from pulling everything out of my drawers and of the shelves; we call her our little tornado. She is a very happy, messy, easy going child. We love you.

Cute Siesa

The real Siesa

Happy 3 years Jensen

Jensen is now 35 ½ inches long and weights 26 lbs. Yes, I have petite children, he is in the 10th percentile but good things often come in small packages.

He has changed so much in the last year. The most exciting thing is that Jensen is potty trained. Yeah! Jensen’s imagination has exploded; he has imaginary friends that are constantly playing with us. He loves to play with cars and trucks. He loves to go out side and build roads with his bulldozer, cement trucks, etc. When we drive anywhere he is always pointing out different big trucks. He also loves to watch the garbage truck come. His new favorite game is to play garbage man. He walks all over and picks up everything he can find and throws it in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. (I only wish it was as fun to put it all away). He loves to help me and when ever I ask him to help with something he says “I would be happy to”. Jensen still loves music. He can sing so many different songs and loves to turn the music on loud and “dance crazy”. He's a joy! We love you!

The scrunch face and

Showing me how old he is

Finally!

After 2 months of hard work we have completed our family room. We started the week before Christmas and finished this week. We sheet-rocked the walls and ceiling, textured the ceiling, painted, fixed the fans, widened the door entrance, put up new trim and base boards, covered the couch, put in all new outlets and covers, and tomorrow I need to put up the new blinds and curtains. We LOVE the new room. It seems so much bigger, lighter and just more fun to be in. We learned a lot about how to remodel and some do’s and don’ts like always wear a mask when sanding sheet rock(Derek had a hacking cough for a week because of all the dust) smooth ceilings are highly over rated just texture it, it saves a lot of heart ache, sheet rock is edible (just ask Siesa she will tell you), the more power tools the better (thanks Eric), it is very nice to have someone who knows a lot to help (once again Thanks Eric), there are many more colors in our world than white and eggshell (like tea leaf green, love it!), it always takes more time than you thought, (we thought we could do our “little” project in 3 weeks? Yeah right), and some things look better from a distance and that is OK.

Now on to the guest bedroom! Yippee!

Before (I know, it was ugly)

Toilet Triumphs

I think I can safely say Jensen in potty trained. This week we wore big boy underwear all week with only two small accidents. (one accident he did have was because he didn’t want me to tell him to go to the bathroom so I told him I wouldn’t say anything and he was busy playing and forgot to go. After that he has always remembered to tell me or just go by himself). I started intense potty training two weeks ago and only put pull-ups on him when we left the house but this week I was brave (or crazy) and he has only worn underwear. It was a busy week and we went somewhere every day with no accidents. On Tuesday we were even gone from 1:00 - 8:30. He still doesn’t really like to use a “big” potty but he dealing with it. I am not sure what to do with Siesa while I am helping Jensen in a public restroom. The other day we were at the library and he needed to go. I was trying to hold Siesa and she was very mad and wanted to get down so I had to put her down to help Jensen. I turned around and she was lying on the bathroom floor sucking her thumb. YUCK!!! She has also gotten in the water before. She got a little sick this week and no wonder with all the bathrooms we have been in it is amazing she has not gotten some terrible disease. Sometimes we leave the bathroom and I feel like I need to sanitize her from top to bottom. Today Jensen even told the nursery leader that he had to go which is really big for him to even talk to anyone at church. We are soooooooooo excited.

This is Jensen showing off his potty chart that. For is reward he got to go the store and buy a toy train.

teeth

Siesa loves to bite anything and everything. She has 6 teeth. We have teeth marks all over the house on books, toys, blocks, the window sills, chairs, videos, games etc. Two of these movies we got are from the library and now they have a nice row of teeth marks and holes in the plastic all the way around them. Today we were playing with some wood blocks and she bit a piece off and was eating it. Silly girl.

our little walker

Siesa is walking. She walks 50 percent of the time. She always starts off walking and walks until she falls and then crawls to something and then gets up and walks again. She is so cute but always wants to be on the move. Getting her dressed or changing her diaper is quite the challenge. She screams half the time trying to run/crawl away from me.

staples, staples, and more staples

We are remodeling our family room. The color that I painted the walls clashed with the couch so I decide to reupholster it. I was originally just going to slip cover it but as I got working on it I wanted the cushions to be different and the arms to be less fluffy etc. . . so I ended up just upholstering instead. I got the canvas fabric for only $10 it was on sale. It was quite the process I must have taken out a few hundred staples from the old couch. In the end it was easier then I thought, I really just took the whole couch apart and put it back together with new fabric. I learned a lot and next time I attempt to reupholster (I want to do my rocking chair next) it will be better. Now for the first time in my married life I have matching couches (our other one is chocolate brown). Now we just need to put up some trim and the family room will be done. Yeah!

Before

After