Young love

Maja and Mr Bunny met on her first Easter back in 2009. Daddy picked him out especially for her

Little ballerina

Maja loves dancing... and dress up and all things girly. We are planning on putting her in actual ballet class early next year after we get adjusted to 3 kids and the Holidays are over. I think she will LOVE it!!

And so it begins

the love affair with Disney that is.

We've been pretty consistent on keeping the girls away from Character type toys but recently we decided to let them watch the Disney classics we've been collecting. Isla doesn't care much about tv and while Maja likes it, she had no interest in those movies... that is until her 3rd birthday party. Her friends gave her a Snow White doll and Disney princess dress up clothes and it all snowballed from there... she is hooked! Oh well, we have been thinking about a trip to Disney in a couple of years when the girls are old enough so I guess it was bound to happen

First day of school!

Maja did great today! she didn't cry or get upset when I left her there this morning.

After I picked her up she said she had a good time. She danced and sat on the "bicycle spot" for circle time. And she said she wants to go back so that's always a plus :)

Decorating the school bag

Maja is starting preschool this year and she got a new bag for her projects and other things. Since the school provided the bags and all the kids have the same ones (although some are red and some are blue), they ask that we help the kids decorate them so they can tell them apart while at school (they do each have their names on but most of these little ones can't quite recognize their names yet)

So we took her to Hobby Lobby and stocked up on random things. She really enjoyed it and I think the bag turned out cute:

Some maternity pictures

The other day I decided to take the family out and document the belly. I set the camera up for Jeff and told him exactly what to do. I've very happy with the results :)

Zoey is getting big

I'm not nearly as diligent as I should about taking belly shots and in fact these are all I have of the entire pregnancy so far but hey, something is better then nothing right? I'll make it up to her by rocking her newborn photos :)

14 weeks... not a whole lot there. It looks more like I just had a big dinner :)

18.5 and 25.5 weeks. Kinda neat to see given I was wearing the same shirt and took them in the same spot

and the most recent one at 27.5 weeks

Finally a summer with no humidity or mosquitos!

After spending the last 5 years in Georgia and Wisconsin I started dreading summer. It was just impossible to go enjoy your evening without having to take a bath in stinky bug spray ahead of time and the humidity... oh boy! it sucked, especially when pregnant!

So I had been looking forward to our first "real" summer in a long time (even longer then the 5 years given that neither Portland or Seattle are particularly "summery" places)

I think the girls enjoyed it as well. The one thing I'm bummed about is not having taken them to the pool much. Turns out they love water!! I took them once and to my surprise they were very into it... even jumping all by themselves from the edge and I didn't even have to catch them... they'd go under water and back up all on their own :).

We did hit the sprayground several times though

But mostly we just spent a lot of time in our backyard and just had friends over :)

and almost 4 months later

A lot has happened in the last few months so I'll slowly catch up but I'll start with the most important thing...

Zoey Evangeline <3

We didn't plan on finding out. But we decided to have the gender written on a card like we did with Isla. We never opened it with her :).
When we got to the ultrasound place, the tech refused to write it down. She said she could tell us what the baby was, print us a picture but she couldn't write it and seal the envelope. Stupid, right? so we told her to just start the ultrasound and get her measurements and we could decide later.
At some point she left the room for about 5 mins and during that time Jeff and I decided to just go ahead and find out and thank goodness we did because when the tech came back, she didn't say a word and just continued the scan. All of the sudden she zooms in on an area, freezes the screen and asks "so, did you decide if you want to know the gender?". Stupid again!! I looked at Jeff before she even finished the sentence and he just yelled out "it's a girl!!"
Come on lady! we have girls, we know what they look like on an ultrasound! why in the world would she pull up the "money shot" BEFORE making sure we wanted to see it. It didn't matter at that point. Even if we had decided to not find out we would have anyway :(

Oh well, 3 girls it is for us :)

Happy 3rd birthday to Maja!!!

Time sure does fly. She is such a big girl now

Family vacation

We love road trips around here so when Daddy's fishing trip came up, the girls and I decided to meet him out by the coast and spend a few days there. This was the first time the girls were at the beach and they had a blast.

We started out with a pit stop at the Seattle Zoo and continued over to Ocean Shores to meet Daddy and spend the night. It was all very last minute as it was decided just the night before when Jeff left so while he was fishing the next days after we arrived from Seattle, we found a hotel and decided to check out the beach. After a brief hiccup (Mommy got the car stuck in the sand) the girls had their first taste of the ocean:

The next day we decided to move to Seaside in Oregon. They loved building sandcastles but the weather was definitely more windy:

Then we remembered Grandma and Grandma were spending the weekend in Bend, OR and since we hadn't seen our friends Chris and Sara who live there in a long time, we decided to spend another night there on our way back home.

4 days, 2 States. 4 towns and 1025 miles on a whim.. fun times! We have to do it again next year although this time around Daddy will NOT be on his motorcycle alongside us but in the car with us :)

Baby in the belly

Today we were sitting together on the couch and I told the girls that there is a baby in my belly. They both proceeded to lift my shirt up and tried looking into my belly button to see if they could see the baby. It was so adorable. Maja looked especially intrigued by it and couldn't quite get why she couldn't see a baby... "I don't see it Mommy"

Then I asked if it's a boy or a girl and she said "Hmm... let me think... I think it's a girl"

My twirly girl

This is all she wants to do now... put on pretty dresses and dance around. She even has her ballerina moves down putting her hands up. She is turning into such a girly girl

Getting closer

to getting Maja feeling better.

She has been having some health issues for a while and we finally got an appointment with a specialist at the Children's Hospital in Spokane. We don't have any final answers yet but things are looking better. She will have to stay on a mostly dairy free diet but at least it's ok for her to have some of it occasionally. Jeff is pretty happy we can have pizza again and both her and Isla love the rice milk and soy cheese :)

She loved her pretty "dress" and was pretty excited after they took her picture AKA X-rays. I couldn't go in with her for that part because I'm pregnant but Babcia said she did really good

and then we went shopping... I couldn't resist these shoes :)

Isla is a whole different story

Maja loves putting on dresses... Isla figured out how to get naked... I'm not impressed either

"I'm a princess"

this is how Maja came out of her room... she found a dress and was convinced she was a princess. Who told her about princesses is beyond me :). Then she danced around the living room

Baby Matteo

Baby flutters are the best... it's super early (about 13 wks) but I can already feel them. This little one very active :)

Baby Matteo update

I got to see our little bean flickering and jumping around today

It looks like the due date is 11/03/11

Happy 17 months Isla

1. you nursed for the last time this morning :(
2. you love rice milk in your bottles and will take if from Daddy in the evening and at night
3. you have taken so well to your toddler bed and sometimes after I put you to bed you get up and try to open the other and when you can't you just crawl back into bed, cuddle up with your "friends" and go to sleep. Much better then what Maja used to do which was fall asleep by the door on the wood floor :)

4. you've had your first popsicle... yum. Yes... we gave you the lime one that nobody likes but you seemed to be ok with that :)

5. you are still much of a destructive tornado
6. your vocabulary is amazing and I've lost count of the many words you know now
7. I love how you say no and you stick out your pointer finger at people to make it clear :)
8. you started singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"
9. every time you get even a little hurt you have to get your "awie awie" kissed, even though you are still a tough kid and don't really get hurt
10. you take such good care of your "babies". You nurse them and cuddle them and make sure they get have their blankies with them
11. you love books just as much as your sister

Not good

When you have little children, ALWAYS use furniture straps.

One morning I woke up to a huge noise and at first I thought it was Isla who pushed out the gate out of her room but when I rushed into Maja's room and I saw this and heard her crying I almost had a heart attack. Luckily she must have noticed it falling over and she moved out of the way to the other side.