Style, It's a Process

I think I need to teach Berlin a little bit about hair brushing. Like maybe don't start at the back of the head and comb forward.

Maybe don't comb from one side to the other...

...and maybe it's a good idea to take current hair accessories out before brushing.

And definitely don't leave the house with a comb-over. Nobody should. Not when you're 3, and not when you are 85. It's not a good style. Although, a 3 year old with a comb over is pretty darn cute. But I think she would still look cute with a gum wad in her hair, so I guess she can do whatever she wants. :)

Wait, There Was a Birthday?!

Oh my goodness. It has been almost a month since Berlin's birthday and I just realized that I have not posted any pictures of her cute little birthday party. Bad mom.

I kept meaning to edit them. Now I realize that if I wait until I have time/energy to edit them they will never make it on to this blog. So, here they are in all their unedited glory.

Birthday girl in all her cuteness.


In her birthday outfit, complete with new sparkly shoes surveying the lay of the land. I don't actually know if she liked her new shoes better or the new princess castle with princesses. And someday we will move past this princess stage...but not today.


Waiting to eat cake is hard!


Especially when your cake is a Rapunzel cake, complete with Rapunzel's hair ALL over it.


But first all the guys took all the kids sledding. It was SO cold out, I think the high for the day was 14 degrees or something dumb like that. But they still had fun. And thank goodness it actually snowed a few days before the party because the weekend before almost all the snow melted.



Finally! Time for cake...


...and presents!


What's left at the end of the day? Princess massacre.

When I Grow Up...

The girls had a short conversation in the car yesterday that went something like this...

Berlin: When I grow up I want to be a mom!

Tryn: When I grow up I want to be a mountain climber! (Reference back to this story. She still hasn't changed her mind, which I think is really interesting considering the fact that I don't know if she actually knows what a mountain climber does exactly.)

Berlin: I want to be a mom and a horsey rider! (This is not the first time she has mentioned being a horse rider either. Which is also weird to me because I can't actually remember a time that she has ridden a horse, which means that she probably doesn't remember either. This is also funny to me because I swear this exact sentence came out of my own mouth at some point in my life. Although, I probably wasn't 3 years old and I probably used a word like "jockey" or "horse trainer" instead of "horsey rider".)

Tryn: I want to be a mountain climber and...guess what else?

Berlin: I don't know.

Tryn: Guess! Guess, guess, guess!

Berlin: I don't know Trynie. I can't guess.

Tryn: I want to be a mountain climber and...a SINGER! Just like daddy!

I can't wait to see what these girls accomplish in life.

Trynica's New Thing

Does every 4 1/2 year old spend hours a day coloring? It seems like there are several who do, but maybe not all of them? I don't know, but Trynica definitely does. We gave her 3 coloring books for Christmas and they are all colored through. Steve also found an empty artist sketch book laying around the house and every page of it has been drawn on, I think he found it about two weeks ago. In the last week she has also gone through almost an entire package of construction paper.

Her coloring techniques are so interesting to me. There was a stage for awhile where she had to have all of the markers lined up on the table and she would only use whatever color was at the top of the line. She would color one little thing, and then put that color at the end of the line and not use it until that color came up to the top of the line again. We have moved past that to just having all the markers in a container now.

She colors really well within the lines, but pays absolutely no attention to what color goes where. This means that people have purple skin, green hair, blue hands, and yellow feet. One of her new things is coloring one thing, like a ball, several different colors. She totally knows she is doing it too. If I color with her she will ask me to color the princesses hair purple, like she has a whole plan for the picture - only her plan doesn't make sense to anybody else but her. It's very creative, but very confusing.

She also loves to just draw and will draw very detailed pictures with very specific explanations of what is what, even if I can't tell what the picture means at all. She also likes to write her name on every picture she draws because she has recently learned to write her entire name. She can also spell and read other words by sounding them out.

Smart kid.

Progress

So annoyed right now. I have never taken progress pregnancy pictures. I don't know why. We didn't have a nice camera until Berlin was several months old, so we just didn't take as many pictures in general back then. But I actually have very few pictures of me pregnant at all, so this time, since this is the last time, I figured I would take some progression pregnancy pics.

Well, I took a picture at 15 weeks, right around the time I started showing. I just went to upload the picture to my blog and it won't work. It says the picture is "offline or missing" - only I can see it RIGHT THERE and it seems completely fine to me. Except it's not. I have had this problem with Lightroom several times recently, even regarding photos for other people, and it's starting to stress me out. The last thing I need is to start loosing pictures.

My plan was to take a picture every 5 weeks or so, but somehow I totally missed the whole 20 week period and suddenly I was 25 weeks pregnant. So, there is my one picture of me pregnant so far, at 25 weeks. So far this whole picture thing is not going very well.

Blah.

People keep asking me how I am feeling. Fine. Fairly fine. Things could be a lot worse. My only real problem right now is extremely sore lower abdominal muscles which cause me to move around like an old lady and waddle significantly even though I am not really large enough to waddle. My midwife actually prescribed me a lumbar support belt to help with the pain, but the whole belt is a rather big pain to wear as it turns into a 15 minute process just to use the bathroom. So, mainly I wear it if I know I am going to be on my feet a lot or if I want to go for walk. If I don't wear it and go for a walk - bad news. Then I can barely move at night.

The only other concern is that we don't even have an inch of space in this house for this child. As I was putting away the girls mountains of clothes last night after several loads of laundry, I was realizing how every inch of space in their room is overflowing. No room for anything extra, not even a little shelf space for little boy clothes. He is not going to fit here.

Time to move!

On the Flip Side

Here's the flip side to my post from Wednesday:

This morning Berlin came into our room rather early. She climbed up into bed and snuggled down right between Steve and I. She grabbed my hand and pulled it until it was resting underneath her cheek. Then she promptly fell back to sleep with her little hand wrapped around a few of my fingers.

Of course, this forced me to wake up more fully because my daughter's sweet face was only inches from mine, and every mother knows that when you have the opportunity to gaze at your sweet babies sleeping face you take it - no matter what time it is. Besides, it's hard not to. Looking away from a sleeping angel face is like trying to look away from the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen and we all know that's almost impossible.

I am in love with my three sweet angels, one of whom I have yet to meet. As Steve spends the afternoon preparing a funeral for a two year old little boy from Edina, I am especially so thankful for them today. Thankful that I get them for one more day. And I hope with all my might that I get them for one more, and one more, and for thousands more after that.

March Madness

Both of my kids are mad at me this morning. Why, you might ask? Well, let me tell you what life is like with two spirited and emotional young ladies in our house.

Tryn is mad at me for two reason. Reason number one is that there were no clean tights or leggings in her size this morning. So instead of letting her wear a pair of Berlin's, I made her wear pants. Sometimes if she has to wear pants I will put a skirt or a dress on over the pants. I didn't today. She is mad.

Reason number two that Trynica is mad at me is because while we were getting into the car she realized that she was missing this little quarter sized makeup brush that she thought she had with her. Since we were supposed to be at our 20 minute away destination in 5 minutes I wasn't really in the mood to look for it. I did retrace our steps back up to the front door. I couldn't find it. She is mad.

Berlin is mad at me too. Her reason? Well, since she has been staying awake until 10pm the last 4 nights because of time change and stubbornness, she was one of the reasons that we were still 20 minutes away from our destination 5 minutes before we should have been there. We had to wake her up to get her ready to go. She was mad when she found out that Tryn got to eat cereal at home and she didn't. I gave her a banana and a granola bar in the car. She still had some banana left 20 minutes later so I asked her if she was done with it and she said she was. So I took it and chucked it into a tree. She started bawling, and she is mad.

Save me.

My Trip and the State of our Household

I went on a trip, a little vacay. I have never gone on a trip without some member of my little family. Whenever I have gone somewhere, wether it was out to IN to visit my brother and sister, or on a weekend trip out to MI with some friends a few summers ago, there has always been a child with me. I have been away from my kids for other trips, but then I am always with Steve. Which, don't get me wrong, vacations with Steve are one of the best things in the world. However, until this last weekend I had never been away from anyone in my family to do something fun, I think since I got married almost 8 years ago.

So I went to Nashville to visit my bff, Cait.



Since I am starting my third trimester in a couple of weeks and can't fly until June, and since I won't be able to go anywhere alone without it being a massive production (pumping, etc.) after the man-child is born, Steve and I decided now would be as good of a time as any.

It was so fun. And relaxing. We just hung out a lot, slept in lot, and went shopping a lot. Good trip :)

I also realized a few things. First is that I really like traveling with Steve, he's such a great guy. It's especially nice to have someone to lift my suitcase into the overhead compartment when I pack my carryon to the brim. :)

Second, people kept asking me how I thought Steve would do at home with the girls all by himself and that felt like a really weird question to me. I just kept saying, "Oh, he'll do fine," and I knew that he would. The state of my kids well-being upon my arrival at home was not something that I worried about one time. Last night one of our friend who hung out with Steve over the weekend told me that when he was here the state of our house was the same as when I am here - only I wasn't. I wasn't surprised, I didn't expect things to be different. Then I realized that is probably not the case in all households. It also made me start thinking this morning about comments I have heard from other mom's, things like how their husbands never put their kids to bed and might not even know how. Things like their husbands don't know what the kids like to eat for lunch, where the toothbrushes are, and what the kids like to play with. My realization? I have a really, really, really great husband who is a really, really, really great father.

My girls had a great time with their dad over 5 full days, not because he spoiled them, gave them lots of sugar, and let them watch tv all day long. They had a great time because they like to be with their dad, and it's normal and fun for them. They might not have even really missed me all that much - and I am totally okay with that.



The other thing is, Minnesota sucks and I didn't really want to come back here. Why? Well, in Tennessee there are trees that already look like this:



And there is no snow to be seen. One day when I was there it was 71 glorious degrees. Then I came home to freshly fallen snow, and then more snow last night. I don't want snow, I want trees with blossoms and 71 degrees of sunshine.