Look Who Just Turned Two!

Logan started her morning with her breakfast of choice (waffles!) and we got to enjoy them as a family because Mike, thankfully, had the day off.

I carefully pin all of her hair back when she has anything with syrup, otherwise, we inevitably end up with a clump of hair full of it.

Mike headed off to class and Logan and I went on a mommy date to build-a-bear for the morning. She picked out her very own bear:

Waiting to get stuffed:

Picking out a heart for the bear. Logan thinks everything should come in twos now that she's two years old and insisted that the bear needed "TWWWWOOOOOO" hearts, not just one.

Having the process explained to her:

Helping stuff her bear:

Checking for it's "huggability":

Warming up the bear's heart:

And then putting the heart in the bear to bring it to life!

Then she went to give the bear a bath and fluff her up:

She picked out an outfit and we were on our way! She loved the experience, it was so much fun to see her get so involved. She's been carrying the bear around non-stop since we got home with it yesterday. It's name? Baby bear. I think everything she owns right now has the name baby in it.

Her big two year old outfit:

We headed out after her nap to pick up her tup-takes. She insisted on taking her new backpack and bear with her:

I felt far too pregnant this year to try and attempt another cake and we saw these cute cupcakes at target a few weeks ago and went ahead and ordered some. The cupcakes were Logan's request, she and I looked through cakes and cupcakes and she insisted she needed the cupcakes. She also got to pick the flavors of the cupcakes, the lady at the bakery really was sweet and let Logan look through pictures and pick exactly what she wanted.

She thoroughly enjoyed her cupcakes this year, which was nice since last year she wouldn't even touch her smash cake! She did keep very, very clean, though.

We learned our lesson at Christmas not to try and make her open all of her presents at once so we opened a few every couple of hours. It was perfect because it allowed her plenty of time to play with whatever she had opened and then she got something new when she was done! Here are some of our present pictures:

Logan requested "fren fies" (French fries) for lunch, so I made some for her and then requested we take her for pizza for dinner. Here she is saying "Shu-shu" (thank you) daddy for my pizza!"

This was her reaction when she realized the massive dessert they brought out after dinner was for her eating enjoyment:

Notice the change of pants? Logan pulled the top off of her apple juice and spilled it on her other ones. We fully intended on teaching her a lesson (because we CONSTANTLY tell her she needs to keep the tops on her cups) and we were going to leave her in the wet pants until before we left. Her reaction to that was, well, I'll teach you guys a lesson and she got out in the aisle of the restaurant and began to strip her pants (and everything else) off....so she won and we went to the bathroom and changed. So much for that lesson.

This was our last big family event as a family of three! Our next big event will be welcoming #4 to the world!

2 Years Old!

Logan is TWO years old today! Here are some of the things she's up to:

- She wears a size 2T in her clothes and she wears a size 5 shoe.

- She can count to 10 with some prompting and knows the numbers in the right order.

- She can sing songs like Jesus Loves Me, My God is So Big and today she learned "Happy Birthday to Lo Lo." Sorry if your birthday comes and she sings happy birthday to herself...she's learning ;).

- She remembers story books she reads and can retell stories by looking through the pictures.

- She recognizes her name and when it's spelled out will tell you, "That says Lo Lo!"

- She's got quite a vocabulary and knows more words than I can count. She's speaking in sentences now and you can have quite the conversation with her if you work hard enough at it. Her favorite word? No. It's quickly becoming my least favorite word.

- She's very sensitive and when Mike or I are visibly upset she'll give big hugs and say, "I so shorry mommy (or daddy)." She's also taken to saying that right after she comes out of her room from time out so it's hard to stay upset for too long with her.

- She likes to dress herself. She (thankfully) still lets me pick her clothing but she puts most of it on herself. And most of the time she does it correctly. She does not like to be helped in any capacity so we have to start getting ready to go out a good hour ahead of time because we know it'll take a while to get all of her stuff on.

- She LOVES to swim in the bathtub and will call out for the world to hear that she's "FIMMING."

- She's a sweet little mommy to her baby dolls. She loves to change diapers, put them to bed, change their clothes and tote around a "dia bag (diaper bag)" for them. She'll be a big help when the baby comes, I'm sure.

- She's very good at following instructions. She'll get the things we ask her to get and can follow a series of instructions, too. We can tell her to do numerous things at once and she'll go get them all done.

- She loves to clean! She makes her bed every morning, helps straighten her room at night and does a very good job of helping me with odd jobs around the house.

- She is COMPLETELY potty trained! She wears big girl panties all day long, even through her nap, and only wears a diaper at night because we've had a couple of accidents happen. She's making it longer and longer, though, so maybe by the time the boy makes his appearance we will truly only have one in diapers.

- She uses a spoon and a fork and does it correctly. She's gotten to the point where she doesn't make too much of a mess when she eats, and when she does, she cleans it up herself.

- She still uses sippy cups mainly for my sanity because she does pretty well with regular cups.

- She's very into pretend play and will make all kinds of foods in her "chichen" to feed people. Then she'll walk around the house and ask every doll, stuffed animal and living being if they "wan shum?"

- Knows the colors pink, green, yellow, red and blue. Can identify pink every time, the other ones you have to prompt her.

- Knows that a green light means go and a red one means "top, top!" We had to teach her this when she'd scream "GO GO GO GO GO" like crazy any time we pulled up to a red light.

It doesn't seem like 2 years ago we were in the hospital getting ready for the crazy ride that parenthood has brought, but we also can't imagine a life without our sweet girl. We have been so blessed with such a wonderful child and are so excited to see what the next year brings!

35 Weeks!

I'll make this one short and sweet since even more important than being 35 weeks pregnant today is the fact that my first baby turns TWO today! We're about to head out for a day full of fun and I'll post pictures from that later on. Nothing new, went to the Dr. yesterday and everything's looking right on schedule. Only about 5 weeks left!

**Side Logan story: yesterday she was loving on her baby brother and then quickly got off the couch (when he kicked her in the head), lifted her shirt and said, "my baby in my belly kick-ed (with the syllable separation)." When I told her only mommy had a baby she shook her head and with extreme certainty and said, "no, I have baby too, see?"

Psalm 23

I love the idea of speaking scripture into our children and have been working very consciously with Logan to do that since she was tiny. I want them to grow up having heard it and to know several verses without having to sit and memorize them; rather, they will have heard them so many times that they know them naturally, like a song on the radio. Psalm 23 is one that I've recited to Logan at bedtime for most of her life and a couple of months ago she grabbed onto the word "shep" (shepherd) and would recite that word with me, then she added a few of the other words. We actually go through the whole psalm every night but I went ahead and posted just the part she knows for now. She recently started saying "passa" for pasture but I just couldn't get her to say it this time around, despite the 10 different videos I took of her. Stubborn one, she is. As she learns more and more of it, I'm sure I'll post more videos!

And yes, she is asking for candy at the end of the video. I had promised to give her an M&M if she stayed on the other side of the camera (I think she may be a photographer in the making the way she only likes to be on the opposite end of the thing), she doesn't get one every time she recites it...though, she'd like to, I'm sure.

Another Baby Sneak Peek

We've been so blessed by so many people throughout this pregnancy who have freely given us some of their gently used baby items that we needed. One of the bigger items we needed was an infant car seat because during the summer we encountered some mold in our storage unit on the porch (we've been routinely checking for it since then) and Logan's infant car seat had taken the brunt of the molding. It was not salvageable so we had to throw it away. Thankfully, one of our good friends had a little boy who had outgrown his and since they were moving, they didn't need to lug the extra car seat with them and gave us theirs! There was nothing wrong with the car seat minus little wear and tear things (it had been used when they bought it) and the canopy was a little bent--which turned out to be not fixable, anyway.

I think I mostly am dealing with a bad case of nesting and needed a project. I had seen these sweet minky covers/canopies online but was certainly not willing to pay the $100+ dollars for a set so I decided to try my hand at it. I had a mini panic attack last night as I pulled the canopy apart, knowing that if it didn't work we'd (again, like with the rocker) probably have to shell out some cash to fix it but went for it. I really like the result, it's really soft, easy to take off and wash, breathable so it'll be nice in the summer months and I love the look.

Logan actually helped pick the giraffe fabric on the canopy. We literally ran around the fabric store (ok, Logan ran, I tried to hurry after her) and this is the fabric she stopped at and said, "da one, da one." I like her style.

Mike and I are going to install the car seat in the car in the coming days because Logan is just too interested in it. She loves to put her baby in it and drag it around the house (or knock it off of whatever it's on). I don't think she'll break it, but I think it's best we not let her play with it right now so that she doesn't accidentally knock her brother off of something when he's sitting in it. :)

Now I need to come up with another project to keep myself occupied. Sigh. This was supposed to take all week.

How He Loves Us

I realize that I've posted several videos of Logan dancing, so please don't feel like you need to watch this one if you've gotten your fill! I post them mostly because I know the grandparents all enjoy getting a chance to watch her do whatever I can get on film. This was several days ago, Logan and I were cleaning the house and this song came on the radio and she said, "top, top (stop, stop) danding (dancing) time" and proceeded to do this through the whole song. I love that she was dancing to this particular song (How He Loves Us by David Crowder), every once and a while she'll sing some of the words to it (though, I was unable to catch her doing that today). I also love the little ponytail which she had forgotten was in her hair, they don't last too long these days because she prefers to just have a bow with her bangs clipped back. Anyway, here you go!

(Please pardon our little mess, it was our cleaning day)

34 Weeks!

I'm 34 weeks pregnant today! It's hard to believe that in three weeks I'll be full term and could have the baby at any time. I'm a little nervous this time around about going into labor naturally as I was induced with Logan. I'm so type A and SUCH a planner that it kills me to not have any idea what's going to happen or when it's going to happen. I've literally written out every scenario and have plans for all of us (where Logan will be, how I'll get to Mike if he's at work, etc.) for every one I have thought of. I go over them in my mind every day. I'm feeling a little crazy...I'm sure part of it is the pregnancy, right?

This week Mike had to go into our distance learning office and ask for an exception to their distance learning rule (have to be a certain distance away from the seminary to take a class completely online). He's registered to take a hybrid class that meets one weekend during the semester and it just so happens that it's the weekend that the baby is due and if he were to miss it he'd fail the course. So, we're hoping they'll give him the exception and we'll have no worries about it. (He has to take the hybrid because of his new work schedule as an Assistant Manager)

I was really excited this week because I finally got an email from the artist who will be doing some of our custom artwork for the nursery and she's gotten started on our pieces! These are the last little things we needed to start the nursery so when they come in the next few weeks we'll be able to put it all together. :) I think it'll help my nesting bug to have that project...so far I think I've cleaned our house so much that it's close to hospital sterile (I mean I took a bucket and a sponge and washed all of our walls for crying out loud).

New this week: sleep issues. Thankfully it's only about one night every three or four nights, but little boy HATES it when I sleep on my left side (oddly enough, L hated it when I slept on my right side), so if I ever roll onto it he kicks the snot out of me. My left side is the side that I'm most comfortable on, though, so naturally I roll that way when I'm sleeping and he has a tendency to kick so hard it hurts and wakes me. That was my last night...hopefully things go a little easier tonight.

This has nothing to do with the pregnancy but when Logan wakes up from her nap she and I spend a good 20-30 minutes snuggled up together because she's not really all there when she wakes. She's actually just like Mike when he wakes up. It's my favorite time of day and Mike was home today and caught it on camera.

62 and SUNNY!

We finally got some warmer weather today! When Logan woke up from her nap it was 62 degrees and sunny and you couldn't beg that child to stay inside, so we went out and played for a while. I am loving what this camera can do more and more every time I'm able to get it outdoors.

Sweet girl in her glasses (Mike calls them her Elton John glasses...I think we need to make a trip to Janie and Jack and get her something a little smaller and a little less red).

So glad I get to spend sweet time with her like this! I know in a few months things will be a LOT different.

This is Logan throwing rocks, as she threw them she'd scream, "doe (go) away rock, you dirty!" SUCH a girl! :)

We'll definitely enjoy the weather because it's supposed to get cold again in the next few days.