The Good Life

Life can be pretty tough sometimes, and depression has the tendency to get me down pretty often.  Nonetheless, life with these kiddos really is THE GOOD LIFE.

 

Evera loves to stick his tongue out.  :)

On our trip to Arizona, Melia fully potty trained herself.  Even in the airports and on the airplane!  She loved going potty on the airplane!  When we got home things continued to go well for a few days.

Melia LOVES to read her potty book on the potty.  :)

 I can't believe how old she looks when she's not in diapers.  It freaks me out.  My baby girl is growing up WAY too fast!

 Unfortunately, Melia also completely un-potty trained herself too.  She just decided it wasn't for her and refused to wear panties anymore and begs for diapers.  She was still 1 when she potty trained herself, and even though she's 2 now, she's still awfully young, so I'll wait til she's ready...again.  :)

Here she is reading her potty book in Evera's closet.  :)  

 Melia likes to set up these magnets on the window sill.  She gets SOOO excited and proud of herself when she does it.  Then she squeals with delight and tells me she made macaroni!  I have no idea why she calls them macaroni, but here's her macaroni!  I just asked her what this picture was of and she says, "That a picture of my MACARONI!"

After I had Evera my mom came out and helped for a while.  She helped Melia create this "Choo-choo Train" for her stuffed animals.  Melia would push this line-up of boxes all around the house, ALL DAY LONG, for days at a time!  She LOVED IT!  She has an imagination just like my mom. 

 She loves to "pretend" and she even tells me she's pretending.  Sometimes she'll do something she shouldn't do, like drink my Pepsi, or try to feed something to Evera.  I'll tell her that's not ok and she'll respond, "Pretend drink your Pepsi?!"  And I'll (sometimes) say, "Ok, you can pretend to [do whatever she was trying to do]."  Or I'll say, "No, you cannot even PRETEND to dump your water on Evera's head."  :)

I find our kitchen chairs ALL OVER THE HOUSE.  I wouldn't be surprised if she dragged one all the way downstairs one of these days.  She uses them EVERYWHERE and drags them all over the house--mostly to climb up to high places--to open cabinets, reach shelves, etc.  She's a rascal, and LOVES these chairs.

I had this photo sitting out the other day when Mike got home from work (the one on the right).  He saw it and responded, "Oh my gosh, he's already changed so much!"  And I replied, "Yeah, he's changed a lot in 10 years."

Even Mike thought that picture was of our sweet Evera.  Believe it or not, that is actually a picture of Spencer as a baby!  Talk about twinners!

Ah he is such a fun boy!

Playing with Pooh Bear is tiring work!

There's that tongue again!  :)  Love that boy!

How handsome is he?!

I just love this picture for some reason.

 I love this Chubba Wubba Bubba!

:)

HAPPY BOY!

Melia LOVES to play "doctor."  She finds ANY scraps of paper or ANYTHING laying around the house and pretends they're bandaids.  She puts them on me, on her stuffed animals, on Chief, on her dollies, and on Evera!

Here she is putting a bandaid on Evera.  :)

And here she is admiring her work!  :)

Melia just LOVES playing with Evera.  She likes to do whatever he's doing.  Here she is laying on Evera's blanket with him.

Ahh just LOOK at that FACE!  It's to die for!

 I pretty constantly have to tell Melia "GET OFF YOUR BROTHER!"  All day long you can hear me yelling, "GET OFF YOUR BROTHER!  GET OFF YOUR BROTHER!  DON'T LAY ON YOUR BROTHER!"  She just adores him so much she wants to smother him with love and kisses.

 The other day I tried to explain to her that she will smash him if she lays on him and it'll hurt him.  She wouldn't stop so I got Melia down on the floor and I laid directly on top of her.  (I mean I've heard it said, "If your kid is a biter, bite them back."  I don't know how I feel about that parenting technique, but I thought, "Hey, it's worth a try.")  So she was laying on her back and I laid on my stomach right on top of her and I even put all my weight on her.  She thought it was the most hilarious thing she'd ever experienced.  Although she had to struggle under my weight to get the giggles out, she could NOT stop laughing.  So much for that technique!

Melia ABSOLUTELY loves to hold Evera.  He loves her too.

She asks to hold him almost every morning.

 She loves to play with her brother no matter what he is doing.

And she loves to teach him how to play with his toys.

We LOVE Pooh Bear!

 Seriously, this IS the good life!