Minnie Mouse Birthday

The BABY girl is turning TWO years old on May 8th and with busy weekends in May, we celebrated her birthday a little early. She doesn't mind, according to her, she's been 2 for about a month now. And we had no choice but to celebrate with her absolute favorite character, Minnie Mouse. 

One set of her godparents, Ryan and Liz.

Another godparent, Huntie Buntie

Leave it to Maddi to give Harlow make up and jewelry which I'm pretty sure was her favorite gift! She had makeup all over her face, eye shadow, blush, and lipstick. And check out those dangling earrings! 

These four are great friends and cousins. They play so well together, and I know my boys look forward to every time we get them together. 

It's become tradition to have a pinata at the parties now, and in typical Harlow style, she went wild on her pinata with a real metal baseball bat! Her tiny little body even managed to get a few pieces of candy out before Hudson went to town on it letting all the loot fall to the ground. 

The whole gang of kids and our "stair picture". 

Top: Hudson, Carson, Regan, and Harlow-Bottom: Paxton, Sidney, and Lincoln.

Sister enjoyed being the center of attention and she blew that candle out several times.

Here's a little video.....

HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY HARLOW MAE JOSEPHINE!! I COULDN'T LOVE YOU ANY MORE THAN I ALREADY DO, BUT TOMORROW I WILL. 

kindergarten open house

The time has come, Kindergarten is right around the corner for Hudson. This time last year I was a mess, debating the decision to send him to Kindergarten as a young 5 year old (with a June birthday) or wait another year. If you had asked me one day to the next, I would've given you a different answer, never sure of where my heart was, but now.......I am SO sure we made the right choice in waiting. I have no doubt that my almost 6 year old is ready now. Even as we walked through the school, and he rarely let go of my hand, I knew he was excited, proud, and eager to learn all about that big school. He wanted to see every single Kindergarten classroom and took the time in each room to talk to the teacher and try out the projects they had on the table.

Some of the teachers use different types of chairs for core strength, balance, and a way to wiggle out that extra energy kids tend to have. Hudson tested out each one, choosing the "T" chair as his favorite. The teacher asked him to pretend to write his name on her hand while he balanced on the chair. In typical Hudson form, he needed that tongue out for concentration. (A trait each of our kids have!)

Hudson has mastered the iPad, Kindle, and our cell phones, but a computer with a mouse is something we've never done at home. It took him less than a second to figure out how to maneuver that thing around, click and drag so that arrow moves where he wants it to.

He was very excited to board the bus for a quick ride, picking the very back seat. Jamie and I quietly mumbled to each other about how much both of us despised riding the bus. We're still not quite sure how transportation will work next year with our biggest kid in school, but I do know that that big yellow bus full of rowdy kids scares the bejesus out of me! 

I noticed many of Hudson's nervous tendencies while we were there; holding my hand, playing with his fingers, and blinking as he talked, but I also noticed his pride and anticipation of what Kindergarten means, and meeting new friends at a new school with a new teacher, and doing all of that as the oldest of two other siblings. There is no doubt that I will be a wailing mess of tears on his first day come September, and I will have a million fears, but I won't doubt for a second that he will succeed, and grow, and make us proud.

exploring at the park

The kids have a favorite park in town and we spent another afternoon there last weekend. Unfortunately its not in walking distance (but fortunately right next to the Target for some convenient shopping!). They each have their "go to" activity there. Harlow loves the.....no idea what this thing is called so I'll go with "spinny thingy". It could also be called the "spin so fast and get so dizzy you'll want to barf thingy". But no surprise, she loves it. Climbs on, spins like crazy, falls off, climbs back on, repeat.  

Paxton loves the spider web and pretends he's all sorts of mean and icky creatures climbing around that thing. 

This teeter totter thing isn't Hudson's favorite, but I just loved his genuine smiles and laughter......

But this is Hudson's favorite, the woods and creek behind the park. He was bummed the water was still too high to get into the tunnel, but that didn't stop him from finding long sticks and rocks to throw in the creek. 

When it was time to go I told them that Mommy had let go of her many fears of them falling in for long enough and couldn't take it anymore. They assured me that they wouldn't let go of that tree and were safe as safe could be. But for some reason, I didn't trust that skinny little measly tree, or their little fingers holding onto it for dear life. I'm pretty sure they'll be 50 years old before I'm ready to let go and let them live a little!

the bunny

The Easter Bunny stopped by our local Hy-Vee. It was Paxton and Harlow's first time meeting the bunny. Well, Pax sat on his lap when he was about 4 months old but I'm guessing he doesn't remember that. As soon as we got close, Harlow started blowing him kisses and walked right up to sit on his lap. She has no fear (even though this mom totally thought the bunny had the creepiest eyes ever!). Hudson and Paxton gave him a quick fist bump and we were on our way.

eggs

Three very happy and excited half-naked kids dyed Easter eggs last week. And surprisingly enough, their fingers and hands aren't still colored and glittered! Harlow worked on the same one egg the entire time. She wanted that thing to be as glittery and sparkly as possible! Along with her hands, body, chair, and floor underneath her! Hudson worked hard on his eggs with ideas of exactly how he wanted them to turn out. Paxton, well, he just dropped eggs in and stirred them around with his blue fingers. 

She is AWESOME

Oh, my Harlow......so many things to say about her, yet most of the time I find myself speechless. If you know all three of our children, it doesn't take long to realize just how very different Harlow is than her brothers. They have always been more reserved, Harlow is anything but! She has the ability to drive me absolutely mad, but I still find myself telling her several times a day, how awesome she is. She'll climb into her high chair, hang upside down from the table, walk on top of the counters, jump off the couch, hide with snacks, and all I can say is, "you're awesome". So here are a bunch of pictures, and little snippets about my girl......

If she can see herself in the camera, she loves to take pictures. If she can't, she usually won't look at me, or will give me some silly pose or face, knowing all too well that is not what I'm asking for. 

She loves attention. She often does something that she finds to be funny and entertaining and wants everyone to look at her. 

She is a hider!! She loves to hide. And if I didn't know all of her usual hiding spots, I would've lost her several times already, even in public places! She runs and she runs fast. At school, she loves to run down the hallway, then she'll jet into a classroom and she's out of sight in no time. Usually hiding behind the door, crouched down, quiet as a mouse. The first time she did this, my heart sank to my feet because I couldn't find her. Stinker! At home her favorite place is in the bathroom, between the wall and the vanity. She hides there with her brother's toys, with her pacifiers (that she's only supposed to have in her crib), and CANDY!!!!!! She is a candy/snack/gum thief! If we didn't know this about her, I'd be convinced we have a family of mice living in our house because we're always finding tiny pieces of candy wrappers in peculiar places. 

She does everything her own way, and that's not always the easy way. I mean, normally you wouldn't climb up the book case to the top shelf. Normally, humans don't actually use the steps of a doll house. But Harlow does. 

This is her "look", the eyes that are so mad at you. I have to get a picture of her real mad look, arms crossed, eyebrows scrunched, and stomping feet. It's priceless. She gets mad pretty much whenever she doesn't get her way. 

She knows what alcohol is, calls it "booze", and is always asking people if they're drinking booze. I'm sure when she does this with other people, their first impression of our family is that we must be a bunch of alcoholics. But it's just something that we've had to teach her because if we didn't, and she came across an unsupervised bottle/can/glass of alcohol, she'd chug it down in no time. Booze she knows she can't have. Clearly in the picture below she really wasn't drinking wine from a mini-wine bottle. But she wanted that "just her size" bottle so bad, Maddi refilled it with water. She downed about 3 full glasses. I'll send this picture out with her 21st birthday invitations. 

She gets time-outs and plenty of them.....enough said. 

She's not shy.

She's an eater. She's not picky about anything. I can only think of a few things that she doesn't particularly care for and only one thing that she's ever spit out, a maraschino cherry (I don't blame her). She's also a messy eater!! Depending on the meal, sometimes its necessary for her to eat in diaper only. She should probably live in diaper only because her clothes never stay clean throughout an entire day. And when I say "not clean", I mean stained!  

She likes to be scary.

She loves her aunties. She used to be a mama's girl, now without a doubt, she's an aunties girl. 

Sunglasses are her thing. She keeps them in the cupholder of her car seat and puts them on first thing and keeps them on. And usually doesn't mind if they happen to be upside down.

She has THE BEST BED HEAD EVER!!!!!!!!! 

In conclusion, she is funny, entertaining, kind, frustrating, sweet, wild, polite, sassy, independent, smart, exhausting, and........... SHE'S AWESOME!!! 

she rock climbs

I don't know why I'm ever surprised by Harlow's physical abilities. Her strength is nothing less than amazing. When she walked up to this rock wall, I just sat back thinking she wouldn't get much further than the first step.......but no....all the way up she went. This was about the 4th time she had gone up. When she first did it, she literally lifted her entire body weight just by her arm strength and barely used the steps. Once she figured out how to find those steps with her feet, the climb was a breeze.

G & G's House

I think if you asked the boys where their favorite place to go was, they'd say Grandma and Grandpa's house. They LOVE having sleepovers with Grandma, and they LOVE playing around the farm with Grandpa's toys. We all went out last weekend and rode the four wheelers and golf cart. (On a side note- I'm a terrible mother for letting them ride without helmets, but this was the last time and they both have safe, really super cool helmets now!).
Last year Grandpa bought each boy a four wheeler, but Paxton's wasn't working so he always rode with Hudson. Jamie and Grandpa got his running last weekend but I still think he'll prefer to ride with his big brother, at least until he's a little more comfortable on his own.

There's something for everyone at the farm.

Fits her well doesn't it?!?! She loved riding with me, but I know in a couple years, she'll be more than willing to jump on herself.