Happy Birthday Taylor!

I can't believe my baby is one already. She is getting so big. Her birthday was the 5th but work has been crazy and life has been so busy that I didn't get a chance to post anything. We had a party planned for the day after her birthday but thanks to the never ending snow we are getting this year we had to reschedule for yesterday. Both Taylor and Ethan have celebrated their birthday with snow this year and we are so tired of the snow. We still have at least a foot of snow in the front yard. And spring is nowhere in sight. Taylor is growing and learning new tricks every day. She is getting better and better at walking all the time. She walked almost half way across the gym today at church. She is saying new words, like baby and ball. I have no doubt that she will be competing with Ethan to tell her stories soon enough. Today Ethan said to me when we were in the nursery "I was playing and then I recognized that my secret bag (a present from his teacher) was missing." He is the only kid that I know to throw recognized into a story. He also came in and said "Mom, I'm famished." I asked what he said just to confirm and he replies "famished, mom. It means you're hungry." I love when he defines words for me.

On Taylor's actual birthday she opened her presents. She loves her little stroller for her baby dolls but she really loves trying to sit in it herself. She has quite a love for her baby dolls. She usually has one tucked under her arm all day long and always wants to bring them in the car. She loves real babies just as much and loves to try and hug and kiss them.

We had a great time visiting with friends as we celebrated Taylor's birthday. Last month my friend and I took a cake decorating class so it was fun to decorate a cake for the party. Unfortunately it was made of sugar so Taylor couldn't eat a bite of it but it looked pretty. When Ethan and I went to buy the cake mix he convinced me to get one strawberry and one chocolate. I didn't realize that I hate strawberry cake. Even the smell of it is awful to me. So I can't say it was the best tasting cake either but once again, it looked pretty.

Taylor walking around, baby in hand.

Taylor talking to her friend at the party. She was probably telling her "don't you dare touch the baby."

Taylor really got into eating her cupcake and now when she sees them on the counter she whines for more. She definitely has a little sweet tooth.

This is Ethan's contribution to the post. I have been trying to convince him to try and draw things for me but he has zero interest. He made a valentine's day card for me and it had a little picture on it and I asked him what it was. He said something like it a splat, pow. So we have been working on writing letters and he was finally willing to give up his constant power struggle to try and write his name for me. You have to use your imagination a little but I was so impressed. He probably has the creativity of his mother and will never draw me a picture.

Taylor's Turn

I have been totally amazed by how much Taylor has changed over the last several weeks. It is so much fun to watch her grow up but of course it is a little sad too. She has started taking steps in between Abe and I. She will take about 4 steps unless she gets too excited (usually because she sees Ethan). Such bravery has resulted in our first black eye though. She has started talking more too. I love to hear "mama" coming from the other room when I'm gone. But I think my favorite word these days is "thank you." She says it so sweet and quietly. I just love it. She has figured out that the cow says moo and will say moo when she sees a cow (or any animal that she thinks looks like a cow). I love "uh-oh" as she starts to drop food off her high chair. She is such a social little girl, just like Ethan at that age. She was constantly saying "hi" to the little girl behind us at church on Sunday and loves to hug people she meets and her baby dolls. She is just such a sweetheart.

Taylor hates having her hair done but that doesn't stop me completely. The fact that she usually has the clips out before I can get into the car does deter me though. She is so proud of herself when I go to get her out of the car and she has her hair clips out and her sock in her hand. She just waves it around enthusiastically.

This is a picture of the day after her last hairdo. Another deterrent to hairdos !

Happy Birthday Ethan!

So we celebrated Ethan's 3rd birthday the other week. I can't believe how much time has passed. We had a big snowstorm here the weekend that we were planning to celebrate his birthday since Abe was gone on his actual birthday. Abe was a trooper and thought he could make it home in the snow but he had continual bad luck. The highway became a parking lot for about 5 hours and the rest of the way he had to drive under 35 mph. Needless to say a 4-hour trip turned into a 14-hour trip. He probably would not have made it home for the weekend except for the fact that all the exits had huge piles of snow from the snowplows and he couldn't get off the highway. Once he finally got home around 5am he still had a walk a mile to our house since the roads had not been plowed in our hilly neighborhood. So he gets lots of brownie points for the effort. It was nice to have him home while we were stuck in the house.

But we did have everything we needed to celebrate Ethan's birthday so we had fun. Ethan was so excited with his chocolate cake and ice cream. When everything has to be made completely from scratch it isn't often that we make that kind of effort. When we got done with the cake and presents Ethan said "Thanks guys for celebrating my birthday, thanks guys." It was so sweet.
Grandma Singletary got Ethan this great wooden castle for his birthday. We joke that it was a present for Ethan and Abe. Honestly, we have all had a great time using the castle as a backdrop for stories, puppet shows, and battles.

So in honor of Ethan's birthday this post is all about him. He continues to amuse us with the things he says and does. I had a video I wanted to upload but it wouldn't load. It may be too big. I'm stubborn enough that I will probably try to load it another time. The video was of him telling me a story. I love his stories. They usually start off "Once upon a time when I was bigger...." Then he continues with pieces from other stories that he has heard. They always make my day. But instead of the video I will just list off some of my favorite Ethan lines from the last several months. I'm afraid I will forget them so I'm saving them here for posterity. Here are my favorites. I may have posted some of them in the past so forgive me if you have heard them before.

- While talking to Abe on the phone "Dad, is it okay if I catch up with you later?"

- When he was told that he had to talk nicely to his dad if he wanted something he replied "Abraham may I have some milk?" (I don't know why he had to call dad Abraham)

- While saying the prayer at dinner he opens one eye and says "God made the animals so I can bless them too, right?"

- While visiting his grandma he sat down outside the bathroom. She asked him what he was doing and he replied "Just making sure you don't get into anything."

- When Grandma said, in a serious tone, that it was time to stop playing and lay down (while he was suppose to be in his bed asleep) Ethan said "WHO taught you to talk like that?" Grandma doesn't get serious very often.

- While Ethan was suppose to be taking a nap I found him in my room with a jar of vaseline and vaseline all over him. He quickly said "I'll get it off in just a minute. I just wanted to look like Santa Clause."

- Ethan is great at learning new words from books and movies and using them. The other day while watching a movie he said "Jesus' shadow is looming over the man." "Looming" came from a Winnie the Pooh book. He also came out of his room one night saying he couldn't go to sleep because "there are mysterious shadows on the walls."

-He has become a master at trying to get out of going to bed. The other night he had several trips down the stairs to avoid bed. Once he said "oh I thought it was morning time." I explained that I would call him when it was breakfast time. So 5 minutes later he came down and said "Umm, mom I just have to ask you something. Did I just hear you say 'Ethan, its breakfast time'?" When i said no he said "oh, okay" and went back to bed for good.

- I love the way he talks to Taylor. She was crying in the store because she wanted to get down from the cart. He looks at her and in a very sweet voice says "Taylor, we can't yell in the store. Okay?" And if I ever tell Taylor no or she gets into something he is very quick to defend her. He tells me "She's just a baby mom. She doesn't know any better."

- The other day Ethan says "Let's play David and Goliath. You be Goliath." I said okay and as soon as I turn around Ethan chucked a plastic screw at my head. I got really annoyed and lectured him about how we don't throw things at people. He looked confused and said "but you said we could play David and Goliath?" I learned my lesson.

- We are fully into the "why and how" questions stage. The other day he wanted to know why boys marry girls and why girls are different than boys. After our discussion I asked him if he was going to get married some day. He said "no, I can't." When I prompted him for why not he replied like it was obvious "because I can't dance." He continued with "I just know silly dances. I can't do real dances, you know, like Prince Phillip."

- In the car the other day he wanted to know what Heavenly Father had made us out of.

- After leaving the bathroom one day he said "Do giants have big penises?"

- While sitting on the toilet he says to Abe and I "can you hear that?" then says "try and smell it"

Thanks for humoring me. I just want a record of these things so I will remember all the fun times with this little boy as he gets big.

Slacker

I can't believe so much time has passed since our last post but I guess with the busyness of work, Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, and not having Abe around it has kept me busy with other things. We had a long week at Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving. It was nice since Abe was working in Richmond for the month. We got to see him in the evenings and he even had a couple of days off for the holiday so it was nice to spend time with him. We are counting down the days until his 3 months of out of town rotations will end. Christmas Eve he will be done and we will have him around for 2 months before he is off traveling again.

Ethan and Taylor did not want to cooperate for pictures. In every picture one of them looked cute and the other one had their eyes closed or something else weird was going on. Finally we just gave up and took their pictures alone.

Abe's sister was wonderful and made the trip from New Jersey to come see us. We had a great time visiting with her. We went to Williamsburg the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate all that well. Thanksgiving Day had been gorgeous so it was sad that it turned cold and rainy while we were out. Abe took this picture right before Taylor peed all the way down the both of us. Of course I had extra clothes for her but not for me.

There is a park near my parents house and Ethan loves to go anytime we are there. Taylor was getting into it too. Even some of the adults had a good time on the slide. I will spare them the embarrassment of posting those pictures.

Poor Taylor, her hat makes her already large head look gigantic. But unless it secures under her chin she has it off in a heartbeat.

Ethan has no fear at the park.

Ethan was a great "help" while we raked the leaves at my parents house. He got a ride both ways and Abe got a great workout.

Last week Abe had to work all weekend in N.C. so we went to visit him. We stayed with two different friends while we were down there and we had a good time. One family had a dog that Ethan couldn't get enough of and the other friends had several boys for Ethan to play with. I'm sure they were tired of playing with him by the end of the weekend but he loved it. He wasn't ready to go home at the end of the weekend. Taylor's favorite part was grabbing the boys hair and giving them wet kisses. This girl is a total flirt with the boys. She is so much fun as her little personality continues to come out more and more.

As some of you probably know, Ethan had a very attached tongue and it made it impossible for him to say some letters and to do things like lick his lips. We finally decided that we needed to have it fixed so we had the surgery done this month. It was very minor but because of his age they had to put him under. It is always a stressful process. Thankfully we have wonderful friends that watched Taylor since Abe was gone, of course. Ethan was a trooper about it, as he usually is. They have him some medicine to calm him before they took him back for surgery. He was pretty amusing. They had poked his finger to draw blood so he had a bandaid on his finger. He just kept starring at his finger and saying "bandaid, bandaid, bandaid" in this really spacey voice. Then he would would ask me if the bed was moving and the go back to "bandaid...." So here are a before and after picture. He didn't want to move it for a few days but now it is all healed and he is pretty excited with wiggling it around. Of course he will never keep up with Taylor and her crazy long tongue but at least now he can lick the batter off the beaters.

Happy Halloween

We had such a great weekend. For the first time in at least 5 months Abe hasn't had to study over the weekend so we got to spend a half day on Friday and all day Saturday together. We have some WONDERFUL friends that volunteered to watch Ethan and Taylor on Friday night so Abe and I could go out and celebrate. Saturday we had fun getting ready for Halloween. We decided to go with a Peter Pan theme for our Halloween costumes. Ethan has wanted to be a pirate for months and Ethan refers to Taylor as Tinkerbell so that was settled. Thanks to a costume from high school I was Princess Tiger Lily. Ethan had the most fun. He was told he could only swordfight with people at the ward party that also had a sword so he spent most of the time just wandering around looking for people with swords. He hardly got any candy, which only makes Abe and I sad since he can't eat it and we were hoping for more, because he spent the whole time provoking people so they would fight with him.

Abe doing his best "angry pirate" face.

Taylor was a trooper about her tu-tu. Friday night I decided I didn't like the onsie that I was going to put under her tu-tu so we whipped out a green dress in a couple of hours and I think it turned out so cute, well as long as no one looks too closely.

I put some gel in her hair to give her some little curls and she worked on ruining her hair do from the minute I put it in.

She loved to eat her wings all night long.

So Proud!

So today has been such an exciting day. Abe found out that four months of studying paid off and he passed the boards! I am so proud of him. He was a little worried after he took the test so we have been not so patiently waiting to hear the results. What a relief! He has had a great month starting his rotations and getting into being at the hospital. I know he will hate this but I'm going to brag on him a little bit. Last week, I think, he was helping the doctor in the operating room. The doctor was letting him do some parts of the procedure. Once they were finished and the doctor had left the room the nurse told Abe that the doctor had never let a medical student do that before. I have always know that Abe would shine once he got to the hands on part of medical school so I am so excited for him.

You guys will have to bare with me with all these random video posts. Taylor is growing and changing so much and I feel bad that Abe misses out on all the fun things. So these are for him. I was in the kitchen today, while periodically checking on Taylor to see what she was up to. I saw her trying to pull herself up for the first time by herself. So I grabbed the camera and was able to capture the moment when she finally got herself up. Being the good mother that I am I stopped filming before she crashed to the ground (actually she sat back down pretty gracefully). I love seeing all the new things she can do. She is so close to "really" crawling but gets around quite well with her little army crawl. Today she was rocking and picking up one arm and then the other. But she just can't figure out how to get it all together.

Today Ethan used his new favorite phrase "Mom, can you do me a favor?" I think he got this from my mom or maybe the babysitter says it. But it often is followed by something kind of annoying like "Can you do me a favor and not make a mess when we get home?" That would imply that he actually cleans up messes that I make. Even when I agree to do whatever favor it is he asks of me it is sometimes followed by a doubting tone and "do you promise mom?" Oh if only he actually did all the things I asked instead of just memorizing them and using them against me. Thanksfully even with the long weeks I can still find the humor in that little boy.

Just for you Abe

So Abe has been gone for the last week and was on call over the weekend so we didn't see him. I know he misses us so we made a little video of Taylor. It's not all that exciting but she gets so excited in her swing. I thought he would like it. I know it makes me laugh. Who knew a baby swing could go this fast.

We can't wait to see Abe on Friday. Love you Abe!