Tea Party

Grandma Miller gave Makelle a cute little tea set for her birthday. The next day Makelle hosted her first tea party for us.

She set out all the dishes, helped make some herbal tea, went around and invited everyone to join her and then offered everyone sugar and cream.

I am pretty sure I got offered more cream about a dozen times during the tea party, because Makelle thought that pouring from the little dishes was far better than actually consuming the tea and cookies :)

She has since requested that we have a real tea party again almost daily.

Deja Vu

Corbin:

Seth:

I will have to find the original file for this picture somewhere, but we have a cute picture of Corbin when he was around 8 months old sitting in his high chair that we have kept in our little reverence book that we bring to church to keep the kids quiet. So I have seen it a lot over the years and the other day I was feeding Seth and he happened to be wearing the same outfit as Corbin in that picture and I thought I'd take a comparison photo. They definitely each have their own little look, but at the same time, I can tell they are brothers, mostly in the eyes. I am excited to watch them grow up together and discover all the similarities and differences that are to come.

Learning

Seth has just recently started to roll over and scoot around a little. We were concerned that he hasn't been rolling, so for the past few months we always just lay him on his belly slightly out of reach of his toys to encourage him to roll. Nothing. Finally we gave up and discovered that everytime we set him on his back he rolls straight to his belly. Opposite of our other two children, he seems to greatly prefer to be on his tummy. This week he has also learned to sit up on his own from being on his belly and is trying to crawl. He manages to get up on his knees and scoot forward slightly, but mostly he just pushes off against his hands and usually ends up going backwards.



(Or just giving up and sucking his thumb :)

Peanut Butter

I was getting out some peanut butter for the kids' snack today and Seth reached out and grabbed the container really quick. Then he got his hand to his mouth while I was getting a cloth. I washed it off his hands and face right away and within a couple of minutes, he broke out all over! But he hasn't thrown up or swollen at all. Still that SUCKS! We eat so much peanut butter at our house! Why does he keep having reactions to all the things that we rely on heavily for Corbin? :(

"3 is a Big Number"

We celebrated Makelle's 3rd birthday at her Grandma Lloyd's house on Sunday.

There was yummy chocolate cake, shaped like a pink princess castle...

...and lots of fun presents...

...including, Barbies.

Grandma Lloyd got her her first set of Barbies and she hasn't put them down since.

We got her a scooter, so that she could play outside and be just like Corbin, only pinker :)

Oh no

I grind random whole grains in the wheat grinder and mix it with breast milk for Seth's breakfast every morning. The other day I accidentally added too much milk and didn't want to grind more grains to go with it, so I just threw in a scoop of already ground flax seeds I had out to thicken it a bit. The result was NOT good!


He got a rash all over, but seemed to not have any internal affects or actual hives. (Corbin's throat would swell up from the inside and limit his airways and he would throw up like crazy for a couple hours after eating things.) His skin reacts the same way to certain lotions we have discovered. So he definitely has some sensitives, we'll just have to see what all they are to and how severe they get. So far I can accept a rash over the hives and swelling that we had with Corbin though.

The most frustrating thing is that I use flax seeds as an egg substitute in ALL my baking so that I don't have to make a separate dish for Corbin. I guess that isn't going to be an option for much longer :(

She may have won...

I made cake filled ice cream cones for her princess castle cake, and had some left over after I was done, so she got her cake for dinner after all :)

Happy Birthday Elle!

Miss Elle turns 3 today. We were at the store yesterday and she saw this frilly, pink dress and asked if I would buy it for her. So I did. We also decorated the house with balloons and streamers for her, we are watching Tangled and baking a cake right now. I told her she could pick her favorite food for dinner tonight... she said, "I just want cake." We'll see how that turns out :)

Finally

After weeks of drooling like a bull dog, Seth finally cut his first tooth today.


(Wherever there is a Seth, there is usually a Makelle close by :)

Last Snow Day

We have had a relatively snowless winter this year and the kids really haven't gotten to play out in the snow much. So given that we just received what is likely our last big snowfall of the season, we decided to spend the day outside. We built a snowman, threw snowballs, made snow angels... basically tried to get a whole winter's worth of fun into one afternoon :)

Mr. Sethers slept through the whole thing :( Oh well, there's always next year, I suppose.

Mr. Sethers

Seth has a big sister...



...she loves him a lot, and really enjoys playing with him.

Lucky guy.

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day our neighborhood friends invited the kids and I over for a cute little party. They ate a red lunch, complete with red apples, sweet bell peppers, strawberries and heart shaped sandwiches. Then they played "Cupid" and decorated sugar cookies. It is always fun to get out of the house and spend time with friends.





Earlier in the week Caleb had brought home a Valentine card kit from work and we had all sat down and spent some time making Valentines for each other and for some close family members and friends.

Then once Caleb got home we played "Ring the Bell and Run" to distribute our cards to each other. I had never heard of this, but Caleb swears it was all the rage during his elementary years, so we decided to try it. Each person took a turn sitting in a chair facing the wall and everyone else would sneak up and drop their Valentine under the chair. As they were sneaking up we'd all sing:

When you give a Valentine,
that's the time for fun.
Put it underneath the chair,
ring the bell and run, run, run, run!
Then they'd ring a little bell and run back to the couch and the person in the chair turns around and has to guess who gave them the Valentine before they got to look at their card. The kids thought it was the greatest thing ever! And it was so funny to watch them try to look innocent so that you can't guess who did it. We may have to make it a new tradition at the Miller house.

Every Mother's Dream

My kids HATE meat. It is such a fight to get them to eat it. However, they actually do pretty well with vegetables. In fact, one of Makelle's favorite snacks is sweet bell peppers.



The other day I was at the grocery store and I asked Corbin if there was anything he wanted me to get, and he exclaims, "Oh, how about beets?!" There was a random lady shopping nearby that overheard him and actually laughed out loud and commented, "I can't believe he really wanted those!" If only she knew just how hard it was to get him to eat a single bite of hamburger...

It's Official...

He's a thumb sucker:

#27

We couldn't get the kids to pose with me for a picture, but I celebrated a wonderful 27th birthday. We ate teriyaki stir fry cooked on some really nice, new stainless steel pans. And there was ice cream cake, doesn't get any better than that!

Comfy Cozy

We bought a rather large, cumbersome trundle bed for the kids, specifically so that they could each have their own space. However, most nights we still find them cuddled up next to each other, sharing one of the beds.

We have been looking at a couple of houses lately, and they already protest when we point out that there will be more space in a new house with one room for the boys and one for Makelle. Corbin always says, "Fine if we can't share a room then, we will just sneak Makelle into our room everynight!"

An actress and a producer in the making.

I found these videos of Makelle on our camera:




If you just ignore the fact that Makelle refuses to wear anything but tank tops around the house and that the floor is usually a complete mess whenever they are left to play on their own for an extended period of time, it is fun to see how they interact when we aren't around. Gotta love those kids!

3... 2... 1... Let it Rip!

For Christmas Corbin's cousin, Trey, whom he idolizes, asked for Bey Blades, ergo Corbin now loves Bey Blades. We had never heard of them... it is basically the latest Japanimation cartoon, where kids battle tops by spinning them in a plastic basin and seeing which one can outlast the others. The show has marketed little metal tops with rip cords that kids can use to battle their own tops against their friends. So Corbin got two Bey Blades for Caleb for Christmas :) He has since dressed up as his own version of a Japanimation character and spent the day running around the house screaming "Let it rip!" and proceeding to launch his metal top across the room.

Christmas Vacation

On Christmas Eve we all sat down to enjoy our Mary and Joseph dinner. We ate bread, fish, rice, olives, avocados, nuts, dates and grape juice. We turned off the lights and ate out of wooden dishes (minus those plastic cups of course :) but the kids' favorite part was getting to use their fingers for the entire meal.


We also wrote up some Christmas wish lists for Santa, that we hung up after dinner.



Then we read the story of Christ's birth and let the kids open one present each, which just so happen to be a pair of new pajamas. Then we loaded into the car and drove around town admiring every one's Christmas lights until all three kids were finally asleep. Then we headed home and bedded down to wait for Santa's arrival.

Christmas isn't Christmas at our house without Corbin getting sick, so he woke up a few hours later puking. Joy.

We had such a rough night that we actually had to wake the kids up early in order to let them open their stockings before Makelle and I went to church. Santa also brought them a kinect so that the kids can now play games on the xbox. So after church we got that all set up and then finally started opening gifts around 1 o'clock pm.





The rest of the day was spent cooking up a storm and playing with new toys as we hung out and enjoyed our fun, lazy day.


The week after Christmas most of Caleb's family was able to come into town and visit, so we got to spend a few days hanging out with them, playing lots of games, watching a lot of football and taking a trip to the children's museum.

Food, Glorious Food

We started Seth on solids. His first food was ground amaranth cereal. Followed by oatmeal, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes. He also is starting to self feed crackers and suck on pieces of fruit in his little mesh pouch. Luckily he is a pretty good little eater, which is a relief since he still refuses to drink from a bottle.

"Seth Did It"

Our devious little daughter has been working on the art of deception lately. She is now old enough to get in trouble when she does something wrong so to avoid a time out she will try to accuse Corbin. However, Corbin is old enough to respond and defend himself and he usually has a good alibi and is able to catch her in her deception. So last time she snuck a treat and knew she couldn't blame Corbin, who was allergic to it, she tells Caleb, "Seth did it!" So Caleb gave her 'the eye' - the, "I clearly don't believe that Seth was capable of climbing up onto the counter and taking the cookie and eating it" look. And before he can even say anything, she quickly adds on, "Seth grew up and did it!"

Gingerbread House

We made our annual gingerbread house using all the leftover Halloween candy.

Basically, Corbin meticulously attached piece after piece of candy, while Makelle non-meticulously ate piece after piece of candy :)

Princess Festival

So far Makelle and I have NOTHING in common. She loves pink, babies, princesses, dresses... pretty much everything I detested growing up.

The other day Caleb was playing video games with Corbin in the living room and Makelle was begging me to let her help fold laundry, and she told me, "it's boring being a kid, I want to be an adult so I can take care of the babies." WHAT?! After wards she brought me a tiara and asked me if I would play princess dance party with her. So somehow I ended up doing chores and pretending to be a princess and Caleb got to play video games. I should have been a boy :)

Later on we were given free tickets to the little princess festival in Provo so Makelle and I had a girls' night out. It was a ridiculously long drive for a low quality production, but she has never been happier.


They had a little princess store set up in the mall where she got to look at tutus, dresses, crowns, necklaces and more. Then we went into the back were they did a little interactive play about a princess that was all clumsy and it turns out she just needed glasses. Makelle is so painfully shy, yet when one of the princess characters came and asked her to dance, Makelle suddenly became the bravest kid there and ran up to the dance floor. The entire time she was clutching this girls' hand and just sort of staring up at her in awe.



After the skit part the girls got to make little snowflake decorations and a Christmas card for someone. Makelle made hers for Corbin. Those two still remain unbelievably good friends, it seriously baffles me with just how much they care about each other.


Then we went to the food court and got a smoothie and discovered that Makelle loves window shopping. I was just rushing along through the crowded holiday foot traffic in the mall, simply trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible when I noticed Makelle kept stopping and looking at all the little window displays, pointing out shirts that she thought were cute, completely the opposite of me!


It was fun to see how excited she got getting to go to a "real" princess dance party, and she hasn't stopped talking about it since and is already asking about when we can go again. I guess I am going to have to learn to care a whole lot more about make up and clothes and princesses in order to relate to her :)