First Haircuts

On December 12, 2009 Kyrah and Broden got their frist hair cuts. I was not expecting this to go well for Kyrah, but she actually did very good. We even had to wash out the pancake syrup she had in it. This first picture is the end picture after the girls at Le Techniques gave her an "up do". I just had it trimmed so still no bangs which I am against and it is still long.

Broden sat on my lap while he got his hairs cut. He did well but would turn his head a lot to look at everyone in the shop. He got a spike hair cut. That night when I looked at him sleeping in the crib, I almost cried - he looked so much older :-( my little man!

Raya just got to hang out and watch all the excitement. Look at those pretty blue eyes - I hope they stay blue, but Kyrah's stayed blue for a long time before they changed so Raya's could still change yet.

Pictures of the process...

She actually cut the spike whereas next time I may just have her take the trimmer to his entire head - not sure about that. It is a little uneven becuase he kept moving, but overall it looks good.

Kyrah would not smile, but she sat there the entire time and didn't whine. I even had a sucker in my pocket ready to bribe her but did not need to get it out. We did count the butterflies on her cape and that helped.

This is when she first sat down - she wasn't so into it at first.

Sneak Peak at X-Mas

A little sneak peak at my candy canes this Christmas. I am going to make our Christmas card out of these pictures somehow. I may try to do a formal picture as well, but we will see if I can get that accomplished. Funny how some of them have similar characteristics - both Raya and Kyrah like to stick their tongue out and cross their feet. Kyrah and Broden sound very similar. All three like to bounce. Raya and Broden like to put their mouth to my cheek (I consider that baby kisses!). And then each one is very different from the other - having tons of fun watching them grow.

Broc should be happy I didn't buy him a onsie to wear.

Gingerbread butts!

So Smart!

I finally got Kyrah on camera saying her ABCs and counting but it was just before bedtime so the lights are really low - can't see her that well but you can here her say her ABCs and count to 10. She skips H,I, J most of the time when she does it by herself, but for 2 years old I am very impressed she can say the majority of them.

A night at the movies

Here are some vidoes from this past month that I have been meaning to upload. Raya eating her first cheerio - doing so well picking it up and the next one is her learning to crawl. That was a few weeks ago and she is much better now.

A little bath time fun with Kyrah and Raya. Typically Raya likes her bath until it is time to wash her hair - she hates water in her face and it is hard to get the soap out and not get some water down her face. Kyrah likes to play in the bath tub too - splashing and making bubbles. She really likes to have the water running and play in the stream of water coming from the facuet.

Little things I Love

Each of my little babies have been doing some really cute things lately and have had some big events in their lives. Kyrah was officially taken off the pacifier (or dinky as she calls it). Wednesday I cut the tips of them off so Wednesday night when she wanted one she didn't like the feel of it and kept taking them out, so when she asked for them I gave them too her but to her they were just not right. All in all it went very well. She fell asleep after about 10 minutes of whinning and I had to go in her room 3 times during the night and Dennis once. So we were all pretty tired and she was cranky all of Thanksgiving. I did give in on Thanksgiving during nap time - she was so cranky and we are were at my parents house and there was no way she was going to sleep without it so I caved and gave it to her. She of course loved it and fell asleep for 2.5 hours! Thursday night, she just whined a bit when I put her to bed but didn't get up at all during the night and so far tonight she hasn't even asked for it!!! Great progress and a big milestone for Kyrah. Also tonight she was really sweet - I went shopping for Black Friday and Daddy was home with all of them plus two more during the morning. So he felt like getting out a bit and we took the kids on a drive to put them to sleep and we told Kyrah we would look for lights. She had a ball and kept saying "no more lights" or "there's lights" "ooohhh pret-ty lights". Things like that and if a house had a Santa in front - that was just the best she loved it. Sometimes she will call him "Ho Ho" then tonight she said "look Santa Claus". One not thing she is doing that I don't necessarly love is that she is being a HUGE Mommies girl. She is jealous of the babies and if I have one of them on my lap she will say "no my mommy". She always wants "mommy do it" and Daddy can't do anything. It is great that she likes me so much, but I feel like I am not getting any time with Raya or Broden. Although most evenings I am on the floor and havev at least 2 kids crawling/sitting/standing/ or pulling up on me so I do get time with each of them. These are not great quailty pictures but I like her expressions in them.

Ahhh Miss Raya camped out after her evening bottle. She is crawling now - that started on Thanksgiving. It is not a perfect crawl but she moves forward now rather then her backward or pivit move she was doing. And she has started saying "ma ma". I don't think she is calling me but rather has just learned that sound (probably from Kyrah saying it so much), but it is nice to hear. She is still an angel baby - sleeps all night, eats well, doesn't fuss much, plays by herself, doesn't get into too much, although she puts the worst things in her mouth. You really have to watch the floor and make sure nothing small is on it because Raya seems to find it everytime. She doesn't sleep that much during the day - typically two 1 to 1.5 hour naps which I wish was a bit longer, but it seems to work for her.

Little Mr. Broden. Not so little anymore. He has been sick this past week and when I took him to the doctor he weighed 19 lbs 3 ozs and at the 6 month check up both he and Raya were 26 1/4 inches long. So he is still slim, but not like he was when he was born. He is such a man on the move now. He crawls very well, pulls himself up, cruises along furniture and is even able to lower himself to the floor without just flopping or falling down. He has regressed even further in the sleeping department - he now is getting up 2 times a night usually around 12 and 3. I am seeing a sleep specialist on Monday so hoping she will have some good advice. He still smiles and laughs at just about anything. This darn sickness this week has been a hassle, luckily it has been mild started with throwing up for about 4 hours then fine, dihera all week, tired cranky not eating much things like that. Then Tuesday he spiked 102 fever so I took him to the doc since this has been lingering. Everything checked out fine so doc thinks it is teeth coming in and maybe he caught something small virus on top of it. Both he and Raya have had bad runny noses and a cough. I am anxious for that to be over because they hate me wiping their nose. Speaking of which another cute thing - Kyrah comes and tells me when she has a booger in her nose - then the other day she picked it and brought it to me - oh the presents Mother's get!

The dinky is dead, the dinky is dead, the wicked dinky is dead!

And Broden - all I can say about this picture is I am sorry but I had to do it. With is sickness this week, he went through all his extra clothes at daycare so they used something I had for Raya and it happened to be a pink shirt and black spandex pants. It was too funny.

My cute little Kyrah.

And Angel Raya

What else - Kyrah has learned so much. She knows what a surprise is and I bribed her to take a nap by saying I would give her a surprise when she woke up and dang if she didn't remember that. Her eating is getting a bit boring - we don't seem to give her anything new and she always wants corn. Overall she eats well if I can get her to stop eating chips, but not much variety. Her favorite veggies are corn and peas and she loves bak bak. She knows what soda is and will ask for it if she happens to see it, but she is still drinking whole milk for the most part. Her pretend play is getting better and she plays with her baby dolls well. She is on a Barny kick right now and wants to watch it all the time. She will sit and watch it for about 5 minutes at a time then will get distracted for a few minutes then get back into it.

Family Photos

A few more photos to put in my book for Grandma.

This won't go in the book because it is just a book of grandkids, but thought it was a really good family photo of my sister and her family.

Just For Tami

I am putting together a little book of Grandkids for my Mom's birthday. The book has an individual shot of each grandkid and a family shot of the grandkids that are brothers and sisters. So I need a picture of Chloe and Eli together and thought I would just snap a shot of them at Nick's birthday party. I laughed out loud when I viewed these photos - Eli is cracking me up! Someone told him to smile "right" so he was trying to figure out what "right" was! Too Funny! This is the progression of shots.

Finally at the last photo I think we got a good one.

Happy 2nd Birthday Kyrah!!

I can't believe I have had Kyrah in my life for two years. It has been so much fun watching her grow up. I have really seen a lot of changes in her this past year. Her speech is wonderful - she knows so many words and will put a sentence together. Her imiganation is taking off and she is starting to play pretend. Her motor skills have gone from walking while holding my fingers at one year to hopping, jumping and running.
Sometimes on my long drive home I think how awful it would be if something happend to one of my kids. I don't think I would survive if they were taken from me. Dennis asks why I think of bad things like that and it is not meant to be focusing on bad things, but is a reflection of the love I have for them. Parenting is the toughest job in the world - never were truer words spoken.

And here are pictures of the big girl.


Big girls should not need dinkies!!!

Oh my gosh it is Elvis, no it is Steve (my brother) oh wait it is just Broden with some bed head...

Ahh Angel Raya!! Such a good baby!!

Kyrah's 2nd Birthday Party

Kyrah will turn 2 on Nov. 12, so we had her birthday party Saturday starting at 3. The weather was unbelievable - to have high seventies and sunny in November was wonderful. Kyrah had a wonderful turn out for her party and everyone signed a picture of Kyrah so she can look back when she is older and know who celebrated with her. We had ham, hashbrown cassarole, green beans, chips and a salad and rolls. Rather then a big cake for Kyrah I ordered cookies with her name and the number 2 and I made cupcakes, then of course people brought desserts. Grandma brought a coffee cake, a lemon pie and a banana split cake. Carl made 4 cream filled cakes and 5 coffee cakes. It was a sweet tooth's dream.

We had three different activities the kids could do - a bounce house, a hay slide and a rice bucket. All three activities where a huge hit with everyone, but the rice bucket I think won most popular. The hay slide was a hit with the older kids.

Raya and Broden were passed around a lot and had a great time just watching everyone, but they could not hold out and actually fell asleep at 6 pm!! It is okay to get off schedule once in awhile for a special occasion. Raya actually slept until 6 the next morning even without eating a dinner. Broden, who did eat a dinner woke up 3 times - we really need to put a stop to that!

Kyrah put on the traditional Propst "Queen for a Day" hat.

This started with Jessica getting the hat when she was five or six and it gets passed around to the Propst grandkid that has a birthday next (only for the girls). So technically, we will hold onto the hat since Raya is the next to have a birthday, then it will go back to Jess for her April birthday. Kyrah then let everyone sing Happy Birthday to her and blew out her candle (all by herself).

She was going to eat her cupcake until I mentioned opening presents. Once she heard that it was all over. She got some great presents - Barney DVDs, bowling games, lots of play sets - a picnic, an elmo book and doll, and a castle tent. The big present from Grandma was a Dora's Magical Dollhouse.

Besides trying to make Kyrah keep her socks and shoes on the day was a wonderful success. She is very blessed to have such great family and friends.

Happy 1st Halloween Raya and Broden and Happy 2nd Halloween Kyrah. So I tried to improve the sheep costumes by glueing cotton balls all over. The costumes looked good on the hanger and for the first 10 minutes the twins had them on. But as I knew the twins pulled at the cotton and then the repeated up and down holding and in the stroller, etc...needless to say the cotton did not hold up. After about an hour the little sheep looked they they had a bad experience at the with the sheers. As you can see in the wonderful family picture below little Raya has an evil smile on her face pulling the cotton off, Broden's butt and legs are hanging a little lose.
This was are attempt to win at the costume contest at the school Halloween carnival. We got beat out by Ragdy Ann - although one of the judges did come up and say she thought they were the cutest.

Kyrah's daycare Halloween carnival. She was a football player.

And for the big event!!!! Broden started officially crawling this past weekend. He had been sort of creeping and moving a bit, but now it is the traditional crawl. He is not very fast at it, but I don't expect that to last long.

Daddy and Kyrah dancing. At the end of the video she see me taking her picture and she comes running saying my picture.

Halloween 2009

I finally decided on the kids Halloween costumes. Kyrah is Little Bo Peep and Raya and Broden are her sheep. So I found the costumes at One Step Ahead - a great company that puts out catalogs and has a website. The problem is that the sheep costumes just do not fit right. They are too long and too tight in the belly. So I got some pictures in the bought costumes but knew there was no way the twins would be able to stay in them for Halloween. So I made some sheep costumes. Here are the purchased costumes...

I think they are saying "so what are you supposed to be?"

And here are the homemade costumes. I think the turned out pretty good. I may try to improve them by putting cotton balls or something like that on them to make them fuzzy.

And notice Broden up on his hands and knees - he is sooo close to crawling - actually he does move forward a bit in a crawling manner - just doesn't make it more then one or two steps.

Next is Sydney - (Broden's girlfriend). This is my friend Beth's baby - she is about 2 months younger then the twins. I love her hair bow.

All the little kids in the toddler room - the one that connects to the baby room. It is actually one large room with a half wall type divider. With all the chickens it was like Animal Farm. The two chickens on the left are twins also - Ava and Sam. Next is the infant room -which Raya and Broden are the oldest and one was not there this day. Sydney is the pumpkin.

So we will see what Halloween brings on Saturday. Boo!