Hailey's Birthday Party: Part 3

This is Hailey's pretty princess cake. Generally, I make and decorate the cakes but they never turn out this good looking.
Hailey actually blew out her candle all by herself before any of the other kids did it.

Here's a couple pictures of the party guest. Yeah!!!
Gramma Cherie and Robert hung out together a lot today. After the party they went on a little walk around the complex.

Hailey got a second piece of cake and put it by me and walked away. Since it was hers I didn't pay much attention to it and went inside for another drink. When I came back the cake was still on the table, however the plate that it was on blew away. The weather just wasn't working out for us today.

After Hailey's nap, Gramma Cherie took us out to AppleBees. This was a great day. Happy Birthday, Hailey!!!

Hailey's Birthday Party: Part 2

Hailey had a very fun day. First, Gramma Cherie took Hailey out for breakfast and a little present shopping. Hailey came back and told me all about her Mickey Mouse pancakes that she had.

Then we started our party with pizza in the backyard. Due to rain, we quickly finished and squeezed 13 people into our living room for presents.
A card for Gramma and Grampa.

This had her extra pair of sheets.

From Darlene, Hailey got a neat book and a pretty dress. Also this is a good picture of Hailey wearing her "Birthday Princess" badge.

This cool fish kite is from Bronte. Bronte is our neighbor who is about 2 weeks older then Hailey. They play often outside. Hailey likes following her and Bronte likes being the leader.

Chloe had Hailey a birthday card.

Chloe and Luc got her this big Disney art pad that also includes blank pages. It came with crayons, scissors, and watercolors. Hailey loves coloring unfortunately Robert likes to eat the crayons so we have to be careful.
This is a present I've been holding on to for a long time. It has Pooh, Tigger and Darby as the Super Sleuths in their changing tree. This was a big hit the following day.

Hailey also got her very first Barbie. My mom found princess Barbies for a good price so Hailey got Ariel, Jasmine and Belle.
Apparently, Robert and Bronte also wanted the Barbies. Bronte also was very helpful in most of the present opening process.
Here's Gramma Cherie with all the kids for a quick book before cake.

Hailey's Birthday Party: Part 1

Hailey turned three years old on Sunday, so we decided to have the party of Saturday. This ended up being a very crazy day for me.

First of all, Hailey got a new bed. (This will be a tradition in our family now. At age three the child will be moved from the crib to their own bed. Let's hope Robert last in the crib that long.) Due to lack of space, I put the bed together that morning. I only needed a little bit of help connecting the head and foot boards to the mattress support bars.
The mattress is a crib mattress so it's not really a bigger bed and works out perfect in our small apartment.
My mom was able to find toddler bedding which really is an amazing thing. It has the fitted sheet, a top sheet, a comforter and a pillow case. Here is Hailey's bed all made up. I love the pretty colors.

Hailey does too and wanted to be surrounded by her blankets even though it is hot at night. She loves her bed and doesn't even look at her old crib which is now Robert's. Robert loved playing in Hailey's crib before the switch. However, he is jealous of Hailey's bed now and keeps crawling into it when we are getting ready for bed.

Hailey now wakes up and gets out of bed at 7:30 instead of waiting for me to get her at 8:00am. Also naps are still uncertain but so far (two days) she stays in her bed for at least an hour and gets out without waking up Robert. If this continues, I couldn't be more happy.

The second big present that Hailey got is this little car. This awesome toy is from her Gramma. This toys has more parts then the bed and was harder to put together. For some strange reason we can not get the yellow top to snap into place. Nathan will probably call the manufactures today to figure out our options.

In this top picture, Robert is actively pushing Hailey around in the car.

In this picture Hailey is filling up the car with gas (using the screwdriver.)

They love this car and will use it a lot when it's nice outside.

Baby Three

Out of the blue, I took a pregnancy test in the middle of April not expecting anything at all. However, to my big surprise it said I was pregnant. I didn't believe it at first thinking that it had to be false due to the diet program and green tea pills I was taking briefly. After a few hours it sunk it. I looked up the due date: Dec 15th (Nathan's birthday) and even looked up baby names. Since I was doubtful at first, Nathan joined in with my doubt and decided we'll just take another test next week. After I was sure I was pregnant, he has been very supportive and even excited.

So a few common questions I get:

Do I have morning sickness?: I've been extremely hungry. I threw up once but that was also mixed with an afternoon in the heat without a lot of water. At week 12, I was so hungry that I was nauseous and very picky about what I wanted. That's the closes I got to morning sickness.

How far apart are they?: Hailey and Robert are 21 months about just like Robert and this third baby. I think this timing is perfect and if we only thought about how spread out we want our kids we would have planned on this. We were waiting on Nathan to be close to graduating before the baby is born but plans change and it'll be fun having them this close.

Are we going to move?: We are a little washy on this. Nathan has two more years of school. If we move, we couldn't find a cheaper place and would have to get a second car since moving off campus eliminates the bus system. I think we can easily fit three kids when we get a storage unit. (to put our boxes in not the kids.)

Food cravings: I craved a lot of sugary foods at the very beginning and fried eggs. I quickly went through a pickle phase and now only want fruit and potatoes. With Hailey I wanted sugar and with Robert I wanted fruit and meat. So I'm confused at what sex this baby is.

At 13 weeks, I had a doctor's appointment and he was a little worried because the baby was measuring small. This meant for me that I got to have an ultrasound. I was excited. An ultrasound makes the baby seem a little more real. Good news is that the baby is perfect and healthy as much as the technician can tell. The baby has both arms and both legs, 2 kidneys, a stomach and heart on the same side. It's too early to tell the sex of the baby right now but it was amazing it see the baby move. Here are some pictures that she took for us.
The baby is upside down, with it's bum in the air and face is down.
This picture is labeled to make it a little easier.

In the picture you can see the spine bone pretty well. The face is pointing outwards.

Speckled Frogs

A long time ago, I order a few Scholastic books from Darlene (a teacher). I love how there are $1 books and one of them happened to be "Five Green and Speckled Frogs". I remember this song from when I was a little girl and just had to pass it on to the next generation.

Hailey loves books and has always been good about sitting on my lap and letting me read to her. I'm not sure if it's because I read to her when she was an infant and I had to be up at odd hours or if she's just like that. I thought all my kids would be like that. However, having another to compare to changes those ideas. Don't get me wrong, Robert likes books. He likes turning the pages before I even finished reading the page. He especially likes really books because there are a lot of pages to turn. I have found one book (a pop up type of book) that he really likes and will sit through. What Robert likes better is music!!! So this "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" book is perfect for the two of them. I sing to it, which entertains Robert, while Hailey has pictures to looks at.

Part two of our story:

We got little rubber frogs that were supposed to stick at the bottom of the tub, so the kids won't slip. They didn't work and ended up as just regular bath toys. After reading and singing this song so much to the kids for bedtime, it also turned into a bath time song. Nathan started this with the kids and they love it. Hailey helps line up the frogs on the tub and lets them jump at the right time in the song.

Here is a video of Hailey singing this song. (Make sure you are looking at this through the blog site and not the email or it won't work). And yes, I did call it the Freckled Frog song while I'm talking to Hailey. I am pretty tired at this point in the day.

In case you forgot, here are the words:

Five green and speckled frogs

Sitting on a speckled log

Eating some most delicious bugs

YUM YUM

One jumped into the pool

Where it was nice a cool

Now there are four green speckled frogs

GLUB GLUB

Stroller

For Christmas, my mother-in-law had a great idea. She gave all her married children the choice to pick out a stroller and she'll pay for it.

We decided on a sit-and-stand double stroller because it would be more condense then a regular front and back stroller. I know a lot of people have a double stroller where the kids sit side-by-side but have trouble going through doors.

So this works out great for us and the kids like it too.

Outside Fun

There hasn't been that many warm days so far, so we jump outdoors when there is.

This is how we spend some of our warm days:

This is a cool water table meant for Robert's birthday.

Our swimming pool broke last year and Hailey never really played in it so I thought I water table would last longer and be more enjoyable.

My kids got soaked by playing with it while our neighbors stayed dry.

So, Chloe comes to my house one day and tells me that she saw someone flying a kite and wants to fly a kite too. First thought was "No way! We don't have kites". Then I thought "well, maybe, with big pieces of construction paper, but there's no way it would fly." So I turned to the Internet and found a paper kit website. It took one sheet of computer paper, a trash bag for the tail, a shishkabab stick, and yarn. Surprisingly, I had all of that.

The biggest surprise was that it worked and they actually flew when it wasn't tangled.

Finally, if weren't not in our backyard playing, we're on the hill at the playground.
We have to watch Robert very carefully because he has no sense of caution.

Also he loves to eat the wood chips that we have.