Baby doll

So today Miss Raya finally  discovered the joy of baby dolls. She has pretty much always hated any sort of doll or stuffed animal (much to my dismay!) but today she found a baby bottle with "real" milk in it and oh my, she thought it was the coolest thing ever. I showed her how to feed her camo baby (it's really the only baby we have other than a completely soft infant one) and I showed her how to "burp" the baby and check it's butt for poop :-P She carried the thing around pretty much all day, and I started to think the only reason she liked it was b/c the twins wanted it from her lol....but  even after the twins left Raya still carried it around most of the night and even watched her bedtime movie while feeding her baby at the same time :-)

She was way  too interested  in the baby to look at me for pics...

Of course she had to check and see how the milk tasted!

I think we've decided that for Christmas Grandma F. is going to outfit Miss Raya with everything baby doll now :-) We like this little doll nursery center for her: http://www.step2.com/product.cfm?product_id=1762

And Grandma, this is my favorite doll I've found that I think she'll actually like...so many of the hard plastic dolls are so ugly! ...but this one is pretty cute: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Baby-Alive-Better-Now-Doll-Hispanic/10996484

....we also saw this doll at Walmart tonight and even though it makes noise Raya really liked it! The faces it makes are hilarious. She thought it was so cool how the doll sucked on it's paci lol http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11018652

Ok, back to our day :-)

I told the girls NOT to do the squinty eye smile....I got these very "natural" looks instead haha

And lastly, tonight we went out to dinner and I decided Miss Raya needed to wear her snow boots, since obviously we haven't had any snow yet to warrant their use, but I just think they're so cute! :-) She was very uncooperative for the pics, but trust me, she looked too stinkin' cute. At dinnner everyone commented on her furry boots hehe ( i have no idea why it looks like the zippers on her boots are glowing....they don't :-P

That's it....happy weekend everyone! My weekend includes lots and lots of sewing! After tonight Shawna is removing her turkey shirts and cutting off Thanksgiving orders...those things were popular!

Sippygate Scandal of 2010

I'm going to pretend that I don't  hear all my munchkins up from their nap early (please go back to sleep! :-) and try to fit in this quick update.

I just had to share these pics from the other day....I like to refer to it as Sippygate Scandal 2010! As you can see Miss Raya was simply beside herself when she discovered this sippy cup did not fit in her cozy coupe cupholder. Silly Mama tried to run and get another sippy and show her that the new one DID fit....but seconds later that sippy literally zoomed by my head--she chucked it at me!! She then proceeded to scream and cry big crocodile tears while she continued with her futile attempt to fit the too big sippy into the too small cupholder.

Demanding that I rectify the situation immediately!

In other sippy related pics, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, Raya is obsessed with carrying her many sippy cups around with her. Here she is trying to make her way to breakfast with not 1 but 3 sippys!

Raya had her "cutest pumpkin in the patch" shirt for festive wear last month--this month we have an adorable "everyone is thankful for me!" shirt :-)

How can you NOT be thankful for this adorable little face?! :-)

I always chuckle when I see her eating at the "big kid" table. She's growing up so fast!

She LOVES her food! She eats what both twins eat combined!

There you go...I fullfilled my picture promise today! Now I better go get the squealing munchkins out of bed...

Brielle Update 30ish weeks

Just  a quick  update tonight....I  had a doctor's appointment today and they basically told me I am the picture of perfect pregnant lady health :-) My urine is perfect, my blood pressure is perfect, I only gained 2 pounds in the last 2 weeks which is perfect, and they said my uterus is measuring right where it should be. Brielle was hyper hyper tonight and giving the nurse a run for her money trying to "catch" her for the heartbeat reading haha, but we eventually clocked her at almost 160 bpm. All in all they said things couldn't look better and from now until delivery we're just  waiting for baby to get nice and fat :-)

I'm still feeling relatively good, but the 3rd trimester exhaustion has definitely hit me! I'm sure the time change and watching twins full time doesn't help with that either haha. I'm also having trouble sleeping b/c of all the weird dreams, which was a constant problem with my last pregnancy too. About 2 nights ago I dreamt that I went to my doctor appt. and was told that my stomach had grown 6 weeks worth in only 2 weeks!!! ....and when I asked the doctor if I should be concerned about that she said "let's do rock, paper, scissors to find out" lol. So yeah, crazy dreams :-P

Sorry people, that's all I have tonight. No pics! I'm just too stinkin' tired and have to go make turkey onesies for triplets yet  tonight so I'm not motivated to upload any pictures. Maybe  tomorrow!

My shoppin' buddy

Yesterday Raya and I had a wonderful girls day out shopping! Everyone kept telling me she'd stop being a good shopper once she started walking, but I'm so proud that she continues to love it! :-) She really is an angel when we're out and about....everyone always comments on how good she is. We were shopping/running errands for over 5 hours yesterday and she even was missing her nap and she STILL was perfectly behaved. We didn't really buy much, but Raya had tons of fun "browsing" at toys r us haha. The official verdict? She loves anything with buttons that makes noise! We decided to wear a pair of our ruffle pants yesterday b/c everyone always loves those, and she worked those ruffles for sure. I let her walk outside of her stroller in certain stores and everyone would comment on her pants and hat (she wore that white crochet hat again...must be getting back into the hats I guess!) Her only "naughty" moment shopping was at Old Navy when I wanted to try a coat on her and she thought it was a game, so she ran squealing through the store trying to have me catch her lol. Silly girl.

Ok, now for a few pictures. She was being so goofy while I got ready yesterday morning. She LOVES sitting on her potty and she was just kickin' back while I put my makeup one :-)

She didn't understand what I thought was so funny :-P

The funniest part? Well ever since I started watching the twins (who are really in to carrying lots of "things" with them room to room--they have special stuffed animals etc. that need to go everywhere with them!) now Raya wants to have lots of stuff to carry around with her too! But she hates stuffed animals so he latest thing is her sippy cups....she had to bring an armful of them with her to the bathroom. But then she lined them up on the edge of the bathtub, moved her potty chair closer to the tub, and then sat down and enjoyed her beverages on the potty :-)

She also gets into trouble with the toilet paper. "No!" means nothing to her when that beloved roll of paper is so tempting!!!

She likes to wipe her nose with it :-)

We enjoyed taking the van out for the first time yesterday too! I was tempted to make unnecessary stops just so I could load and unload Raya with my very cool power sliding doors :-) Its running great now. We just have a minor annoyance still left to fix. When you drive on the hwy, etc. there is a rattle on the roof....we think it's the luggage rack....but we have yet to pinpoint it and tighten the rattle down. The people at the mechanic shop couldn't provide much help....lee said he drove with them to try and pinpoint where it was coming from but the mechanic was old and his hearing wasn't good enough lol.

Anyways, it looks pretty sitting in our drive!

I tried to get a pic of Miss Raya sleeping in the van when we got home, but when the door opened she woke up....and wasn't too happy with me! :-P

We did end up moving her to forward facing now in the van. Legally she could have turned forward facing at age 1, but the current recommendation is to keep kids rear facing until age 2 if possible, b/c it's safer. I had really hoped to keep her rear facing longer, and Lee is a little nervous with her forward facing, but it had started to become a problem b/c she was throwing major fits in the car the last week or two. I think her feet were just getting too smooshed and she was annoyed that she could hear us talking in the front and not see us, etc. After switching her to face forward she did well in the car yesterday, so hopefully she's happier now.

After we got home from shopping Raya took a really nice long nap! I was able to get some Etsy orders made so it was productive all around :-) Then after her nap we loaded back up to head into town and get groceries! (Yes, groceries on a Saturday night haha. Can't get them during the week right now b/c of babysitting!)

Raya wore her new coat to the grocery store. This was our main purchase shopping yesterday, and the story behind it is that I saw it when shopping  a few weeks ago at Old Navy and thought oh my, a black ruffle collar peacoat for a toddler is the cutest thing ever! But alas it wasn't on sale at all and quite pricey for a kid's coat, so I sadly had to walk away. Well then yesterday I had a 40% off coupon to use on a single item and I told Raya if she was good we would go to Old Navy and use it to get that coat. Imagine my surprise when we walk in the door and there in the front of the store is the beloved black coat, on sale for 50% off!! They had all their outerwear on sale for 50% ....it was so exciting :-) So of course Raya is now the proud owner of her very own black peacoat. If only I could still fit into mine!!

She wasn't in the mood for modeling it last night, but here's a general idea...



Notice the double ruffle collar :-)



Pleating in the back hehe

Let's go mom, I'm ready!!

Today I think we're going relax around home until Daddy returns. Then it's back to babysitting on Monday!

This and that

I survived my first full week of babysitting...yay! haha. The twins have not given me problems, but oh boy Miss Raya....a little diva she is! She will not nap more than 1-1.5 hours, so even my beloved nap time isn't lasting very long. She is also constantly (I mean CONSTANTLY) throwing tantrums for food! I thought it'd help having the big girls model for her that we wait for meal and snack times, but no....she throws tantrums in the kitchen while we try to ignore her! I always tell her "it's not time" but when she wants food she really really wants it! I'm hoping she outgrows this soon or I'm in trouble! The good news on the food front though is that she's doing very well with eating using a spoon now (i can give her a spoon and a container of yogurt and she'll eat it all up just fine--a little messy, but not too bad), and the big girls modeling for her has helped as far as now she will eat whole apple slices and bigger chunks of food. She watches how they eat and she copies them....such a big girl! She's also been putting words together more lately....she'll say some short phrases like "all done".

Here are a few pics from the last couple days...

We were all in pink this day...

I tend to take pics when they're sitting and their table b/c that's the only time they're all contained in one spot!

Life is good....she has a cracker :-P

Today we made princess crowns. Raya couldn't have cared less, but the big girls loved them

I caught Raya pretending to care for just a second haha

Can't get them NOT to do the cheesy "cheese!" face haha

Goofballs

They are definitely not shy around me anymore! The one on the right was the quieter one,
but now she is the one constantly wanting to sit right next to me....she's on Raya's shit list! :-P

This was Raya's overall feeling about modeling her crown.

The big girls however wore them a lot of the day!

So that's my babysitting update :-) What else? Well, not much new to report with baby Brielle. Still cookin' along....only 9 weeks to go now I believe! (I'm losing track of the weeks haha). Can't believe it's November....December will fly by with the holidays and then it's January already! Brielle is really movin and groovin lately...she gets my belly going crazy and Lee actually felt  her the other day (he hates trying b/c both babies (raya and brielle) always stopped moving when he'd try and it drives him crazy haha....but she gave him a few good kicks the other day to shut him up :-)

This weekend Lee is hunting so I think Miss Raya and I are going to start some Christmas shopping! I'm not sure if I'll actually start buying stuff yet or not, but I want to at least scope out some ideas. Christmas is sooooo much fun with a little one to buy for....especially this year now that Raya is older and will actually be more interested in opening presents and seeing her toys. Plus Lee and I are DYING for some new things to play with around here! haha. I've been doing some online browsing and compiling a Christmas list for Raya....in case any of you have kids a similiar age I'll share some of my findings for you! :-)

(Now Raya certainly will not be getting ALL of these things....this is just a running list of presents I'm considering for her :-)

Her big gift is going to definitely be some sort of climber. I just can't decide which one I want yet. They are so expensive! I'm leaning towards this one right now b/c it's "cheap" and gets good reviews as far as having a big enough slide that she won't outgrow it right away
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2333028

I'm also liking this climber though. More expensive and would be bigger....not sure it'd provide enough extra fun to justify the price...
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2308747

I'm also interested  in getting her some sort of indoor tunnel/fort thing....they seem mighty expensive to me to though! http://www.walmart.com/catalog/allReviews.do?product_id=11969633

This is the toy Raya has on her list for Grandma F. I think she would love this one....it does all the animal noises, which is her total favorite thing right now http://www.amazon.com/Little-People-Learning-Zoo-Playset/dp/B0007WWZLI

I feel like she needs a dollhouse of some kind.... http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3502223

She doesn't have any lego type toys and I think lee would enjoy playing something like that with her. This one has all the zoo animals which I think she would really like http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3498760

She really likes to play with and mimic "pretend" toys....so I thought she might like a doctor kit or something.... http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2983674

She hasn't quite figured out coloring, but I think she'd find this to be fun http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3145486

I definitely have to get her some type of bubble machine. At kindermusik she just LOVES the end when they do their bubble machine. Seriously....she is crazy for bubbles. The bubble maker she currently has is just a small little thing that for some reason never works....I'll pull the handle like 20 times and maybe get one bubble to pop out, the whole time Raya screaming for bubbles haha. This is similiar to what kindermusik uses... http://www.leapsandbounds.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=6479&cm_ven=SF_Bizrate&orderType=2#tabs 

Speaking of kindermusik, we did the Thursday night class this week for the first time, since I"m babysitting during the day. Raya was somewhat terrified haha. It was a new teacher and the kids (and moms!) in this class were crazy and hyper! Raya wasn't sure what to do and stayed on my lap most of the time. I wish we could keep doing the morning class b/c I liked it a lot better, but oh well. Hopefully Raya warms up to the new class. Lee went along this week and watched, in case he ever has to take her by himself. He wasn't that impressed haha....but I didn't suspect he would be, since he thinks I should just sing with her at home and call it a day lol. However he did think she was very well behaved in the class and he was impressed at how well she did, considering being scared of the new people.

Ok, back to Raya's wish list :-) I definitely need to get her something like this. I hear nothing but great things about these teaching kids their letters, and this version "grows" with them to even form words! http://www.target.com/LeapFrog-Word-Whammer-Fridge-Phonics/dp/B0002SC7CE/ref=br_1_18?ie=UTF8&id=LeapFrog%20Word%20Whammer%20Fridge%20Phonics&node=2355921011&searchSize=30&searchView=grid5&searchPage=1&sr=1-18&qid=1288926322&rh=&searchBinNameList=subjectbin%2Cprice%2Ctarget_com_primary_color-bin%2Ctarget_com_size-bin%2Ctarget_com_brand-bin&searchRank=pmrank&frombrowse=1

Grandma F. has something like this at her house that Raya seems pretty interested in.... http://www.target.com/Deluxe-Lacing-Beads-Box/dp/B000GIJ4Y4/ref=br_1_15?ie=UTF8&id=Deluxe%20Lacing%20Beads%20Box&node=2355921011&searchSize=30&searchView=grid5&searchPage=2&sr=1-15&qid=1288926510&rh=&searchBinNameList=subjectbin%2Cprice%2Ctarget_com_primary_color-bin%2Ctarget_com_size-bin%2Ctarget_com_brand-bin&searchRank=pmrank&frombrowse=1

Lee really wants to get her something like this (magnetic white board on one side, chalk board on the other) http://www.walmart.com/ip/Step2-Easel-for-Two-Pink/11072579

And lastly, this probably won't end up happening b/c lee thinks it's stupid to spend so much on a kids chair, but I think Raya would really love her own chair and I just think these from pottery barn are so cute! I know you can get cheapo ones at Walmart with like Dora the Explorer on them and such, but if I'm going to have a chair in my living room or something I want a cute one! Plus, these have got to be way higher quality than a foam walmart one.... http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/hybrid-bright-pink-mini-dot-anywhere-chair/?pkey=danywhere-chairs

We will obviously also be getting her books! B/c that's mostly what the child does all. day. long. We read and read and read. I love to read though so I hope she continues to love it too!

Oh, one more thing I almost forgot! Lee applied for some new jobs awhile back, b/c we'd like to eventually move back closer to both our homes, and he had gotten a call a couple weeks ago from the company but ended up being told that he was overqualified for the job they were calling him about (we obviously will not move and switch jobs for a pay decrease!) so Lee was a little bummed b/c he was basically told he's overqualified for the basic engineer jobs, but I really doubted he was qualified for the "senior engineer" jobs ( i mean, I don't understand what he does, but the title "senior engineer" makes me think of someone much older and with more experience!) ....however last night he found out that he gets an on site interview for one of the senior engineer positions he applied for! He's pretty excited so I hope it goes well. They are supposed to call him to set up a day for him to go there. The stressful thing though is that is by some chance he actually gets this job he will be commuting over an hour each way to work until we sell our house and by something new, and there's no way we'll be able to sell during the holidays or before the new baby comes, so I think he'll be commuting a few months at least, in the winter! Unfortunately since our house is a 5 bedroom and obviously a "family home" I predict we'll have a hard time selling before spring, b/c people with kids like to move in the summer so as not to disrupt their kids' school schedules. Oh well...guess we'll worry about that if he gets a new job!

That's it for tonight! Can't wait to get out of the house this weekend and spend a girls day out with Miss Raya....we even have our van back from the shop now so we can cruise in style :-)

Still babysitting!

Ahhhhh, nap time is the most wonderful time of day! :-) Babysitting is still going well, but I'm definitely getting stir crazy having to stay at home all during the week! This morning *would* have  been kindermusik day, but we have to go to Thursday evening classes now with the twins here during the day. I would have really liked to get out of the house today though!!!

This weekend I picked up some crafts to do with the girls, so yesterday we practiced our shapes and our colors!

Raya's attention span for this type of activity is about 30 seconds haha....but the bigger girls could have played with the foam stickers all day I think!

We also played outside with sidewalk chalk for awhile! Miss Raya was less than thrilled with this activity too :-P

Raya and her friend :-)

We played with playdough too! The big girls kept saying "this will be fun!" haha....but Raya, well she hated playdough too :-P I did get a couple pics of Raya "playing" with it though before she completely lost interest.

So as you can see, we do have lots of fun during the day! However Miss Raya consistently gets tired of the girls after about 1 day haha. Last week she did great the first day the girls were here, and then got pretty fussy on subsequent days. Well yesterday Raya did great once again with the girls, but when she woke up and they were here again today she seemed pretty annoyed lol. So far today she has spent most of her time doing this:



How pitiful is this?



And lastly, You may remember Raya's super cute owl print bell bottomy ruffle pants? Well sadly she has outgrown them :-( I was heartbroken and so I had to of course find suitable replacements. I found someone willing to make me some at a good price and they arrived yesterday...so cute! I mistakenly measured Raya's wait wrong though, so they were too big in the waist, but I have since taken the waist in and now they look great and fit perfectly! And i'll be able to let them out and have her wear them as capris when she's bigger.

Here is her modeling one pair....this was before I took the wait in so they are looking kinda baggy here

She wasn't too happy with me by this  point...

I  asked the lady to send me some scraps of the same fabric she used on the pants so that I can applique my own matching shirts too :-) Now I just have to find the time! I sold 4 turkey shirts yesterday alone, so I'm pretty busy with paying customers....my own kids aren't getting too many shirts from me right now!!