Thursday, 28 February 2013

Ice Skating Fun

My 9yr old nephew is totally in to ice hockey at the moment and would actually sleep in his skates if he were allowed to.  As it is, he spends as many waking hours as his parents will permit practicing his skating skills.  On one of the weekends we spent at my brother's house recently, we all decided to accompany Ethan to the open skating night at the rink.  The Tazling was a little trepidatious at first, but within 2 sec flat of getting onto the ice with her little grandma walker she was having a blast.  This is definitely an activity that we will do again very soon.




Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Another Little Miss H'ism

I have to write this down while it's still fresh in my memory and I'm having a good chuckle at it.

The precious ones were a little bit hyper after their bath this evening, and they were having one of their rare "I'm playing with my sister and having fun" moments.  I let them play till about 30 min after their usual bed time, when I let them know it was time to cover their nakedness and put on their pajamas.  Taz co-operated after barely any threats, but the little miss decided she was having nothing to do with anything resembling  a diaper or clothing.  She loves to run around the house exclaiming, "I'm nay-ked!"  I let her know it was time to settle down and get ready for bed when she turned around and ran into Taz's room and started jumping on the bed.  I grabbed her and lay her down on the bed to try and get her diaper on, when she lifted her legs to start kicking me.  I raised my one eyebrow at her and told her that if she kicked me I was going to smack her bum.  She pouted a bit, but lowered her legs slowly, then turned her little head to the side and yelled, "TAZSH  HEEEEEELP!!"

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Little Miss H'ism

Trying to figure out what my two year old will actually eat so that she doesn't starve herself is an all consuming job right now.  (You know how they say little ones won't starve themselves.  That is so not the case with my kids).

This morning I gave her an empty ice cream cone to see if she would munch on it for breakfast.  She got really excited and clapped her little hands, "Yay, i-keem."  Her little face changed when she realized it was just the cone, she looked at me, pointed her little finger inside the cone and said, "Mom, i-keem go in."  It was hilarious, I could just hear the sarcasm in her voice as she told me that ice-cream goes in the cone.

She's a sassy little thing I tell you.

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Little Miss Maestro

The Tazling has been learning how to play the violin as part of her pre-school curriculum.  We had a meeting with her teacher today where she was able to show me what she has learned in the last 6 months.  This was definitely an awwwwwwww moment for me.


A Trip to the Mall

It has been seriously cold here lately, and when a big weather system comes through it messes with my back like you wouldn't believe.  The pain zaps my energy and I become a zombie.  What do zombies do with two super lively kids who just want to run and jump and treat your furniture like a jungle gym?  Why yes, you take them to the mall and spend daddy's hard earned money.  You also become one of those oblivious mothers who's kids are running amok and destroying all in their path.  They had fun though, just look at those smiles.




Thursday, 14 February 2013

Formal



These were the only pictures in focus so there isn't a full length one of the two of us, but picture a really cute pair of bright red patent leather shoes and you'll have the whole picture.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Blue Eyeshadow

The 80's have made a comeback at our house.


(Dec 19, 2012)

Monday, 11 February 2013

The Hair Cut

Taz has the most fantastic hair.  It is thick.  It is CURLY! And, it is the most amazingly vibrant shade of auburn you have ever seen.  Pictures do not do it justice.  Wherever we go, people stop me and comment on her hair.

I let her hair grow and just do its own thing, because seriously, taming the wild beast is not always the best option.  Well, the wild beast has become a thing of the past for us.  Why?  Because the hair either had to go, or one of us was not going to survive the next wash and brush session.  Brushing the child's hair was becoming increasingly more of a chore and a cause of serious tension between the two of us than it needed to be.  She hated....hmmm, no, more like HATED getting her hair brushed because it was so curly and knotty and got so ratted at night.  I woke up one day and figured I only had two options to help my child not have serious issues about her hair when she grew up, 1) Let her hair form into dreadlocks, or 2) convince her that getting her hair cut short was what she wanted to do.  It took about a week of me telling her the only way to not have to brush her hair was to cut it short like daddy's hair.  She woke up one morning and said, "Mom, I want to cut my hair, but, only if I can have some blue in it."  Done and DONE!!

I called the neighbour and asked her to babysit Little Miss H, and took Taz to a walk-in Salon down the road.  The hair dresser in this salon took one look at the munchkins hair and refused to cut it.  What the what?!  Umm, how can you refuse?  Nope, they point blank refused to cut that hair.  So, I took her to a different salon, where the stylist looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to cut her hair and tried to talk me into just styling it a little shorter.  I told them to listen to me carefully.  I wanted her hair to be cut OFF, boyshort, pixie cut.  Still, I met opposition.  Eventually I asked if they were going to do it or not, or if I had to take my child some place else.  They agreed to do it, but all the stylists in the salon looked like they wanted to cry.  The guy who eventually cut Taz's hair told me that if he could hand pick his own kids hair, Taz's hair would be what he would pick. I told him what it was like to brush that hair while still attached to the child's head and what it felt like to do all that with a broken back.  He didn't say much after that.

This is what her hair looked like the morning we took her in:



This is what it looked like during the cut:



This is what it looked like after the cut:


And, this is what it looked like the next morning:



After all her hair had been lobbed off, the stylist asked her if she liked her new hair cut.  She thought about it for a few seconds and then said, "Yeah I like it, but its just missing a little something....Its missing some blue."  I bought a can of blue hairspray, sprayed the front curl a vivid blue and she was one happy little girl.  Best part of the whole thing?  We don't have screaming fits in the bath anymore.  She loves washing her hair now, doesn't run when I try to brush it and it has possibly saved that part of our mother/daughter relationship.

Besides, it really suites her and we still get stopped wherever we go.

Out of Order

Nope, not broken, just not in sequence.

I know I haven't posted in a while.  I just didn't feel like it.  My back was getting progressively worse again and I was getting more and more depressed about it.  My days felt like I was slogging through a fog and by the time the girls were in bed I was so worn out that I didn't have time or energy to sit and record the fabulous goings on of the day (mainly because fabulous was not a part of our days.)  I did take a bunch of photos, just to record the kids progress, but I basically fell off the face of the earth for a while as far as communicating our still being alive to friends and family. 

I finally found a chiropractor that worked a little magic and I feel so much better.  I feel like I can almost function again.  Which is saying quite a bit.  Not being able to feel your feet and crying through a workout were just getting so tiring.

Anyway, so I'm going to start adding the posts that I missed over the last 4 months.  I am not however going to do them in any sort of order.  I'm just going to post the stories.  So, if things don't seem chronological, they're not, but at least I got around to posting.

Saturday, 9 February 2013

She's 2!!

I can't believe my baby turned 2 this week.  She is growing so fast and is the sassiest little red head.  She has such a big vocabulary and talks in full sentences, even if I can't fully understand all of the words she says, I usually know exactly what she is trying to convey.  This little girl is quirky and full of life.  She loves to dance and move her little body, and if there is any sort of music with a good beat playing in the house I can hear her commanding her sister to, "Dance!"


We invited all her cousins around to celebrate with her today, and she had a blast wearing her tutu that Grammy gave her for Christmas and playing her little heart out.  We bought her a little slide for her birthday (with Utah winters being the way they are, something physical for the kids to do indoors is always a winner).  She and Taz have played on the slide non-stop, and it was a big hit with the rest of the kids today too.



Naturally I had to make a her a themed cake, and this year I chose to make her a chicken.  She was a little obsessed with chickens this year and it was the first animal she recognized and would run after yelling, "chicken, chicken,"  Awww, it was cute.  The chicken cake ended up looking a little more like an "Angry Bird" than anything else, but it was still cute.  The body is made out of cake with just a little buttercream frosting over it.  I then rolled some sweetened coconut into the frosting to make it look like feathers.  The eyes are black jellybeans, and the comb, beak and feet are made out of marshmallow fondant (which is really easy to make.)



A fun time was had by all, and little munchkin celebrated in style.  She sang happy birthday to herself along with every one else, and blew her candles out with gusto, even if she didn't understand what was actually going on.  Happy Birthday my lil Punkin!




Oh, and Taz decided that this is her new pose whenever I try to take a photo of her.  Where she got this from....heaven only knows.