Levi...Oh Levi...

Now for Levi...So here it is..really for me so I don't forget and a reminder to myself as to what makes Levi so special and why we love him SOOOOOO much.

Levi is 19 months old almost 20 months. He wants to do anything and everything that Chloe does and he thinks that he can. He is a mommy's boy. He loves his daddy, but he can be quite the mommy's boy. He loves to be outside, which obviously makes him a Batsche. He loves to jump off of anything. He gets messy with anything that he eats, I mean anything, even cereal. He loves breakfast food like bacon, pancakes, cereal, bread, fruit, etc. He gets really proud of himself when he does something new. He is very animated. He is our snuggler. He poops like 100 times a day. He has learned out to drink out of a straw and whenever he finds one he gets really really really excited. He doesn't walk he runs with his hands down at his side flapping back and forth. When we vacuum he is right behind flapping his arms like a  bird and screaming. Timeout is a useful form of disciple because he hates it. He thinks he needs a pacifier whenever he gets his diaper changed or just anytime really. He likes to get in his sister's way. He likes to wrestle with Chloe. He always says no and only shakes his head yes. His head is so large in size that he is top heavy and constantly is getting goose eggs. He likes to make silly faces and lip smacking noises. He is carefree. He wants attention. He says "Hi", "Bye", "See Ya Later" to anyone and everyone he sees. He loves to blow kisses and always has a smile on. He gets the hungry grumpies. He loves to read, I mean loves to read. He would read all day if we would let him. If someone else is reading a book he will come from a different room just to sit down and listen. He laughs all the time. Sweet and sour is a good way to describe him. When he does something he knows he shouldn't or drops something he says to himself "Levi" in a deep voice. Whenever he sees a camera he always says Cheese even if the camera isn't pointed at him. He loves to take pictures with our play camera and our phones. He doesn't stay still for long so when he does we soak up every minute. At first thought he thinks most things are green or purple, so I'm guessing it may be his favorite color. He loves to play in his daddy's old truck and sweep out the garage with the broom. If he sees his sister in time out then he goes over and stands in time out with her. He loves the water and doesn't mind if it gets in his face. He loves to swing all day long. He loves to play peek-a-boo. He loves anything bread. He giggles when he gets excited. He runs away looking backwards when he takes something from his sister or takes something he knows he isn't suppose to have. He is headstrong. He loves to climb on anything and everything. He is already fascinated by electronics and fixing things. He will be a good little helper for his daddy soon.

Levi's personality is just starting to show and I can't wait to see how he starts to really develop over the next 6-12 months. He is definitely more of a handful than Chloe was, but a good handful. At the end of the day we may be tired after chasing after him, but we love him so much and couldn't imagine him any other way. 

Chloe: Here's What I Don't Want to Forget

You hear all the time how quickly the kids grow up and as it can be annoying to hear, it is true. Time flies. I keep saying I will write down things that I don't want to forget, but I keep forgetting to write them down. So here it is..really for me so I don't forget and a reminder to myself as to what makes Chloe so special and why we love her SOOOOOO much.

Chloe - she is THREE, how can it be! She loves purple. She loves to cuddle and snuggle and read books. She is an independent person who can sit quietly and play by herself for hours. She loves Disney princesses and pretty much anything Disney. She is fearless. She loves to color and use stickers and put them on anything. Although she doesn't like to go to the doctor she only cries for the initial prick of a needle for shots and then stops. When she gets nervous or really excited she doesn't really talk, but she bobs her head around with her tongue normally out and screams or squeaks. She can be loud, but on most days she is quiet as a mouse. She talks, but just in a soft tone. She loves to wrestle with her brother and chase the dogs around the house. She would rather sleep on the floor than in her bed. She wants to wear a beautiful dress (nightgown) all the time and likes to twirl around saying "look at my beautiful dress". She loves her routine almost to the point where it is frustrating for us, but that is part of her and part of me so I have a bit more patience with it than Zach. She loves her animals (stuffed dolls/animals) although she doesn't understand naming them as all her dogs are just dog or big dog, she loves them like they are her real babies. She is silly about 95% of the time and has to stick her nose in the corner a lot for being too silly. She is sympathetic. Whenever someone is sad or in trouble she is sad and wants to know what is the matter. If you tell her to use her helping hands she will do what you ask because she gets excited about her helping hands. She loves to play with trains and loves anything about trains. Even sometimes she will build a "tracker" out of books or toys and then walk on it like a train. She doesn't like to eat much unless it is fruit, cookies or a snack and she loves sprite. She loves to run around the house without any pants on just in a t-shirt. When we get home that is normally the first that she does, take her shoes, socks and pants off.  She tries to negotiate on almost anything especially when it comes to bedtime or how many animals she can take someplace. She loves to help pour things into the bowl when we cook. She doesn't have much coordination, but she loves to dance. She loves to sing. She loves to read the Bible and her Bible has to sleep with her in her bed. Her 3 favorite stories are Adam & Eve, Noah & Ark, and Jesus Birth or as she calls Christmas. She can get overwhelmed easily and just watch the chaos like she is studying for a research project. She likes to walk around the house reading books to herself, like Belle she says, and normally the stories are always about creation. Her prayers are soft and normally for anything and everyone that she can think of and they normally end with thank you for everything and Jesus, Amen, lets eat. When she doesn't want to eat she will want to give out hugs and kisses to everyone and say "I just love you". She talks about the kids in her school and her teachers Ms. Mary & Ms Beth all the time. Her imagination is HUGE. She LOVES Christmas and anything about Christmas. She loves to pick out marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal.

Chloe's phrases: "I just told you." - this is when we ask her to repeat something or try to confirm something with her.
 "Never" - sometimes she gets in a mood and decides her answer for everything is never
"What's gonna happen?" - this is what she asks all the time during a movie or cartoon, she knows what is going to happen because she's seen it 100 times.
"Mom/Dad can you get your son!' - when she wants Levi out of her toys or wherever she is playing.
"2 Minutes" - this is her sense of time. Everything is two minutes.

This is just a little piece of who Chloe is and a big piece of what I don't want to forget. I am so Thankful that she was our first child and that she is my daughter. Sometimes I secretly wish she was just like me and then when she is I wish she was more like her daddy :)

Ten Times Older

So we celebrated Chloe's birthday in Indiana and next was Zach's birthday. Now Chloe just turned 3 and Zach the big 30! Which means he is 10 times older than Chloe :) I like to say that to him and remind him that he is no longer in his twenties. He had told me no big party for him. He told me that like a few months ago. So no big party is what he got, but we went out with his parents to Texas Roadhouse and of course he had a purple Angel Food Cake. Because well you can only imagine who wanted it to be purple.


Happy Birthday Zach and Chloe!!!

SURPRISE!!!

October had been a rough month. A great month, but still a little hard on the family with me being out of work. So what better way for a little pick me up than a road trip! We decided since we had the time we would take a road trip up to Indiana for a nice week long "getaway". My mom had surgery on her foot so she was at home and we had the time so it seemed perfect. Also, it was Chloe's birthday so who wouldn't want to spend it at Mama's house. Like I said my mom had surgery on her foot so she was suppose to take it easy, but if she knew we were coming then do you really think she would  have taken it easy? No, she would have been cleaning and prepping and scheduling and filling our time with things to do. So a surprise was in order!

We had just told my sister so at least someone knew, but no one else. I thought about telling my dad, but he can't keep a secret at all he gets too excited so I knew that wouldn't be a good idea. It would be nice because we could just relax with my family and spend some good quality time with them since our normal Indiana trips are go go go and short. We packed up the truck and headed out for our 15 hour drive. The kids did great on the way there. We like to drive through the night so it is dark and they normally sleep a bit better. They would doze on and off for a few hours at a time and then the other time they would watch movies on the iPad. We had to make a few extra bathroom breaks for Chloe, but no accidents and no big complaints. We got into town about 7:30 in the morning and that was a bit too early for a surprise so we went over to my sister's house and let the kids run around and play before we knocked down the doors of my parents' house. 

Now, my sister lives right across the street from my grandma, who didn't know we were in town. There is always a risk of something happening or an unexpected drop by. We were lucky for the most part, but then when we were getting ready to leave to go to my parents' house I noticed my dad's car parked at my grandma's house. Oh great. Surprise ruined. So we figured we would just trot over there and surprise him there before he spilled the beans to my mom. When we were getting ready to walk out the door he was in his car. And we were busted! He drove really slow by my sister's house because he thought he recognized the truck. Yep, we were busted. So we packed up and went to my parents' house about 5 minutes behind my dad. My sister walked in first as always and then my mom was confused because she heard extra pitter patters down the hall. Now remember, mom had surgery so she couldn't get up. The look on her face when she saw us. It was funny. It was like she was trying to jump out of her seat, but she couldn't because she was stuck in a mud puddle or something. It was funny. My dad did say he saw the truck, but he was able to keep the secret for the 5 minutes or so. A great surprise!

It was so relaxing and we were able to have Chloe's birthday party with my parents, grandparents and sister and her family. This is a rare occasion since we live so far away. And Chloe had strict instructions on her party. She had to have purple balloons, purple cake, a purple cup and pretty much anything and everything purple. She also picked out the theme of My Little Pony...yes, that is my daughter. We got an ice cream cake from the local DQ and told them to make it as purple as possible. They did a good job using the gel icing (my favorite) and putting purple all over it. Chloe was so excited at her party and she was ripping through her gifts (all in bags and tissue paper) like a crazy lady. She was having more fun just opening the bags than actually seeing what she got, but after the presents were gone she then decided to see what she got and was so excited with everything. She talked on and on about her birthday. I would say it was a success.

While we were in Indiana is also snowed a little bit. The kind where it falls overnight, but by 10am it is all gone. Chloe went out to have lunch with Sydney at school and Chole asked my sister "Why is daddy's truck hiding?" It had snow on it and she thought it was hiding. Silly girl. 

The whole trip was a success and after a week as hard as it was to leave, it was time to make the trip back down to Texas to go home and try to get some kind of normalcy back in our routine. I'm so glad we were able to make the trip just another unexpected blessing that we were able to do while I was off work. 

A Princess, A Prince and A Monster?

I'll be honest I dread Halloween. I don't really know why, but I always dread it. I'm sure I loved it as a kid, but now I worry about if our pumpkins will get smashed or our house egged or some super creepy person trying to rob you while trick-or-treating. I have unrealistic ideas on what will happen on Halloween, but I don't like it. It is hard because Zach for some reason loves it. When we were first married he wanted to put out the orange and black lights like you would for Christmas and he had to dress up to give out candy or he was the one scaring the older trick-or-treaters. Then when we had Chloe it was a little better because rather than being scary he wanted to dress up with her so that was a nice change. The first year they were Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse the second year they were Dorothy and the Scarecrow. After last year I told him that one of these days she isn't going to want to dress up in a matching costume with him, but of course until then he is dressing up and then I'm sure he will still dress up to take her around the neighborhood.

So this year it was a big debate on what they were going to be. The initial idea was for Chloe to be Tinker Bell, Levi Peter Pan and Zach Captain Hook, but Chloe had an idea of her own. She wanted to be Snow White so we thought Zach and Levi could be two of the dwarfs. Do you know how hard it is to try and find a costume or make something to look like a dwarf? It was hard. Then Chloe wanted all three of them to be princesses. Yea, I don't think so. So we decided to take her to the store to pick out a costume and she wanted to be Sofia from the Disney Jr cartoon. Okay, they could all be Disney Jr. characters. So after going to two stores to find her size she changed her mind and again wanted to be Snow White. At this point I told Zach that she could be Snow White and then Levi could be a Minion from Despicable Me and that Zach could be Gru. I mean how hard would those be to find. So we picked up the Snow White Costume and realized that Levi was in a size that they don't really have great costumes for because he is too small for the toddler but too big for the baby costumes. So we were going to make Levi's Minion costume rather than buy it and surely Zach had everything for Gru. After searching around and trying to figure out how to make Zach and Levi's costumes I decided this was silly and told Zach that maybe this year we just get Levi a costume and Zach not go as anything because it was going to be too expensive. Remember how I said Zach loves Halloween and dressing up, so you can imagine he was a bit depressed by this.

I finally decided just to go to the store myself and try to find a costume that would work for Levi. I found Mike from Monster's inc. It would be perfect on him because he loves the movie and even though it was in a bigger size it didn't look big. So I came home and showed Zach and I could tell he was a little upset still about not being able to dress like the kids. I felt bad because this would be like telling me we couldn't put lights on the house. So I rummaged through the house and the closet  and put together a costume for Zach. I thought for sure he would hate the home made look, but he was so excited. He actually said I did a good job. So he went as Snow White's Prince. All was well for this Halloween.

Waiting for it to be time to go trick-or-treating

Fall Festivities

I love Fall! I love Fall! I love Fall! I enjoy watching football on the weekends and spending more time outside when the weather isn't scorching. I love the vibrant colors of the trees. I love the smell of pumpkin spice and all the normal fall smells. But more importantly I love that Christmas is right around the corner. We had a busy fall. Actually, I don't even think I can say it was busy because our everyday normal is busy with two little munchkins running around. But what I can say is we did a lot.

What I can say about our  time the past few months is that it has been centered all around family. We've spent a ton of time together the four of us and also spent a good amount of time with our extended family...haha. I've been off of work since the end of September and as scary as that has been we have tried to make the most of everything and spend as much time together as it isn't very often that both the mom and dad are home with their two small children every day for almost 2 months. It has definitely been a blessing, maybe not how I would have liked it to be, but I can't deny the fact that I was able to spend so much time with my family.

We had some visitors over the past few months as well. My brother-in-law Phil was in town for work for almost 3 weeks so we were able to spend some time with him and he was able to do his laundry at our house in exchange for back breaking labor of "trimming" some trees in the backyard and chopping up wood. Now it wasn't all work. We fed him and took him to church and he was able to play with Chloe and Levi so it was a fair trade...right?!?!? The kids loved having him around. Chloe warmed right up to him as if he was always around. We were surprised how well she did so quickly since she can sometimes be a bit shy. She talked all about Uncle Phil and how he was going to go to church with her, pick her up from her class, get her out of her car seat and pretty much anything and everything Phil was going to do for her. And then Levi he would ask where Uncle Phil was and waller on him when he was here.

All three kids wanted to be outside cutting down trees.

It was quite the calculated task.

Chloe with her uncle Phil after dinner.

After Phil's visits were over then my mom came in town for a long weekend. We celebrated her belated birthday with a purple cake...I wonder who's idea that was. We played outside and went to Boo Zoo. As always we had a great time and the kids did not like to see her go. Levi calls her Papa or Mapa. He can't quite seem to understand Mama. He will say it after you say it, but when he is talking about or to her it is some variation of Papa or Mama or both. He would wake up the next few days looking for her and whenever Chloe would wonder where she went she would go through the whole story that Mama and Papa are coming for Christmas. It was like she would reassure herself that she would see Mama again. We also painted pumpkins while my mom was in town. I think Levi had more paint on him than his pumpkin, but he had fun and the paint is washable so we were all good.

Getting some ice cream before Mama arrives

Boo at the Zoo

When we weren't having visitors we spent a lot of time playing outside in the backyard. Levi loves to swing. I think he could swing all day and all night. Chloe enjoys swinging too and she always wants to go higher and faster, but Levi he is just content swinging back and forth. Like I said, we had a great Fall and I can't wait for Thanksgiving and then CHRISTMAS!!!