Dad Life

Lucy is scared to death of escalators! We have tried and tried and tried to get her to go up and down it without being carried, but she refuses to. We were at our local JC Penney recently and I was downstairs looking at clothes while Ross was upstairs with the girls. When I saw them on their way down the escalator, I just laughed. Ross was carrying both girls and said "dad life" to me when he saw me. What a good dad he is. :)

I was kind of surprised to see him carrying Molly, too, because usually she steps right on the escalator with no trouble at all while I'm carrying Lucy.

New Fruit

When I was pregnant with Molly (so four years ago) I discovered a new-to-me fruit salad that I absolutely loved. A friend brought it to our Christmas party and it was the best thing ever. She called it BOPS. It was bananas, mandarin oranges, a can of peach pie filling, and strawberries all mixed together and it was so good. I made it a lot at the time and then forgot about it for a while. Sometime last year I made it and both girls absolutely loved it. They called it "new fruit" because we hadn't had this fruit salad before, so it was new to them! It has been a big hit and we love having it. When I make it, though, it doesn't last very long because all four of us like it so much. We haven't had it for a while because strawberries have been expensive, but just last week they were on sale for $1.49 so I bought up the strawberries and made up the new fruit!

Molly's Bible Reading

One of Molly's preschool teachers sent me this one day after school last week. I thought it was just the sweetest thing. I love Molly so much. :)

Ross Wiseman, CPA

Ross is now officially a Certified Public Accountant. I am so proud of him! Getting this certification was a journey of 4 1/2 years that we are both glad is over! You can read about how it started here. Ross did an excellent job studying and being disciplined with him time and it certainly paid off. Congratulations, Ross! I love you!

How My Mom Worries Have Changed

I have these pictures up in Molly's room below her mirror.

They are pictures I had done at JC Penney's when she was a baby, probably at two, six, and ten months old. For their first year, I took each girl on their monthly birthdays to JCP to have their pictures taken. My Mom did this with us our first year and my sister did it with her kids their first year. I guess I didn't even think twice about not doing it for my kids...it's what my Mom did, so it's what I would do.

Anyway, one day I was looking at these pictures and was filled with memories of having them done each month and all of the thought (and agony?!) I put into deciding what they should wear. Some months were pretty easy. If it was a holiday month like February or December, I knew I'd put them in a holiday-themed outfit. But other "regular" months it sometimes got hard figuring out what to wear. I'd often take pictures of all my options and send them to my Mom and sister asking for their opinion. And then I had the nervousness of getting them to the studio in time and still looking good from when we left our house; hoping and praying they would cooperate during the photo shoot; wanting to buy every single picture because they were so good but new I couldn't....so many different things were involved in these pictures that no one but me will ever know about! It got to be a chore after a while and at times I wish I wouldn't have started doing the pictures each month, but now I certainly am glad I have them!

My whole point of this post, though, is that when I was looking at these pictures I laughed thinking about how my "mom worries" have changed over the years. That first year each month I had this worry of getting everything perfect for their monthly pictures. This turned into worrying about stopping breast feeding. This turned into worrying about potty training. This turned into worrying about moving into a big girl bed. This turned into worrying about going to school.

I know the things to worry about will continue to change as the girls age, and I bet someday I would gladly change the worries that come along with the teenage years for the worries of what to wear for a monthly birthday picture worry. :)

Personalities

We had almost 70 degree weather on Sunday in December, so took advantage of it by playing at the playground at a local elementary school. I love these pictures I took of Lucy and Molly. They capture their personalities so well. :)

Molly And My Necklace

At the beginning of the year I gave myself and the girls "mommy and me" necklaces. You can read about the necklaces here. Well, for whatever reason I always kept these necklaces on a silverware holder that sits on my stove. It wasn't the most ideal place for them, but it was a place I saw every morning and knew I'd remember to put them on.

One night Molly, who had not had the best day (she's 3 1/2.......), picked up my necklace and dropped it down an opening on the stove. I realized what she had done and was so upset by this. I didn't know if we'd be able to get it out and Ross wasn't home at the time to help me. Then it got worse when Lucy found out what had happened! Lucy is an emotional little girl and this greatly upset her, resulting in sobbing tears.

Thankfully, that night Ross was able to pull out the stove/oven and retrieve my necklace. I was so happy he was able to do this. I know I could have bought another one, but this necklace has grown to mean so much to me. :)

Trading School Pictures

Lucy and Molly both had school pictures taken this past fall. The package I ordered for Lucy's pictures had some 5x7s, wallet sizes, and maybe a 1 1/2x2 picture size that came with 20 pictures. I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to order so many pictures of this small size, but thought whatever, I'll go with it. It wasn't until Lucy came home from school about a week after all the pictures went home that I realized what that size was for: trading pictures with friends! She had a picture of one of her friends from school in her backpack and it just made me smile! I remembered all the times as a kid that I traded pictures with friends at school and was fun to think of Lucy doing this now. I wrote her name on the back of each picture and sent them with her to school to give out to her friends. I so wish I could have been in the room to see this process unfold! I wonder if she just gave the pictures to her friends or asked if they wanted a picture. And I'm betting she didn't fully understand why she was doing so, too! Elementary school..........

Molly's "Artwork"

I've shared lots of posts about Molly's artwork and the places she likes to do her artwork the last few years. Here's another of those posts to add to my archives.

We discovered Molly colored on our wooden window seat in the family room and I'm pretty sure she did so with a non-washable marker. I tried to clean it off  and a little did come off, but there's still a lot of work left to do on it. We do so love Molly..........

Advent Calendar

We did an advent calendar with the girls this Christmas season and it turned out to be a very good experience. A friend told me about this calendar and I decided to give it a shot. It was pretty neat and I'm glad we did it. I has a 3-D tree that unfolds and each day you read a small devotional and put an ornament on the tree. It basically tells the lineage of Jesus and gives a short synopsis of the whole Old Testament leading up to Jesus' birth. The girls seemed to like it and did a good job paying attention for the most part. However, we did have some rough days where the devotional reading was interrupted with threats of taking toys away if they didn't pay attention, but nonetheless, we persevered and finished it!

Happy 2019!

Happy New Year! We had a very uneventful, yet fun, New Year's Eve last night. Ross had the day off work and he smoked a brisket all day so we had that for dinner. We also had potato soup and then got the girls ready for bed a little early so we could have a NYE dance party in our family room. We found some fun NYE countdown shows on Netflix and had a fun time with that. Then we just sat on the couch in our jammies and robes and watched the NYE shows on TV. We watched the New York ball drop at 11pm and called that our midnight and went to bed. We're old.........

Since 2013, I've taken a picture of Lucy, then Molly in 2015, sleeping before I went to bed on NYE and continued that tradition last night. I love these posts. :)