Well I guess this is growing up

Here's grown up girl #1 (and troublemaker #1).

I got her this backpack to take on the plane for our trip to Portland (tonight!!!). When Sadie saw it for the first time she let out a dramatic gasp, put it on and told me "I'm going to school mom". She is very excited to pack it with toys and books for our plane ride this evening.

And here's grown up girl and troublemaker #2. 

I love how this picture of her has the soft glow of a glamour shot, including the strategic placement of her hand. It could only be improved if her hand was under her chin.

 This girl is trouble. She enjoys making messes and climbing things, but if she gets the slightest bit hurt she bawls. I tell her she can't have it both ways- you can't be a rough and tumble girl and then cry at the drop of a hat.

And she is still not walking. She'll be 13 months next week and I am starting to get anxious about it. Mostly because I think she'll be much happier once she starts walking.  

And finally... I am sure some of you remember Sadie's Harry hair comparison. Well, when I saw the picture below I could not stop laughing. 

 

She looks exactly like that actor who plays the ghost on the subway in the movie Ghost (and many other movies) 

I guess I will never tire of comparing my little girls to unattractive male actors. It will always be hilarious.

Zoo Time

We recently made our yearly spring trek to the Hogle Zoo. Now that we have a minivan we brought Sadie's little friend Claire Sullivan with us. I have never felt quite so old as I did when we drove up to SLC with the girls watching a movie in the back as we discussed our finances. There's no denying we are old and lame now.

It was so much fun to watch the girls get excited about everything. Sadie still rambles on and on about the animals she saw and what she did. 

Claire and Sadie practically ran from animal to animal screaming about what each one was.

We had some pushing and shoving over the lion water fountain, but that's understood. That's the coolest water fountain ever. 

It's too bad you can't see the girls' faces very well in this one because they are plenty cute, but what I really want to point out is the tiger right behind the window. That thing was massive. Sadie kept pounding on the glass trying to get him to wake up. 

Probably both of these girls' favorite things. Two weeks later and Sadie can still tell you which animals they rode on the merry-go-round. They also rode on a train that took them by cougars. I wasn't on the train with them, but Sadie tells me about it almost every day. 

And last, but not least, here is another little girl that attended the zoo that day. 

She was not always as thrilled to be in the stroller as this picture might suggest, but overall she was pretty darn good. 

We love the Hogle Zoo (at least enough that we go once a year). 

Perpetual Learners

11 things we have learned in the past few weeks.

1. Honda Odysseys are pretty awesome.

 Daniel said a tearful goodbye to his beloved Explorer.

 I love all the space. And that it has a DVD player. I think Daniel is enjoying driving a car (our Sonata) that has A/C and functioning seat-belts.

2. Your mouth is an efficient way to carry things whilst crawling.

Even if she acts like a dog she's still really cute. And she loves cheese

3. Play dates are much more fun when you don't fight with your friends.

 It is absolutely glorious to have Sadie and her friends go in the basement by themselves without having to be supervised/refereed. Sadie & Anna Gaines played downstairs for a good 2 hours one day

4. Tapes are amazing, but useless.

 The Explorer had a tape player and these tapes have been floating around in Daniel's car for the past 10 years. When we cleaned out the Explorer I couldn't part with them, but a few days later I realized a picture on the blog and then tossing them would suffice. Tapes pictured above (l-r)- good mix, most romantic songs ever mix, Ace of Base, Meredith's relax mix '98. and Bette Midler. Pure gold. I miss them.

5. Elise's hair is long enough for a ponytail.

6. Baby powder is really fun to make a mess with, but not that fun to clean up.

7. Willy the Wolverine is both exciting and fear-inducing

 

8. Kids don't really care about Mother's Day.

 

 Sadie refused to take a picture with me and Elise refused to take a good picture with me.  

9.  Elise is allergic to penicillin.

This is actually before the rash spread over her entire body (including her earlobes). She had a rough few weeks between the double ear infection, being allergic to the medicine for the infections, and then the traumatic nebulizer treatment from the cough that just won't go away.

10. Plastic pools don't really cushion the hard ground underneath

 Sadie whined a little after running and jumping into the pool

11. Wearing sunglasses makes it hard to see movies in the car

New Englanders

Meredith got a bunch of cute pictures when she and my mom (the New Englanders) were visiting. 

Here are some a lot, of my favorites. 

Sadie was so cute with Weston- so much sweeter with him than she has ever been with Elise.

Elise was just her crazy self. I love that she looks like she is about to pounce on Weston's face. 

Sadie really liked baby Weston.

She wanted him with her everywhere, including the ball pit. RIP ball pit thing- the top got a hole in it and no longer stays inflated. It's times like this we really miss Paco. He'd find a way to fix it.

I include the following picture because it's a good illustration of Lou. She's happy, mostly because she is climbing and clinging to me.

On Sunday night the kids were all playing with balloons we had from various places. Have I mentioned how much both my girls loves balloons? Well, it's a whole lot. But again, with Sadie giving lots of love to Weston.

In this picture I have no idea what she was doing, but Meredith caught her on camera rolling back with her feet in the air. It looks like she fell flat on her back and it makes me laugh every time.

And probably my favorite picture of all:

Louie snuggling up to Nana. My mom had to take her outside while I finished dinner because she was whining so much for me. Once they took her out of my sight she was fine.

John Girls

A few weeks ago we had our first ever John girls + babies weekend. We went up to my cousins' cabin and pretty much just talked for 2 1/2 days straight. The cabin was perfect because it has all the nice modern conveniences, but it's away from the world.

The babes under age 1 were invited (Elise barely made it). 

No showers. No work. No leaving the cabin. 

Sounds awesome to me.

We had actually hoped to do some easy hikes but there was a big snowstorm the night we got there that left 6 inches of snow. My mom and Alicia had to drive up the canyon in the storm in the pitch black. They couldn't find the turn off for the cabin because snow was covering all the signs. I had to drive out to the canyon road to show them the way and I was terrified.

 

We drove up earlier in the day. This was Hillary's view until the kids fell asleep. 

They both had some great scowls going. 

Side story- my uncle had told us that a window had just been replaced that broke. Everything looked great when we got there and we went about our business. While I was changing Elise into her pjs for bed the first night my knuckle scraped across something sharp and starting bleeding. When we realized it was a little piece of glass we started hunting around to make sure there wasn't more glass. We found glass all over the place that we hadn't noticed! This is a collection of the bigger pieces of glass on the coffee table. To give you an idea of the size (we should have put something else in the picture so you could tell!) that piece at the top of the picture was about 8 inches long. 

The babies were great for the most part. One night Elise was up for a couple hours right when we wanted to go to bed. So that was not fun, but she made up for it in cuteness. And now that I know she had 2 ear infections maybe there was good reason for the crying.

 

One day Carrie and Anthony came up with their 2 kiddos since they were in town for Carrie's sister's wedding. We were so happy that Carrie could join in the John girls weekend, even if she totally violated the no husband and no kids over 1 rules. :)

2011 John grandbabies unite! I had to include this one because of Elise's awesome face. The kids don't look too different in size here, but they actually are quite different in person. Elise was born in May, Lauren in October, and Weston in November. We can't wait for them to be running around together wreaking havoc at family reunions in the future.

Hopefully this will turn into an annual or every-other-year event. 

I really do love the women in my family. I am lucky to have 1 awesome mom (just realized she's not in any pictures- more on the next post), 3 super cool sisters, and 1 amazing sister-in-law.

Meredith blogged about the trip over here if you want to see more pictures.  

Month Twelve

This may be the best product ever to come out of these monthly photos. The double wave with crazy eyes.

So here we are at 12 months. My baby girl will become a toddler soon. Each year of my life just keeps going by faster- but Elise's first year was an especially rapid one. When Elise was first born I didn't feel like I had a good handle on being a mother of 2 kids and, unfortunately, most of the time I don't feel like I have made much progress.  Being a good mom is hard work.

Assorted facts on Elise "Louie" Lynn Nielson:

-has 4 teeth- one of them just barely starting to poke out on top. 

-60th percentile in height, 40th in weight. 

-stands for 45+ seconds at a time and then just sits down in a controlled movement. I know she has the balance and leg strength to walk, she just needs to do it. Judging by how long it took her to switch from army crawling to just plain baby crawling, she may be at the "standing freely but not walking" stage for months. 

-loves being outside and crawling on grass, concrete, wood chips, you name it. She's got the calloused legs to prove it. She also won't stop eating wood chips when we go to the park. It's a problem.

-has a mega sweet-tooth

-wants to play with whatever Sadie has

-says "dad"; at least, she consistently makes a sound like "dad" when she sees Daniel. I get really annoyed when people exaggerate the abilities of their kids, so I hesitate to declare it her first official word. 

-still got a huge head- 80th percentile, baby!

-not interested in movies or shows

-loves wrestling/snuggling with the huge bear Papa bought Sadie

-thinks playing in the basement toy room is the best thing ever

-hates being buckled into a stroller. She prefers to ride standing up holding onto the sunshade. Crazy girl

Oh, and she's been kinda fussy that past few weeks with 2 different colds and teething, but that could be explained by the double ear infection her doctor found at her 1 year appointment today. Oops.

Here's a look back at Lou each month in her first year

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

She's pretty cool.