Various June Pics

Love my girls and their wanting to be with Mommy!

This is where Haven ends up almost every meal now - right next to me.  She always asks to "gooch by Mommy" (meaning "skooch" by me - which I've recently discovered isn't a real word either except in our house :-) ) and it's not close enough until our chairs are touching! 

Eating popcorn on the porch

The last day my baby was 1 year old!

There are very few parks in Lynchburg, but recently we discovered a new (to us) park about 20 minutes from us that the girls really enjoy...and has the most important things...swings!   Both my girls could swing all day I think!

Haven LOVES arm tickles.  And in this picture below is what she does every time she starts to get a tickle to "encourage" you to continue. :-)  If you stop, she'll put her arm under your hand to get you to keep doing it.   So funny.

Probably not a great thing to admit as a Mom of toddlers, but I have held off until getting finger paints until recently.  Thought making that kind of mess would be much more fun at preschool than at home. :-)  But I finally broke down and got some and Addysen, my particular, neat, organized little girl LOVES them...gets quite messy in the process, but loves it!  Haven on the other hand, my always a mess, wild child wants absolutely nothing to do with finger paints.  I've tried several times to get her to do it and show her what you can do and as soon as it gets on her hands she immediately wants it off...does not like it at all.  Total opposite reactions of what I would have expected of my girls!

Haven is our little gymnast.  This is her in the monitor at naptime.  See her in the right top corner...yes, that would be her head and hands on the mattress...and feet up in the air!  This is her favorite "calm down and get ready to go to sleep" activity in her bed....headstands! :-)

All ready for bed eating some grapes

Last week, we had a day where we needed to be home during the day and I really was hoping to get a few projects done...not sure how much I could accomplish.  Addysen was such a big helper that day, obedient and played SO kindly with Haven...even when Haven was a bit challenging due to being really tired.  I was able to accomplish quite a bit that day as a result!  Haven didn't take a nap that day so she had to go to bed early that night and Addysen took a really good nap so I let her stay up a little later and made her a milkshake (her 1st milkshake she'd ever had!), played a game together, and read some "extra" books before bed.  It was such a special time together and she was beyond thrilled to be rewarded like that...her lit up eyes and smile were so cute!

Father's Day

The plan was to bring Daddy breakfast in bed on Father's Day when the girls woke up...but both girls slept in that morning!  Jeff woke up about when Addysen did so he laid back down so Addysen could at least bring him a muffin in bed! :-)

Snuggle time with Daddy after both girls woke up

Fun to have both Daddy and Grampa here to celebrate with this Father's Day!

 

After church, neither of the girls decided to take naps.  So while Daddy was taking a nap, we decided to go get a coffee for him.  The girls were excited about doing that...and I figured out why on our way there when they started asking for a "strawberry drink" for themselves. :-)

The weather was pretty nice that afternoon so we got to open gifts and cards on the porch

Daddy opening a gift from the girls

A close up of what they made him (thanks to Pinterest and my Bible study girls for initiating this idea!)

Haven's Hair

Oh how I love to curl my girls hair!  And amazingly, even with how busy Haven is all the time, she stands still and lets me curl her every day!  So fun!

Paci Free

A few weeks before Haven turned 2, she started really chewing away on her paci...to the point that I had to throw a couple of them away.  I was getting concerned about her choking on the paci if she were to bite a whole piece of it off so decided that after she turned 2, we'd get rid of the pacis.

Here she is on her birthday night - last night she had her beloved "packee" as she called them... :-)

I really wasn't sure how Haven was going to do without her pacis.  Though she hadn't used them during the day for quite some time, she was pretty dependent on them for sleeping.  We talked about getting rid of her pacis for a while leading up to her birthday and how she didn't need them anymore now that she was going to be such a big girl.  We talked a lot about how Addysen doesn't use a paci since she's a big girl and now that Haven's going to be such a big girl when she turns 2, she won't need one either!  Since she wants to do everything Addysen does, this seemed to be a big convincing factor!

So the day after her birthday, I had Haven throw her pacis in the trash herself and we talked about how the trash man was going to take them away.  Despite being a little reluctant to actually let go of them into the trash, she was pretty excited about being a big girl like sister now!  When you ask her why she doesn't need her paci anymore, she says "big girl!" 

For about a week following us taking paci away, she struggled a bit with naps (not unhappy...just had a really hard time calming herself down to fall asleep) and though she would go down for sleep at night pretty easily, she would wake up 1 time during the night crying...asking for paci. But after that week, she's done great!  Every once in a while she'll still talk about her paci, but mostly to talk about how the trash man took it away or to be silly...she'll ask for it and when I tell her she doesn't need her paci anymore she'll say "Noooooo...big girl!"

We didn't take Addysen's paci away until she was 3 (she never bit hers) and it was really easy because she was old enough to understand.  I was concerned with how young Haven was to take it away...but once again, she reminded me she too is older and able to handle more than I give her credit for sometimes!  So thankful it was such an easy process!

Junk of Mud

The other day, Addysen came running out of my bedroom saying "There's a junk of mud in Mommy and Daddy's room!  Come look!"  I had no idea what she meant and was envisioning all the awful things this could mean...until I went in and saw her looking out the window saying "Look!  There's a junk of mud!"

They had just started working on getting the property behind us ready to build a house that morning...and that's how Addysen was describing the piles of dirt that they had accumulated at that point in preparing the property.  Ha!