Who's Got Twinkle Toes???

We do we do we do!!! Some of you know I was on an island wide monster search for these teeny tiny shoes. I could find them everywhere, but never in Gillian's size. I had also come to the conclusion when I was looking for them that they weren't made for bitty feets like Brenna's. So, with a little girl's whiney request I started my search online for them. I mean how can an almost six year old start first grade without shiny sparkley things on her feet? To begin with I found the black one's very quickly at the never fails me Zappos.com. My mom then calls no joke five minutes later to ask me what size shoes the girls wear because she found them online too. I told her not to worry about it because I just bought some for Gillian and that they didn't make them small enough for Brenna. Oh contrair! They do make them small enough for Brenna. So mom ordered the blue and pink sparkle toes for bitty feets. And then of course I of all people can't leave well enough alone, so I'm off looking around online and find the pink shoes. And OMG the sparkles are in the shapes of flowers...and they are sparkley all over. As the mom that wants to give my children everything that they want I ordered them too thinking that she could make her mind up when she saw them in person, and we'd send the extra pair back for a refund. They came a week and a half ago. Guess what I haven't done???? That's right, I'm still the proud owner of three pair of twinkle toes. Too bad my preggo feet are too big for them. I'm just so scared her feet are going to grow a mile a minute and that I just spent a small fortune on two pair of shoes she's going to be able to wear for a month.

In other news, Gillian starts school on Monday. I'm sitting here getting her prepared by labeling school supplies and doing a last minute check that I bought everything I was supposed to. Like the box of markers that I purchased that now clearly state that they are BOLD colors when her supply lists CLASSIC colors. Last year for her art projects I just sent in an old t-shirt of mine for her to wear over her clothes. She got so messy on some days though that the paint seeped through the thin material of the t-shirt. This year we decided that she needed an apron. We bought a plain denim one and jazzed it up a little bit. I figure even if she doesn't get much use out of it at school, it'll be fun for her to play in at home in her various make-believe worlds. I'm still thinking about sewing her a few out of fun material...maybe later on in the pregnancy when I get super bored and decide I just need something to do with my time.



And what blog would be complete without a picture of the kid that puts a smile on my face every day???



Boy am I going to be sad the day she decides to turn her attitude on me. So far I'm the only person immune to it :)

Happy 14 Weeks To Me!

I'm finally officially in the second trimester. This pregnancy is dragging major butt. I don't have decent pregnancies to compare it to though. The first child that entered my world didn't inform me she was in there for almost the whole first trimester. The second child that took up residence in my uterus did so when I had a 9 month old to take care of. This go around I have completely self sufficient children to contend with and an absent husband. I'm not even wiping butts anymore...guess I counted my lucky stars too soon on that one.

The second trimester comes very bittersweet to me. For one thing I get to find out the gender of the baby in just a couple of weeks. Some are betting boy, some are girl. I have my own educated guess, but if you really are that interested in what I think it is you could just ask...or you could wait two weeks to find out the truth. We are ready to welcome a healthy baby, no matter the sex. Although I'm finding it hard to wrap my head around anything boy related...even names.

The bitterness. Evil pubic symphisis dysfunction. If you get grossed out easily by pregnant women and their bodily functions, please read no further. Pubic symphisis dysfunction or otherwise known as pelvic separation happens when your body prematurely excretes the hormone that allow your pelvis to separate and the baby's head to fit through the birth canal. Thus, your pelvic area starts to loosen and separates while you are still pregnant. I never had this wonderful side effect with G, but was blessed when I was pregnant with B. It's rearing it's ugly head again. Feeling the bones between your legs grinding into each other as you are shopping in the mall is not a pleasant experience. Neither is feeling your crotch pop as you are rolling out of bed in the middle of the night when your bladder is being smashed like a pancake. Throw in the severe back aches, the sharp pains running down your legs...getting the point? I hope so cause just writing about it is making me ache. So, it has kicked in already. No fair. No freaking fair.

Pity party for one please. Is it not hard enough that I have to parent both of the girls alone while Richard is away at school, grow this baby as good as possible, prepare for said baby, pack out our house, clean and clear our house, ship our car on a boat cross country, fly 4000 miles with the kids alone to meet my husband at 8 months pregnant..... But no. I have to do all of this that I had every intention of doing with a smile plastered on my face. I have to do all this, smiling, all the while my crotch bones are grinding and popping.

So is life. So is life.

Brenna's Got Bling!

I took Brenna today to get her ears pierced while we were out doing her sister's school shopping. She was so excited as you can see above. I asked her multiple times if she was sure she was ready for this, and explained how it would hurt. She kept telling me it was okay, and that she was a big girl.

I knew I was in trouble when she said "OW" as the girl was marking her ears with the marker. There were no sharp pointy things anywhere near her. She cried...she cried for a long time. I wasn't prepared for it because her sister didn't shed a singe tear when I took her to have hers done last year and she is my crier. I was at least a nice mommy and took no pictures of her sobbing, but as you can tell she was not happy afterward.



She did want to show her daddy though that she got stars in her ears.



Now let's just hope she doesn't throw a fit when I make her clean them tonight! She won't let me touch them, so I may have to pin her down.

12 Weeks

I don't think it looks like I've gotten much bigger after seeing this picture but I feel bigger! I'm definitely out of all of my regular jeans and am in dire need of buying more than the one pair of maternity jeans that I'm sporting right now. I've got a couple of selections sitting in "checkout" waiting for payday because I'm breaking down....the cheapest pair that I've picked out are $75. I cringe at that thought, but then I think...I'd spend that much on a normal pair of jeans to have a GOOD pair of jeans so why should now be any different? Especially when you buy so little for yourself because you will live in these clothes for such a short period of time, but the things you buy you wear the heck out of???

I get to go hopefully (fingers crossed) hear the heartbeat at my first official appointment with the doctor on Friday. I at that point will make a good guesstamation at the gender of the baby. Both of the girls had heartbeats around 140 or slightly higher. I know they say that the gender doesn't determine the heart rate while they are in the womb, that it takes a few weeks after they are delivered for it to change per sex, but if both my girls were the same then you would think there is a little truth to it right? Who knows. I guess all babies are different! I can still drive myself crazy though until August when I can officially find out :)

Time Flies When You're Having Fun (or sick)

So, I'm not going to lie. I've been neglectful of my blog. Richard came home and tossed me up in a whirlwind of cuddling on the couch and we were in the middle of full blown t-ball season. That and getting a kid to and from school. We originally only planned on him being home for two weeks and it somehow stretched into two and a half months. I'm glad I had the time with him though. I get to play single parent and have a long distance phone relationship with the man I'm married to for the next five months. He'll get no more leave, so we just have to suck it up!

So here he is with the girls when we picked him up at the airport back in April.


It's amazing how you forget little things like the way they make you feel when they look at you when they are gone for so long. The separation stinks, but the reunions make for great reminders of why you fell in love in the first place.

Here we are the next day at Gillian's first official t-ball game.


See we look happy! This is because it's the week prior to me locking my purse in the trunk of my car along with my keys and my cell phone. How lucky was I that he was here and drove separately to the game that day. I never do stuff like that! I remembered why once I realized how infuriated with me he was ha ha.

Richard took the girls shopping...


They were so excited to wear their dresses and tell everyone that their dad picked them out for them. Richard was then (by no surprise to me) shocked to find out that Gillian got told dresses like that weren't allowed at school. Eh, I'll just stick a tank top under it from here on out.

This is Gillian at her May Day celebration at school.


They were sassy little mynah birds. Funny story about that. Only a week after this we actually had a mynah bird nesting in our exhaust fan duct in our half bath downstairs. That thing gave me the heeby jeebies and I wouldn't let the kids pee in there until it was removed. Yes I'm a freak, I know.

Gillian had water fun day at school.



We had to go out and specifically by one piece bathing suits for the girls because to my wondering eyes they only owned bikinis when I went searching. They allowed little brothers and sisters to join in the fun, and I think Brenna had just as much if not more fun that Gillian. It made her feel like a big girl, and she's all about being like her big sister right now!

Oh ya did I mention I'm pregnant???


That's what happens during reunions I guess ha ha. I'm 9 weeks there. I know people say "you shouldn't be showing yet" and "are you sure you aren't further along than that?" Yes, I know I in the worldly view not be showing yet, but I am. I get huge. I get huge fast. I'm short and have a small hip to rib cage ratio. I have big babies. And I'm sure I'm not further along than that because well...that would make me the Virgin Mary. Not possible. I'll try to scrub the grub off of me in a bit and take a 12 week picture in a few. I don't think I'm any bigger now, but who knows. Only the picture will tell!

We took a trip to the zoo.



We decided that our dog Winnie looks like a meerkat. I think we spent half an hour watching them dig for cool sand and guard. They really are fascinating little animals with hella long sharp little claws. I wouldn't want to be cornered by one of these little guys to put it lightly. They were awfully cute snuggling up on each other though. The girls were so intrigued with them and laughing at the resemblance to Winnie that Richard bought them each a stuffed meerkat at the zoo store on our way out of the gate.

And finally the fourth of July.


This is the girls with their friend Elizabeth. We had just dropped daddy off at the airport. He wouldn't allow me to take any goodbye pictures. I think he was too upset about leaving. It was a sad day for all of us. Gillian and I did have a little fun during the fireworks though playing with the camera.


I will be better about posting from here on out!

Hula Hoop

Pretty much self explanitory...she's a rock star!

Baby's got a brand new bed

After months of saying that I needed to buy Brenna a big girl bed I finally got around to it after Richard left. It's amazing the things I get accomplished when I have no wifely duty distractions. My mom purchased the bedding for her as her birthday present. The headboard was party of her crib and it has a matching footboard, but I think I'll probably just ditch them some time before we move and buy her a new one when we get to Kansas. The quality of the crib has been crap since we took it a part to put on the truck from Kansas City to Hawaii a little over three years ago. I'm totally disappointed in it since Gillian's lifetime crib is still doing it's lifetime purpose almost 6 years later.

I'm a little perplexed on how to totally accessorize the rest of the bed, but I'll get it figured out. I'm dying to finish off her room as the rest of it is bare bones (no curtains, etc), but I am attempting to behave and not spend unneccessary money on those kinds of things until we move into our next house. That way I can totally go all out and get it done right away without having to put things together piece by piece like I normally do.

If only I had the time, energy and money to give my own bedroom an overhaul.

Meow

Yesterday was Gillian's school carnival. She hadn't expressed much interest in it until I started questioning her about it. She told me she didn't have time to go to it because her teacher was having a hair painting booth at the same time and that she needed to go get her hair painted. Too bad the kid didn't see the correlation between carnival and hair painting booth. Once I broke her the news that the hair painting booth was at the carnival I got asked every five mintues how long until we could go.

I got tired of hanging around the house and having them ask me questions so I decided maybe if we left and strolled around aimlessly somewhere then the time would go by faster for all parties involved. So where does a person go to waste time you ask? Target of course! It's just too bad that once we got there that whole section of Kapolei had lost power and they were running on back up generators. Shopping in a dark store with two whiney kids = no fun. We made that last as long as the kids and I could possibly stand it and then hit up Starbucks on the way to the carnival. And let me just say that I find it a good thing that they are starting to sell things like bananas to grab and snack on along with their other fattening pasteries. Makes making the right eating decisions easier when you have a banana sitting next to ooey gooey blueberry coffee cake.

So off to the carnival we go, oh and did I forget to mention that it freaking rained all day? Ya, not so sure why that didn't make much of a connection in my brain. We totally didn't dress properly to go stand in a wet muddy field during a Hawaiian barely there rain storm. Gillian had her platforms on and that's all I'm going to say about that. Oh and my new cute sandals are all grossed out now. Blah, whatever.

So like a good mommy who is totally over compensating in every way possibly because their daddy is 5000 miles away I gritted my teeth and bared through it. I bought them 40 tickets a piece and told them when the tickets were gone we would leave. Luckily the food booths and everything took tickets too so we honestly didn't have to do much to rid ourselves of the 80 tickets, except I didn't give much thought of how long it would take to get through a line. Only so many kids can get in a bouncer at one time, so you have to wait several minutes in that line to get a whole minute of jumping time in. It also didn't help that they only had four ladies in the face painting booth. Not a very smart move made by PTO or whoever set that shindig up. I'd say it was taking them an average of 8 minutes to paint on childs face. And of course every child there, with their miserable wet parents, under the age of 8 wanted their face painted.

We got through it though and the girls had a blast. Their joy at this point is the only thing that matters to me even though my Roxy jeans were soaked and muddy up to the mid point in my calf and I had loose pieces of wet grass sticking to my toes. They were so exhausted by the end of the night. As I was tucking Brenna in and saying my goodnights, I didn't have to warn her too many times to not get out of bed to get toys. I shut her light out and turned to go into Gillian's room to shut the blinds for her and to my surprise she was konked out already. I hadn't even noticed until I got no response when I asked if she wanted her fan on or off. It's just a shame that they didn't sleep in any longer than they normally do!

She blessed it within 30 minutes...

I've been researching five point harness booster seats for both of the girls for about a week now. I have had both of them in a seat belt booster, but I'm beginning to get paranoid about them not being safe enough. That along with us having a lot of road time in our near future (most likely 4 hours a weekend until Richard comes home!) I decided I needed to bite the bullet and get the best of what I could find. I did a lot of research and ended up with this baby.

It's a Sunshine Kids Radian 80 in the color princess (I wanted the black and gray to streamline with my interior, but who can deny a four year old a pink flowery carseat???). It stands up well against the more popular Britax brand, but it has two things that made it worth purchasing over a Britax. #1 look at the base...see how skinny it is??? My little Honda's backseats sit like bucket seats. So every other carseat that I've tried in the back of this car wobbles trying to balance on the higher cushy parts of the seat. #2 The seat folds up against the back of the carseat so that it folds flat. Awesome for travel, needing to carry it though at airport (has straps for that too), fold it flat to allow more room in the car, or even to pull it out and fold it flat to stow in the trunk.

But, as the title of the blog tells you...this isn't the end of the story. Anyone who knows Diva knows she spews. Yep, we were all the way back from the one and only USA Baby on island sitting right outside of McNair gate when she started screaming that it was coming. Luckily we had just stopped for a happy meal on the way to pick G up from school so she had her little paper bag to barf in, but she slightly missed and got her new favorite dress coated along with a spot on her new carseat. Oh did I mention she got my actual car seat too that I just vacuumed and cleaned the upholstrey yesterday?? I should've known better. It's just like every time I wash my car it rains, or anytime I change the kids sheets after an overextended period they pee on the clean set the first night. I wonder why that ALWAYS happens????

Happy Love Day *cough cough*

Today is Valentine's Day whooptie woo. The first we've been a part in three years...and I'm sick as a dog. I fought off this thing for two days with Zicam. It normally doesn't keep me from getting sick, but it definitely lessens the symptoms. Well, that lasted until last night, I am soo soo sick right now. But what can a girl do when she's at home alone taking care of her kids? March on as usual. I never get an oppurtunity to be sick even when he is home, but it's still nice to have someone here to run out and get you chocolate ice cream at eleven o'clock at night because your throat hurts.

Richard sent me a pajama gram, delivered right on time. I am swimming in them, but I have a feeling a run through the wash will make them a little tighter...at least I'm hoping. The girls were so jealous that daddy sent me pj's and not them, that I had to make an emergency run to the mall to get them so pj's. We promptly got back in the car and headed home where we all immediately threw on our new duds and laid on the couch.

I really do love my kids so much. Gillian kept making sure that the blanket never came off my feet and Brenna sat behind me and brushed my hair for an hour straight. They worry me a little bit though because I feel like they worry about me a little too much for being only four and five.

As far as an update on the family goes, we are all doing exceptionally well given the circumstances. I was told at Gillian's parent teacher conference this week that she is already ready to proceed onto first grade, so we have nothing to worry about when we transfer to Riley. Brenna is just busy being my little shadow. She's the one that gets me through most days. And Richard is doing really well at school. He had a test at school (call for fire or something??) and he aced it. Apparently about 20 of the soldiers in his class did not pass it, so getting an A is something to be said. I think he is being challenged more than he expected to be, and I think it's harder for him to be away than he expected it to be. It's kind of like us being so far away from our families. Our lives go on here, and we don't realize how much we are missing out on until we visit for a few short weeks once a year or so. It goes the other way too. Now he's the one getting glimpses of our lives ticking by while he feels like times standing still for him.

Well I'm off to choke down anther Mucinex and try to go to sleep although I feel like I want to pound a shiv through my eye. I'll try to update pics when I'm feeling better. I need to do some other random crap for Richard too that I'm gonna be in trouble for if I don't do it soon!