Birthday Guests

Emma was blessed to have many family and friends at her birthday party, including lots of kids. We started by reading Hurry Up, Noah and then the kids danced around to 3 Noah's Ark tunes, waving a paper plate with streamers. What fun!


We tried to get a picture of all the kids together, but that proved to be a little challenging.

Birthday Girl

First of all, excuse the quality of some of these photos. The actual photos are perfectly fine, but for some reason they uploaded fuzzy...and I'm not taking the time to change it.

Emma had a lot of fun at her first birthday party. It was funny because she liked the cards even better than the presents themselves.

Her favorite part of the cake was the frosting, of course. Amazingly enough, she really didn't even make too big of a mess. I used a fork to break open the cake for her. She still didn't have much interest in the cake...but she loved the fork and refused to let go.

Decorating Cakes

I now have a new digital camera, and I wanted to play with it a little before Emma's birthday party tomorrow. So I took some pictures of the cakes and cupcakes I decorated. This cake is Emma's own cake. It'll be interesting to see if she destroys hers the way John destroyed his on his first birthday.


I used the other half of the batter from that cake to make cupcakes for the other kids who will be at the party.
Then I made another cake for the adults. Notice the M&Ms are on the adults' cake...not the kids'!

Where Emma Came From

My mom stopped by to say Happy Birthday to Emma tonight, and I took advantage of that by leaving and taking care of a few things at church. When I got home, Mom informed me that during John's bath, he said Emma came from Jerusalem. Then he changed his story...babies come from the baby store. Ahh...the random things he comes up with...

Taking My Sins Away

As Easter approaches, I've been talking with John about why we celebrate Easter. We currently have a book (The Toddlers Bible: Easter Book by V. Gilbert Beers) from the church library. I do like how the book starts with Jesus entering Jerusalem and goes through Jesus going back to heaven and the angels saying that He will come back. Anyway, here's a conversation that John and I had last night as I read:

Book: Jesus wants to help us live with God in heaven. When we sin, we can't go there.

John: But I want to live at home, not in heaven!

Mommy: Well, someday we'll die and that's when God wants us to live with him.

John: oh

Book: But Jesus die to take away our sin. He wants to be our Saviour.

John: But I want my sins back!

Mommy: John, sins are bad. They are the things we do against God when we don't obey him.

John: But I want them back!

At that point, I just finished the story and figured we'd carry on the coversation again when he wasn't so tired.

So, on the way home from MOPS today, he and I were chatting about things he was seeing outside. As usual, I had his Bible songs CD playing in the van. In the middle of our conversation, John started another random one:

John: Jesus will wash away my sin.

Mommy (trying to figure out where that came from - and realizing that Jesus Loves Me was playing on the CD): Yes, he will, John.

John: My sins are good, Mommy.

Mommy: No, John. Sins are bad, and Jesus washes them away to make us clean again.

John: But I want my sins back.

We started the Resurrection Eggs today. We'll see if this helps clear things up...maybe?

Boxes

While eating supper tonight, John turns to me and says, "What did one box say to the other box?"

Not sure I understood him correctly, I say, "Did you just say 'what did one box say to the other box?' "

"Uh huh"

I laugh and fall for the bait of John's first joke. "Okay, what did one box say to the other box?"

"Mom, boxes don't talk!"

(I have absolutely NO idea where he picked up on jokes, but that was simply too cute not to share!)

Walking on Sunshine

On March 8, Emma took about 6 or 7 steps down the aisle at church. Grandma Van Manen witnessed this, but I did not because I was teaching Sunday School. Emma had a book in each hand - must have thought holding things would help her walk.

Since then, she's been getting steadier and steadier, but hasn't had the confidence to completely let go for more than 10 steps (and only 3-4 different times of that).

Until today...

Scott, the kids, and I headed to visit Grandpa and Grandma Wiederstein before Scott DJed for the Audubon St. Patrick's festivities. Then Scott and I left the kids to go get set up. When I returned, Emma had decided walking is lots of fun. She was going everywhere!!! I'll try getting a video in the next day or two and attempt to post it.

Emma goes to the Bathroom

Okay...I guess the title is slightly misleading, but I thought it would at least get your attention. Let me begin this post with how our day started. I took Emma in to the doctor today since her eyes have been "mattery" and she's had a slight fever off and on. Right after we got there, she decided to do her "duty." I went to get a diaper out of the overflowing diaper bag, but low and behold there were no diapers. What, you ask, is the point of carrying a diaper bag with no diapers? I did find three pairs of John's underwear, burp rags, change of clothes for Emma, snacks, extra pacifier, etc. so there really is a point! Fortunately, our appointment was as the pediatric clinic, so they had a diaper for her. It turns out Emma has fluid on both ears, but neither are infected. So we went in for nothing...again.

Since our clinic is right by church, Emma and I swung by the church to do a few "quick" things before lunch. She'd been playing in the foyer, and I popped into the office to quickly talk with Noel. I soon realized that I didn't hear Emma's babbling and squealing anymore, so I went on a search for her and expected to find her in the nursery. Nope...she was in the toddler bathroom next to the nursery. (I know, I know. I should have shut the door. I should have watched her more closely. I should not leave her unattended.) And as you've probably already guessed, she'd been playing with toilet paper and the toilet. YUCK! Oh - and she'd done her "duty" AGAIN while in the bathroom. At least she knows where to go! LOL! Needless to say, I cleaned her up and changed her clothes before doing anything else. I'd post pictures, but my camera is boycotting at the moment. Hopefully the rest of our day goes better...

Napping

John's now 3 1/2 and we've been struggling the last couple of months to get him to nap. When he doesn't nap, he goes to bed easily, but he's often cranky in the evening. Then on the days when he does nap, he's still trying to take long naps which means it's hard getting him to go to bed at night. I was up for him just resting in his room (aka playing with books, cars, and stuffed animals), but then he kept Emma awake since they share a room. So a couple of weeks ago, Scott and I set the pack n play up in the living room for Emma and had John rest in his room. This seems to be working fairly well. Some days he'll fall asleep and other days we won't, but it gives both John and I a few much-needed quiet moments to ourselves. One of his latest things to do during rest time is throw all of his blankets, stuffed animals, etc. into Emma's crib and play in there. Today I went to check on him since it had been quiet for awhile and he was sound asleep in the crib.



Emma woke up shortly after that, so I put her in the crib too in order to wake up John. She thought that was fun!

Helping Daddy

We had a scare earlier this year with Scott's DJ equipment when a table tipped over, causing some of the most expensive equipment to drop to the floor...hard. Scott brought the equipment inside to test out, and John LOVED being Daddy's little helper. Fortunately, God continues to watch over us. The little bit of damage was just on the case Scott stores the equipment in, and Scott was able to work around that by switching some things around.

Emma's Boyfriend

I've been blessed to be "back-up" day care for a friend I taught with up in Ankeny. Krista was the teacher-librarian at NW last year, and we were both pregnant at the same time...along with a few other teachers. We got along really well even though we really only taught together until mid-January. That's when Krista had Tate, and then I had Emma before Krista came back from maternity leave.

It's been fun over the school year so far to watch Emma and Tate as they grow and reach new milestones, and they always do such funny things that I, of course, just HAVE to catch on camera. The last couple times, I've fed them lunch sitting side by side in the booster seats. However, I've had to move them apart in order to eat since they grab each other's food and hold hands. Ahh...

This one was taken back on December 31 before I had two booster seats.

John stories...

Saturday night I trimmed John's hair - just around the ears and back because it was driving me CRAZY. He still needs a haircut, but at least the hair isn't over his ears right now. Anyway, I left the scissors on the bathroom sink. At supper last night, John didn't want to eat, left the table and slammed our bedroom door. I figured he was in our room, so I left him there a couple minutes. When I went to tell him to come back to the table, I discovered that he was in the bathroom and had just slammed the bedroom door for special effect. Are you putting 2 and 2 together yet? You guessed it...he used the scissors to cut his hair. Fortunately, he only completed 2 snips - one on top and one on the side - and I can barely tell where they were! Unfortunately, no pictures were taken BECAUSE you can't tell he cut it.

Then last night before bed Scott went to the fridge for a glass of milk and was disappointed that it wasn't very cold. He took a look at the temperature settings and the fridge had been turned off and the freezer was turned way down. He's done this one other time to the freezer. This is better than a broken fridge, but still not good. I have to laugh though because the freezer dial is hard to turn. Scott asked me if I've been coaching him on how to turn them. Nope...I've talked to John already this morning about not doing this again.

Then about 2:30 this morning, I heard John crying and noticed a light on outside our room. This has become a habit the last few nights as he's been waking himself up to go to the bathroom (and thinking that he can then watch a "John show" on TV). I walk out of our room and see John standing at the toilet, crying, with his pants and pull-up around his ankles. Hilarious! This time he really did go potty. YEAH! He said he was tired, so I told him to go back to bed, but he wanted to come to our bed. I told him I'd come to his room for awhile. His response? "Mommy you lay on the right side...no the left side! I want to be on the right side and you lay on the left side." Funny thing is that when we went into his room, he crawled up and went on the right side and showed me where the left side was. =) Emma was crying, so I took her to our room to feed her. By the point I was done with her, he was asleep and I went to my own bed.

John just discovered a VHS tape of Veggie Tales: Dave and the Giant Pickle. He said, "Mommy, here is a DVD, but where is the movie?" We're now watching the video, but the picture definitely is not as nice as that on a DVD - and I'm not one to notice things like that most of the time...