Big things

Having 3 kids 2yrs and under is a handful! The twins were barely 2 when Matthew was born and I thought it would be a great time to add another baby to the family. It was perfect for our family but it is a lot of little babies. I wish there were more hours in the day. There are many things I would do with those hours but one of them would definitely be blogging. So many amazing, funny, big things happen every day. Ok well you may not see them as big things, but to me they are. I saw a quote in the store today. Matthew was asleep in his car seat and I was pushing it in a shopping cart through the grocery store chasing Emma and Addie who were pushing their own mini shopping carts around trying to sneak as many things into their tiny carts as possible.

Anyways, I was hurrying through the store trying not to create too much of a scene and there was a quote that caught my eye. It read "Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things". I realize this is very true. There are little moments in every day that are so important. It is such a blessing to be a mother to 3 sweet wonderful children. It is A LOT of work with them all being so young, but it is so wonderful. Some days, yes, I want to pull my hair out! I want to crawl in a corner and cry. Some days are overwhelming and I am pretty sure without the help of all of my wonderful family I wouldn't have made it this far. BUT, even when all three kids have been screaming for an hour or the twins won't stop fighting or Matthew refuses to sleep no matter how tired he is, or how many times they empty all the Q-Tips all over the bathroom, no matter how many things they shove into the toilet, or how much vaseline the twins spread all over the living room and themselves, or how many bottles of Medicine Adelyn empties out (did I mention that was all in one week?). Anyways, no matter how hard things get it is all made up for when Emma says "Mom, look at me dance" and then proceeds to show me the funniest dance moves I've ever seen, or when Adelyn mimics me and matthew and she swaddles her baby doll and sings it sweet lullabies, or when my sweet baby boy gives me one of his million dollar smiles as he sees me walk into his room after he wakes up, and best of all when I hear the sweetest little voices say "ove ewe mommy" as I'm leaving thier room after I've tucked them into bed. I'm sure every parent can relate to this. These "small" moments are so wonderful and such big moments to me. I wish I had more time to blog about them or at least write them down so I don't forget them. I do take a lot of pictures so I guess for now the pictures will have to tell the stories for me.

After Matthew was born the girls quickly learned they were getting less of my attention and oh boy did they have a big adjustment. For about the first 4 months they were little sneaky mess makers when I was tied up with Matthew. They have gotten a lot better at keeping the rules and not making such HUGE messes. The following picots were all ONE day, more specifically in ONE hour! While I was feeding Matthew I could hear them in their bathroom and this is what I found.

 Yes, Matthew uses the girls' old pink bathtub and he likes it! Also, notice how they emptied the entire bag of hair bows and hair accessories many of them made it into the toilet :(

 I got them dressed and sent them outside to play in the backyard while I cleaned up that mess but instead they went into my bathroom while I was cleaning up their bathroom... Yeah.... ok, this might make me a bad mom, but when I went into my bathroom and saw the mess they had made the first thing I saw was Addie using my deodorant as chap stick hahaha so of course I took a picture before I stopped her from doing that. I know totally gross and like I said that might make me a bad mom.

 I took the deodorant away and she picked up some nursing pads and I guess she watches me a lot because she knows exactly how they work. :)

 The next day while I was feeding Matthew they took the cereal outside for a snack but instead of eating it they dumped the entire (new) box out all over the lawn.

In the same week they emptied an entire new big jar of vaseline all over themselves and the living room and they caked it all over their little couch. Adele's favorite activity that month was finding Mattews medicine and dumping it out. I lost count of how many bottles of medicine she dumped out. Mostly just gas drops but once she even dumped out his antibiotics he had just started taking. They took their diapers off one day during nap time and pooped on the ground and then used their poop to paint the wall in their room. Don't even get me started on all their poop stories. I have cleaned up WAY more poop then one person should ever have to. Like I said, it was a bit of adjustment and it is getting easier to laugh instead of cringe at all of these stories.
This week they got into coloring. They found where I hid the markers and while I was on the phone they had a BLAST in their room. I was so proud of how well they were playing in their room and not fighting. Then Emma came in and told me Adelyn colored on her so I went to see what Adelyn was up to. This is what I found.

Luckily I only have washable markers so I made them clean it up.

 Today I left emma to flush the toilet by herself. BIG mistake. She was in the bathroom for a long time so I went in to check on her and she had stuffed half a jumbo roll of toilet paper in the toilet and all over the ground. I made her clean up this mess too. She was very disgusted when I made her reach in and get all the toilet paper out of the toilet and put it in the garbage can.

All of the misbehaving has far been made up for with all the cute things they do. I love what good friends Emma and Addie are to each other. They genuinely like playing with each other and they watch out for each other. One day they were outside playing and I hadn't heard them for a while so I went out to find them and they were sitting at the side of the house next to each other just talking to each other and kicking wood chips.

Emma left, Addie right

 Love my silly little girls!

Emma left, Addie right

Addie Left, Emma right

Emma is just like her momma and she has a serious chocolate addiction. She snuck into some chocolate and then she came to me looking like this and asked "More Chocolate Pwease?"

This Girl! (Addie) She is so silly. She dressed up with Matthews onesie on her head and his socks on her hands.

I love having twins! Their bond is so close and I love watching their friendship develop.

 This is their favorite way to take a bath (for about 3 min before they want to splash). They LOVE their little brother! They are the best big sisters! Matthew has outgrown his bath tub now and he LVOES taking a bath with his sisters and splashing them. They squeal and he just laughs. Its a lot of fun!

 Before it got SUPER cold going on walks kept my sanity. All the kids loved it and it gave me a break from the girls' constantly making messes in the house.

 Even now that it is super cold we still bundle up and go for walks when the sun comes out.

 Matthew even enjoys bundling up and getting some fresh air. No judgements on my lack of make up or doing my hair. There really is no time for that some days so I just go the natural way :)

 We are very excited that it is almost spring! The girls have decided that they will not go outside to play unless they have their sun glasses.

  They don't get much sweeter then when they are asleep.  My sweet little Emma always sleeps with her little hands tucked under her face like this.

We LOVE when we get to take trips to St. George. Its a 5 hour car ride form our house to St. George  and with kids it usually is closer to 6. But, we LOVE LOVE LOVE visiting there and escaping the bitter cold.

Adeline having fun playing with cousin Alexa

 We enjoy playing at the park with cousins! Having older cousins to show the girls around the playground is a lot of fun. It gets the girls out of their shells and helps them to do things they would normally be too afraid to do on their own.

Adelyn and Alexa - They are such good friends

Emma

Adelyn

What little kid doesn't love a big pile of leaves?

Adelyn in bright pink, Emma in light pink

 My sweet Emma girl is getting so big! She had a lot of fun helping Grandma decorate for Christmas. She really liked Grandpas silver tree.

While we were helping Grandma decorate for Christmas Adelyn fell and hit her head on a glass table. It swelled up pretty quickly and it was cut. Since it was so swollen the cut looked really deep so I took her to instacare to see if she needed stiches. Needless to say while we were waiting for a little over an hour the swelling went down and it was clear she did not need stitches just a band aid. But she did get a big black eye that made her look pretty tough.

Having a 2 year old wait for over an hour in the waiting room was not so fun for her. So we made funny faces while we waited. She loves to take pictures of herself and then look at them. 

After our selfie session at the insta care Adelyn has become obsessed with doing selfies together. It is one of her favorite things to do. Here is one more selfie of the two of us from a month or two ago. 

Potty training twins is A LOT of work! Aaaahhhh! I wish there was a place I could send them and have them come back potty trained. I tried when the girls were about 20 months and it was clear they were not ready and I was about 6 months pregnant so it just wasn't working. I decided to wait until after Matthew was born. I tried again in September. Adelyn got it on day 1. She has been amazing ever since, but Emma, oh Emma... She knows how but she just gets too busy and forgets. It has been a long 6 months but we have finally made it to 100% potty trained!!! 

Here are some pictures from when we started potty training in September. 

They colored posters to put stickers on when they used the potty.

 We put the posters by their potties so they could see them and hopefully motivate them.

 They had a lot of fun putting the underwear on their heads. Where do they come up with this stuff?

 And then right away Adelyn went pee in the potty and got a sticker to put on her poster. Shortly after that Emma pulled Adelyns poster down and pooped on it. Yes her potty was RIGHT THERE! But alas she pooped on the poster right next to the potty.

 This is how they like to go potty now. Adelyn likes to use the "big" potty and Emma still prefers the little one.

The holidays are so much fun with kids! Here are some pictures of Halloween. Adelyn dressed up as Bat Girl and Emma dressed up at Super Girl and Matthew was a giraffe. 

We went to a Halloween carnival at their cousins school. They girls loved every chance they got to dress up in their costumes. 

At halloween I discovered that Emma is quit the little artist. I've known that she loves to color but the girl can paint! Really well :) Here she is painting a pumpkin puppet.

We spent Thanksgiving with Andrews family. His parents have been on a mission so it has been a while since we have all been together for Thanksgiving. It was a lot of people but also a lot of fun. The girls' especially likes making ginger bread houses after dinner and going on a tractor ride.

Cousin Mikayla helped the girls make their ginger bread house

Emma's side

Adelyns side

Cousin Bryton taking most of the kids on a tractor ride

Christmas was also a lot of fun. I didn't take as many pictures as I wish I would have but it was your typical christmas. We stayed home and had Andrews family christmas party a few days before Christmas and we celebrated Christmas with my family down in St. George just after New years.
The twins are terrified of Santa. They aren't afraid of santa. It is a lot worse then that. They scream, cry and shake uncontrollably whenever they think they have to get close to Santa. Lets just say when Santa unexpectadly showed up at the christmas party and walked right by them it was an immediate melt down for both of them. They finally agreed to walk up to Santa to get a present after they saw all of their other cousins sit on his lap and get a present but under no circumstances were willing to sit on his lap.

This was their reaction to seeing Santa at the Stagg family party.

Matthew was indifferent to Santa all though he really liked his beard.

Grandma and Grandpa playing out the nativity with the fisher price nativity set for the children.

This is the first year we have been in a house of our own so we had a lot of fun decorating with lots of lights. Andrews brother Eli came over and helped us hang all the lights up.

 We did a lot of Christmas crafts. Christmas trees and all sorts of different Santa's.

Cousins Alayna and Simon came over one afternoon to play and we made christmas tress

Merry Christmas 2014

There isn't anything quite like having a sweet baby at Christmas time. He is my joy.

By far one our favorite things to do is go to the zoo! The girls like all the animals and there is a carousel that they LOVE! We went several times this fall and we even went once in December to see zoo lights. 

Adelyn -  I can't get enough of this face! She thought the porcupine was pretty cool. 

Emma - Her face! Seriously! I love their facial expressions. She couldn't find the bears.

Emma lovin' the birds

Their favorite part of the zoo is the carousel.

Emma

Addie

Zoo Lights!

cousins

It was COLD!

Andrew and Emma

Adelyn

 Unfortunately we updated our computer a few days ago with a new hard drive so all my pictures are on our external hard drive and I don't know how to get them onto the computer. Once Andrew shows me how I will download the rest of the pictures and finish updating on what we have been up to. Sorry this is such a long post! I will try to post more often so I don't have so much to catch up on. I will leave you with one last picture that pretty much sums up our last 7 months. Pure exhaustion