{ update }

* WARNING: this is a very long post...there are a lot of things I want to remember about my babies *

ORVA:

- 3 1/2 years old
- talks nonstop (really)
- loves to sing ; favorites include "I Love to See the Temple" (she knows both verses perfectly), "I Am a Child of God" (first and second verses), and pretty much every other primary song
- has some funny words she still says that are so cute we can't bring ourselves to correct her: ninger (finger), benember (remember), beebana (banana), check me in (tuck me in)
- has started to say her "Ls" correctly and it's the cutest thing ever (they're very pronounced and show up in funny places)
- plays "princess" or "queen" all the time...she asks ford or brad to be her "kingum" (we think she's trying to say "kingdom" and is just getting that confused with "king")
- wants so badly to be grown up and married - she talks about when she turns 4 and when she gets married as if they'll happen at the same time (i'm afraid she's in for some serious disappointment come august). common phrases we hear: "but i'm just a little bit married, mom", "when i grow up to be a momma, i will dance all day", "but who will be my daddy when i'm married? daddy or ford or grandpa?" (she doesn't know about husbands...i've tried to tell her we don't know who she'll marry yet, but she doesn't like that idea. she'd rather stick to daddy, ford, or grandpa)
- love, love, loves primary - she lives for sundays. and saturdays when she gets to set her dress out. starting on tuesdays (mondays are still okay because she goes to ballet school) she asks me how many more days until sunday and starts planning what she'll wear.
- she loves ballet school (her ideal week would consist only of saturdays (the setting out of the dress is almost as good as wearing it on sunday), sundays, and mondays)
- loves getting dressed - it's the first thing she asks about every morning, and she usually chooses a dress. she hates the fact that i don't let her wear her sunday dresses on normal days and she has to settle for her "other" dresses (she has plenty). she changes as many times a day as i'll let her and her outfits tend to be quite creative.
- loves to comb my hair - there's lots of tangle spray and hair spray involved
- loves it when i get dressed up ("oh mom, you just look so beautiful!")
- is usually a great big sister and keeps ford very entertained. she loves housley and tells everyone how cute he is
- loves to "read" and be read to - her current favorites are all the "fancy nancy" books and she has them all memorized
- has discovered the word "promise" but doesn't really have any idea what it means - "mom, i promise to wear my blue dress tomorrow" or "i promise halle and charity are my best friends" or "i promise to be queen when i grow up and i'm a little bit married"
- has "why" and "how" mixed up and uses them both extensively in asking everything
- talks in her sleep all the time (she's usually very distraught and its really sad/funny)
- has no concept of time - last week is five minutes ago and tomorrow is her birthday when she'll be 4 and get married...
- likes to act very grown up when brad and i leave to go somewhere - "have a good time on your date! be safe! we'll miss you!" and when we get home, "so how was your day? did you have a good time?"
- loves doing "school" (i try to do a some sort of preschool type activity with her every day...) - painting is her favorite, she loves to point out all the letters and numbers and ask me what everything starts with (and wants me to list all the words that start with each letter and she's never satisfied there aren't more), can write her name by herself, has recently started drawing people, and loves talking about the weather and days of the week














FORD:

- 22 months old
- talks incredibly well (and has for a very long time) - he talks in full sentences (8-10 words strung together) and sings full songs (all of "I Love to See the Temple" and "I Am a Child of God", word-for-word...along with many others)
- loves talking about food (isn't all the great at actually eating it) - wakes up in the morning listing off all the things he wants to eat, "oatmeal. with berries! and cheese sandwiches! and apples! and potatoes. and sweet potatoes. and french fries. and cheerios. and juice! and rice and beans!" when he is eating, he loves to say "it's scrumptious! it's delicious! it's tasty! it's yummy!" over and over again (funny sidenote on that: i was watching my friend's little girl who is just younger than ford. they were sitting up eating lunch together, and ford was telling her it was "scrumptious! and delicious!" and she was totally ignoring him. he's at the age where you have to repeat everything he says or he keeps saying it...louder and louder. i kept trying to answer him and explain to him that hannah can't really talk yet, but he wouldn't have none of it...he just wanted her to respond. by the end of the meal he was purple in the face, crying and SCREAMING "it's SCRUMPTIOUS! it's DELICIOUS!" right in her face. it was so funny)
- loves his cowboy boots - i bought him new black church pants and realized after i'd put them on him and we were walking out the door for church that i only have brown sunday shoes for him...so i threw on his gray cowboy boots (that he'd never worn) and we called it good. he now requests to wear them every day. he has some other brown fuzzy boots and if i put those on him, he says, "no! not other boots. cowboy boots!"
- loves to build towers (out of anything) and knock them over. he thinks it's hysterical, which makes it hysterical to watch.
- has a little temper (we're working on it)
- loves to talk on the phone - especially to daddy and grandpa and "mary" (my sister marian who i talk to a lot) but he'll take anyone - you should call sometime. chances are you'll get an adorable "he-yo" and a song of some sort and then an even cuter "bye-bye! see ya yater!"
- has only one volume - VERY loud. except when he's singing. then he's very soft and sweet. we encourage a lot of singing.
- thinks all types of bread (bread, sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, toast, etc.) are called "cheese sandwiches". as soon as we walk into sacrament meeting, he starts yelling for "cheese sandwiches", meaning the tiny little piece of sacrament bread.
- love, love, loves to wrestle on the bed with his dad. as soon as brad walks in the door, he starts yelling "get on the bed! let's go get on the bed!" and starts running for our room
- has a huge gap in between his front two teeth...that is absolutely adorable (he still has his 4 front teeth on top, his front 2 on bottom, and half of his molars)
- says "no thanks, not today" and "not quite yet" when you ask him about something he doesn't want ("should we go to bed?" "can you eat your dinner?" "can you clean up your trains?")
- everything is "for me"..."can i please have a drink of water for me?", "i need my pabbies for me", "i need to play with my trains, for me! please! for me, for me!"
- loves water - lives for the bath (or shower - the only thing that gets him out without a total meltdown is the promise that he can sit "by to the heater" when he's out), has been banned from using normal cups because he just plays in the water and doesn't drink anything (it causes a lot of drama at mealtime - he gets so mad when I give him a cup with a lid), and if the bathroom doors aren't closed he gets orva's little teacups and fills them up with toilet water (lovely!)
- says the cutest little prayers (they're an exact copy of orva's - "heavenly father, thank you for this day, bless this food...it was good and healthy and strong..." we're working on expanding our prayers...)
- loves his pabbies (has to have them 3 at a time), but is only allowed to have them in his bed - usually about twice a day, he asks to go in his bed with his pabbies...so i get some books for him and he stays in his crib for a good 1/2 hour - it's a great system for all involved!
- tiny (3rd percentile in everything)















HOUSLEY:

- 2 1/2 months old
- such an angel baby!
- sits and smiles and coos at me for about 10 minutes after he eats - it's my favorite thing ever
- eats every 3-4 hours during the day, and still sleeps in between every feeding (sometimes for 2-3 hours, and never less than an hour-and-a-half...sometimes i have to wake him up if i don't want him to go longer than 4 hours without eating)
- eats somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30 at night and goes all the way until 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning. before you hate me TOO much, i do usually have to get up 2-3 times between 4:30 and 6:30 to put his pacifier in...but then he goes back to sleep (and up until then, i don't hear a peep from him)
- sleeps on his tummy (i know, i'm a terrible mother) but other than that, HATES tummy time
- is usually very mellow when he's awake, but when he's upset, he has a cry that beats anything i've ever heard - that kid can SCREAM
- is extremely sensitive to any dairy (which i didn't figure out until he was about a month old...and we were miserable! he was super fussy and burpy and gassy and it was just terrible. i couldn't figure it out because i thought i wasn't eating any dairy and anything else i tried to cut out didn't help at all. i finally found an article that said some babies are sensitive to any tiny amount of dairy, even things like whey and casein. i looked on the ingredients of all our food and found some tiny bits of dairy in our butter spray and one brand of crackers i buy. that, and the colic tabs i was giving him, were the only things i found - but as soon as i cut those out, he became the sweetest baby ever! it makes me feel terrible for ford, because he was such a hard baby and i'm sure that was his problem. poor guy!)
- not sure if he's going to have blue eyes like my other two
- looks like a little mini brad, just like my other two (especially orva)
- likes to complain to me - when he is having a hard time burping and crying about it, i can usually sit him on my lap facing me and he'll stop crying and just whine and complain about it to me...which usually calms him down enough that he gets his burp out
- even off dairy (and chocolate - bummer), he still does burp and spit a lot but he's a MUCH better sport about it than before
- has found his hands and loves to hold them together
- had the worst hair when he was born...it was all uneven and weird, so he got his first hair cut at less than two weeks. a few weeks later, he'd rubbed all the hair off on the sides of his head, so he got a total buzz. now it's sort of growing back and sticks straight up
- loves the bath
- love, love, loves his pabby (hooray!)