Skip to main content

stairs and a silly little girl....

I forgot to mention a few August updates in my last post, and have some more Alexa stories (as always)...First, Kyle (with the help of Uncle Paul and Todd--thank you!!) finished the stairs and they look awesome!!  He completely rebuilt them (ripped them down all the way to the drywall).

Second, both Kyle and I were supposed to be in this work athletic competition in August, but I had to back out for obvious reasons.  Kyle still did the tennis and basketball tournaments and made me oh so proud.  He even got this funny little basketball trophy for taking third place.  The other tournaments that week included horseshoes, ping pong, foosball, golf, Wii dance, volleyball, and a triathlon.







We went to Ikea for breakfast last Saturday (so delicious and cheap!) and bought Alexa a stuffed puppy while we were there.  She now takes it everywhere continuously saying "puppy, puppy, puppy!"  Speaking of the puppy, she even dragged it through toilet water last week.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Alexa pooed through her cloth diaper and shorts (yumm), so Kyle stripped her down and threw the diaper in the toilet to get all the nasty poo off. Well, I came home a couple hours later and grabbed a hair tie out of the bathroom and accidentally left the door cracked. Alexa wandered in while we were doing the dishes and grabbed the diaper out of the toilet and started dragging it around the bathroom along with her puppy. There was like an inch of nasty toilet water on the floor and she was playing in it when Kyle found her. It was horrifying and disgusting and awful. We laughed and sanitized all of her, the bathroom, the bath mat, her stuffed animals, etc. etc. Never leave the bathroom door open!!

Kyle and I were downstairs in the living room, and Alexa decided she was done so she climbed up the stairs and on to the table to play with my cup of water!!  Kyle went up right after to get her and freaked out (as I would have done). Karen, I thought of you as this was our first surprise table climbing incident.  How quickly they can figure things like that out when they have 5 spare seconds.

We were grabbing something at Kohl's last week and Alexa happily started chasing a 5 year old through the aisles giggling.  I walked around behind her and laughed as the 5 year old jumped on top a display rack to get out of Alexa's reach.  Keep in mind, Alexa doesn't really know how to run, but just walks faster and looks like a staggering drunk while hyperventilating with glee.  The five year old could have easily walked faster than her and gotten away.  Anyway, the 5 year old's mom said, "the baby just wants to give you a hug!" to which the girl responded "I don't want a hug" and sat up there on the wooden display shelf staring down uncomfortably at Alexa.  So very funny.  I can tell that Alexa will grow up to have no sense of others' personal space, and that this girl definitely does not like people who invade hers.  I led Alexa away so the poor girl could breathe again.

Oh, and she got 5 TEETH last week, including 3 molars.  Ouch.  Kyle was up with her at 4 this morning and couldn't fall back asleep after.  Poor baby and daddy.  She's been pretty good about it, just waking up like an hour earlier in the morning and being a little bit grouchy off and on.  Otherwise, she's a happy, babbly, wandering little girl.  New words include book, baby, body parts (this is her favorite new thing to do -- point to our teeth, nose, eyes, ears, fingers, belly button, etc. and she can say about half of them).  She said "amen" a few times at church today.  That's a word I'm surprised she is just now saying since she hears it all the time.  She is also starting to do animal noises, which I love!  I still remember when I got a video at college of my niece Wylah doing animal noises as a little toddler.  Adorable.  Alexa will do puppy, bunny rabbit, fish, elephant, monkey, lion, and dinosaur.  She has also mastered going down the stairs by herself standing up (she's been going up since she was like 8 or 9 months, but down is another story).
There's no story behind this photo.  I just think she looks hilarious in this racoon hat at our friends house, which she would affectionately pet and call "puppy" :)

She's been hanging out with me more lately and sat on my lap while I peeled a bunch of potatoes for a triple batch of creamy potato soup.  I had to laugh while she sat there biting the raw potatoes one after the other--just biting them, not eating.  Peeled, not peeled, she didn't care.  That's how she entertained herself while I peeled.  She sits on my lap every day while I put on my makeup (she likes to brush our hair and play with the blush brush).  She also sat on my lap for like a solid half hour (miracle) while I finished up two new church quiet books for her.  Some of the pages are for when she gets older, as she could care less and doesn't understand at this point...



Book 1 - tie your shoes
Book 1 - hair braiding, build a temple out of felt squares
Book 1 - build a road and get the car home (it can drive under the house).  Right now the car mostly drives on mom and dad's arms.  Also, a treasure chest to hide snacks in at church.
Book 1 - have to decide if the food goes in the trash can or fridge (Word of Wisdom).  Also, felt soldier / armor of God.
Book 1 - finger puppet animals in Noah's ark.
Book 2 - counting the 7 days of creation with beads
Book 2 - Day 1: separated light from dark (sensory sun), Day 2: earth and heaven (earth puzzle)
Book 2 - Day 3: separated land and water (sensory water), Day 4: made sun, moon & stars (snap on stars)
Book 2 - Day 5: fish and fowl (bird "flies" back and forth on string), Day 6: animals and man (alligator mouth zips open and closed and you can hide things in there too)
Day 7: rest (read the scriptures--buckles open and closed with paper and crayons/pencils inside to scribble on)








Comments

  1. OK first of all, Alexa is adorable, as always. Second, those books are amazing!!! Please do some with me! Where did you get all of those ideas, and I had no clue you were so crafty!!! Dawson gets so bored at church, so books like that would be amazing, but I have no skill! Nice work baby mama!

    ReplyDelete
  2. lots of fun stories (as always!) and such a creative book! thanks for sharing! --we're glad that your'e all growing her up so well, and that you're learning so well as you go! lots of love, dad

    ReplyDelete
  3. HA! Loved the toilet water story! We have SOOOOOOOO many of them thanks to Damien!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jenny!
    That quiet book is freakin' awesome! You've inspired me-I'm going to make one. Also, if it somehow ends up looking almost exactly like yours, please don't be weirded out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

March 2023 - Tad the race car driver and Alexa the zebra

Tad turned 7 and we took him and his best friend Jimmy go kart racing for his birthday.   https://youtu.be/YiTkpefAa1M https://youtu.be/5VuMLJ5iPH8 Jimmy to Tad: When we grow up we should be racers!! Tad: Yeah, and it's good that we already know how to drive for when we grow up and have our own cars.  He got a fun sea animal painting kit from Grandma and Grandpa, a lego puzzle, and a set of Sonic puzzles.  We also got him a voice changing megaphone which he loves.   Alexa had a really fun Medieval Feast at her school after they finished studying the dark ages.  All of the kids got really into it and a lot of them made their own costumes, including Griffin.   Audrey hit the 3-month mark and suddenly refused to take a bottle.  She went 4 weeks hardly eating during the day so she went from sleeping through the night to waking up every 2-3 hours to nurse at night.  We met with her pediatrician and she was still nice and healthy in the 75th percentile for weight so we moved her out of o

December 2015 - Christmas in Indiana

Merry Christmas! We hit the road a couple of days after Granny's funeral to make the trek to Indiana for Christmas. The  kids did great the whole way.  I think it was harder on the adults!  We left at 4am and the first 8 hours were really bad due to wind and snow.  I-70 was closed unless you had chains and we were only a couple of hours in when we passed a sign saying I-80 was closed due to an avalanche warning.  Kyle screamed "Noooo!" and woke up the kids :).  We were so relieved to have Wyoming behind us!!  And we were very glad to have been driving an SUV with all-wheel-drive instead of our Toyota Matrix.  We got a new Mazda CX-9 only a week before the trip so that we can fit baby #3. We pounded out 14 hours the first day and then stopped for the night in Nebraska before continuing for another 10ish hours the next day.  The kids thought that sleeping in a hotel was amazing.  The weather on the drive home was clear and wonderful. although Tyler did poop h

July 2023 - Baby Ian

We had a blast at the Stadium of Fire Journey concert with Sara and Jason.  We also hosted a Swingle 4th of July party at our house.  Grandpa Swingle said that's the first time he's actually been able to light real fireworks in over a decade.  We decided we should make it a tradition to have them come up every year (or move here ;). Baby Ian was born and he is HUGE!  11 lb 1 oz.  Melissa's water broke at 7:30am, contractions started after that, and he was born at home with a team of paramedics with them in the outbuilding at 9am.   Fun fact: he was born on Ian Beagley's birthday and they share the same name. We spent an entire Saturday pulling down and cutting up dead trees.  We rented a wood splitter and went to town.  The kids were a big help.  We did our annual reading challenge to earn tickets to Lagoon.  Our rule is 1000 pages for every grade level finished, has to be during summer, and Alexa and Tyler both had to write a book report as well.  The kids did great! M