Oh, the things you have to deal with when you have a boy...
Like haircuts, for instance. It's been over three years and I have not once had to worry about Evie's hair, but we really needed to do something about Declan's:
It was getting a little out of control.
So, we went to get it cut...
He was VERY unsure about the whole process, but honestly did way better than I thought he would.
And afterward we let him eat the sucker they gave him, so he was quite satisfied in the end ;)
My little baby is 3 years old!! THREE! Where has the time gone?
I was just thinking about this, since I have a dear friend who is anxiously waiting for her own overdue December girl--I remember how excruciatingly slow the time went waiting for her to finally get here! Those last weeks, days, and hours before my labor finally started were an eternity! And yet, as soon as she finally made her appearance in the world, time refused to slow down for a minute (weeeeell, except for those eternally long nights when she refused to sleep... but I digress)!
It seriously seems like just yesterday I was hurrying her out into the world, and today she suddenly seems so grown up! How is she not still that tiny little thing that we brought home from the hospital (with much care and anxiety on our first car ride)?
In my mind she is still that scrawny little newborn, the rolly-polly, determined infant, and also the crazy kid she's grown into, all at once!
Sometimes I really wish I could save each stage of her life in a different room and could visit her at each age whenever I wished. I love the bright, beautiful child she's grown into, but I miss my bebe too.
And now I'm feeling all sentimental-y...
*sniff*
But, enough of that!! Here is our 3 year old Evie cakes!
Evie weighs 26 lbs (11 %) and is nearly 36 inches tall (21%)!
She is so smart, and beautiful, and kind. She has been a wonderful big sister to her baby brother ever since he was born... this year, lol. We've had very few jealous moments, and even then she would just say "mom, put Declan down." when she'd felt I'd been holding him all day long and just needed a little mommy-time.
Catching her brother :)
She is always looking out for him; I was getting frustrated that she kept running ahead of me and closing all the doors on whatever floor of the house we were on... until I realized that she was closing them to keep Declan from crawling into places he's not supposed to go. I never asked her to do it or discussed it with her, she just noticed that I was always pulling him out of the bathroom and telling him not to go in there, and she decided to help! She'll also hold onto him if he starts to crawl or sit at the top of the stairs to keep him from falling. Although, if he's crawling UP the stairs from the bottom, she just runs up ahead of him, cheers him on, and tells me not to "grab him", haha.
Evie has a fantastic little memory; she loves to memorize books, movies, and songs. She knows the majority of the lines to "Frozen", of course, but some of them are lines she makes up because she doesn't understand the real ones. Some of my favorite Evie lines are: "it get's a little lonely, all these empty rooms, just watching these owls skip BYYYY" (or: watching the hours tick by), and, "(Anna:)Elsa, please! I can't look like this anymore! (Elsa:)Then leave." There are more, but I can't remember them for the life of me.
Needless to say, Evie is obsessed with "Frozen". She has basically BEEN Elsa for nearly a year now. She loves to sing every song from the movie (including the instrumentals and one on the end credits) in a row and at the top of her lungs. It makes it difficult to have any other activities occurring simultaneously, but she is very passionate about it. Her other passion is acting out all the scenes from the movie, sometimes with us, sometimes as a one-girl show, and sometimes with whatever toys or dolls she has on hand.
She also discovered a show called Peg + Cat this fall, which she loves too, probably because Peg is a precocious little smarty-pants just like her ;) The other things she likes to watch are Super-Why, Daniel Tiger, Arthur, and she recently found that she loves the movie "Maleficent".
Evie as "Peg" for Halloween
Evie still loves books and reading. We tend to make a library trip about once a week, and every single visit we have to raid the "Little Critter" shelf. She also likes The Berenstain Bears, Piggie and Elephant books, and the Llama Llama books.
Being all mature and reading books on her Kindle...
Evie loves to go to the museums at Thanksgiving Point and the Bean museum. She also loves to go to both the malls around here... for their playgrounds ;)
She also loves to play with ooblek, paint, face-paint, cloud dough, play dough, and anything else that's messy!!
She is still very active and adventurous, and she's starting to like people again finally! Yay! She's a bit less shy these days--she still takes a minute to warm up to new situations and people, but she's come a long way in the last year! She is (generally) a very sweet little girl. She says "thank you" all the time, and is actually very good at sharing for her age.
These past 3 years have been so intense, but I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am to be this little girl's mother. She is going to do awesome things in this world if she decides to, I just hope I can help her become the amazing person she is destined to be!
There are two words that we know for certain Declan knows: his name, and the word "BATH".
I'm sure he knows a lot of other words too, but there is just no doubt with these two. When he hears them he'll stop whatever he's doing and whip his head around to look at you, and he gets this HUGE grin on his face!
He absolutely loves bath time! When he hears the water running he goes "fast crawling" straight for the tub. He loves splashing, playing with toys, and trying to stand up and turn the knobs (THAT drives me crazy).
I love that he's starting to develop very definite opinions and interests; he's such a little person these days!!
I have never been an early riser nor have I ever been a morning person.
One thing I haven't appreciated so much about motherhood is the lack of sleep! Late nights, night wakings/feedings, and then on top of it all they wake you up at the crack of dawn!! And if you know anything about me, you should know that I love my sleep.
But then...
There's this:
Waking up to these smiling faces (that are just so darn happy in the morning!!) is the one thing that could possibly make it all worth it :)
He did it! He finally did it! He CRAWLED. Declan beat his sister's record by 4 whole days, lol!
I was just telling Karl how Declan had almost crawled that morning, trying to get to Evie's little magnetic princess paper doll (Princess Olivia), when he just up and did it!
This toy is major off limits for him, so of course it would be the one thing that could get him to crawl! lol!
He still acts like it's some sort of punishment, or torture, but I have hopes that my little cheater baby will eventually see the usefulness of the whole crawling thing ;)
We've moved more than a few times in our marriage, but not since our babies came along!
We were actually in the process of moving into our last apartment when we got those two little lines that meant Evie was about to become a reality (seriously, I took one test at our new apartment, and confirmed it with another at our old place while we packed more stuff!).
Our apartment on Cherry Lane is the only home either of my children has ever known!
Other than sentimental reasons and missing people in the ward, I can't say that I'm sad about leaving... It was a fantastic little apartment while I was pregnant with Evie, and even while she was little, but recently, it has been kind of a nightmare! With two kids and Karl working from home, our little two-bedroom place was QUITE the squeeze, but then we've had Graeme living with us since June-ish. Let me tell ya, that place was NOT meant to hold that many people!
We had no air conditioning, and with that many people, it was SO hot! Plus there's the fact that we had no dinning space/table, so our little living room/kitchen combo was kind of it. With Graeme sleeping on the floor in the living room, he was basically right in the middle of half our living space. It wasn't so comfy!
We are so much happier in our new place! We have three bedrooms, but soooo much more living space in general, and my little ones have a real table at which to eat their meals for the first time in their lives; I feel so civilized ;)
Moving was... horrible. I never want to do that again!! Lol! We've accumulated a lot of stuff, and with two little ones who constantly need something (Declan's been super clingy...), it was difficult!
It's just so much work!
Evie has been mostly ok with everything, and Declan, being only 6 months old, is pretty oblivious. As long as mommy is there, he doesn't much care where he is, haha!
Evie has had a couple moments where she has just wanted to go back to the old house, but it's mostly when she's supposed to be going to bed. After we turn off the lights she'll ask why we moved here, and tell me she just wants to go to our old home.
Most of the time she likes it here though. There are lots of little kids around, we have a playground and a pool, and a fenced area where she can play. I was a little worried about nursery, since she was not so happy about going alone at our last ward, but this ward has like a whole room full of toys! She walked in the first Sunday and was like, "ok... you guys can go", and when we tried to get her to leave she said she wanted to stay there forever.
The first little bit was overwhelming, with trying to get things unpacked and put away, recover from the move, and get everyone settled and back onto their schedules. I thought we were never going to figure it out! But things are getting put back together slowly, but surely, and we are so much more comfortable and so much less stressed now!
I don't know how long we'll be here, but we are so happy, we don't much care ;)
We've had half a year with this kid already, I can hardly believe it!
I don't know why, but unlike with Evie where I was so devastated every time I realized she was growing up, I'm so excited for Declan to get bigger and bigger and do new and fun things (and so is he, lol)!
Since it's kinda like my thing now, let's just take a quick look back, shall we?
This is Declan six months ago! All 6 lbs 15 oz and 20 inches of my cute little string bean :)
And THIS is my handsome little man today:
Ahhh! He's so big, I love it :)
Declan now weighs a whopping 18 lbs 4 oz and is 27 inches long!
He's just getting his first teeth in, which means he's been SUPER cranky and unwilling to sleep at night, like at all... So mama is tired!
Following almost EXACTLY in his big sister's footsteps, Declan decided at around five months that he NEEDS to walk. He's always grabbing our hands and trying to get us to stand him up, or climbing on things to get into a standing position. He's convinced that walking is the only way to go, which is incredibly sad because just before that he had started working on crawling! He was doing this cute little inchworm-army crawl-roll combo, and I was SO convinced he would go for it... but no, lol. He still rolls all over, which is something Evie never did. He now cries every time we put him in
crawling position, but he's really close!
At our 6 month appointment the doctor watched Declan walking around (holding our hands) and said he's very strong and his walking skills are advanced ;)
Declan is really into his hands... Which sounds weird, but he just loves his hands! He'll sometimes just hold his hand in front of his face and open and close it and turn it back and forth. He likes to hold things and hand them back and forth between his hands (a trick he learned from Graeme). His fine motor skills are good, which I think I just notice because Evie had no interest in fine motor at all!
Speaking of Evie, he absolutely loves her. I love it when he looks at her and giggles, and she
laughs so he laughs harder, and then they're both just looking at each
other giggling hysterically.
He so wants to do what ever she's doing. He
wants to run and play with her. He's not as driven, personality-wise as she was, but he is very determined to be able to do everything with her!
He also loves his uncle Graeme. He thinks he has really cool hair, lol.
The first time Declan saw him after work in his subway clothes,
visor/ponytail he looked at him like he was a stranger. As soon as
Graeme put his hair down he got that huge grin on his face that he
always gets when he sees Graeme.
Annnd speaking of strangers, he is starting to get stranger anxiety and is getting super clingy. Yay
He doesn't really babble yet, he just likes to make these yelling,
squealing, and coughing noises. I know he can make other noises, he just
doesn't want to I guess.
Declan loves the "hushabye" song (our version of "All the Pretty Little Horses"), if he's fussing, resisting sleep, or waking from sleep and I sing it and he calms down. It's really amazing ;) I wonder if it's because we sang it so much while I was putting Evie to bed during those early months?
As far as personality goes, baby boy is happy and fairly calm. He's a silly little one, kind of shy,
but loves to smile at people. He loves to stare at people with a huge grin on his face until they notice him and smile back, then he hides his face in mom's shoulder. It is pretty cute :)
Declan is a cutie, I am so grateful we have him in our family! These last 6 months have been extremely tough, exhausting, and difficult for me to figure out. I thought for sure that being an experienced mom now it would be easier this time around, but there are so many more challenges. I'm so happy that we have waded through the challenges though, because things just feel so much more complete with Declan in our lives. After Evie, I still felt like there was someone missing, and I'm pretty sure we've found him ;)
Evie has many nicknames for her brother: Deck, Deckal, Decken, Decko, Deckie, Decka-lolo etc.
One of my favorites is when he's "in trouble" and she yells, "deck-UH-lynn!"
On the other hand, her favorite is to call him either decka-lynn-uh or deckalina, which I'm sure he will appreciate greatly when he's older ;)
Anyway, this morning I ended up with both of them sleeping in my bed (I seriously don't even know when that happened), but Declan started stirring, and as soon as Evie heard him she popped awake to play with him. They were both so happy to see each other, it was adorable. She climbed right over me so she could see him and said, "good morning, Decalily!"
Lol, I almost wish Declan was a girl, that nickname is super cute.
We finally got to bless Declan! He's only almost 4 months old now... We were waiting to do it when Grandpa Pat would be able to participate (since he didn't get to come out when baby boy was born!), so here we are!
Since Declan was so old, he was actually able to wear the same blessing outfit that his uncle Jo wore (he was a March baby who was also blessed a couple months later, apparently!), it was imported by Papa Gary straight from Italy, so that was pretty cool!
It being summer and with so many people coming to help us with this special occasion, it got pretty darn hot very quickly, and by the time we got everyone there, poor Declan was tired again and therefore very fussy.
The bishop had all the great-grandparents say a few words before the blessing, which was very special, and I really appreciated. Then Karl, with the help of so many people we love, gave Declan a name and a blessing.
And Declan decided to SCREAM the whole time.
So funny, because he is such a laid-back kid! This was totally uncharacteristic of him, and of course his melt-down had to happen during this particular event, haha!
It was a short, but sweet and special blessing. I feel so very happy and blessed to have our little Declan Kelsier Smith as a part of our family!
We went to the brand new Museum of Natural Curiosity today! We got there a little later in the afternoon than I'd have liked--after about an hour the place was PACKED--but Evie still had a great time. There are so many things to see and do, I was very impressed! Here are some pictures of our many adventures ;)
Hangin' with my little buddy :) Love my view when I've got him in the carrier!
He actually slept most of the time, just content to be carried around, but the few minutes at a time that he was awake, he was very charming, haha.
Can you spot my dare-devils?? Evie LOVED the rope bridge/climbing tower thing; it was one of her favorite parts, I think! Didn't bother her at all that she was up so high... Definitely doesn't get that from her acrophobic mother ;)
Evie loved the Noah's Ark fountain so much, she ended up in it! Too bad it was a slightly chilly day!! We ended up taking her clothes off, wrapping her in one of Declan's blankets, and heading home. Poor thing really wanted to keep playing, but she was naked and we'd been there for 3.5 hours!!
So much fun!! We're super glad we splurged and spent the money to buy a year pass, I get the feeling we'll definitely be here a lot!
