Is It Naptime Yet

It’s December. Wow.

I’m happy to say the craft fair I participated in was successful for me. It got a little slow in the afternoon and it would have been nice had more people come, but for the first year I think it was a success. Since I sold 4 bags, (score!) I now have some money to buy a little more fabric and I’m finally getting to the stage that I have inventory, so I won’t be spending out of pocket. Hooray! Sew Lacey might actually get in the black. The popcorn and truffles sales really help and I am so thankful that Tim convinced me to sell truffles and popcorn to him last year.

The homeschooling co-op is on break right now. I’m so thankful for that, but that also means I’m needing to deal with registration and finances. Ugh. It’s a lot of work and I’m a little worried for all that entails, especially since I have very little time right now and it needs to get done so we can start looking at the schedule and putting teachers in classes.

I started my first voice lesson last week! I’m so excited! I think she’s already helping me break my shell and helping me not sing from my throat, so I can actually have a louder voice and more control. Sadly, I haven’t been able to practice a whole lot due to so many pressing things this past week. She mentioned that practice is the hardest for her adult students because we are so busy, and boy was she right! It’s a new week, and I have less pressing things, so I’m hoping to carve out a half hour every day around 4:30. These lessons are actually a part, as in the main part, of my Christmas gift from Jon. I love choir, but I was talking to him about how I would like some one on one attention to have someone actually tell me what I need to do and we decided to make it my Christmas gift. I’m happy because it really is to help me gain confidence in myself and not to go out a sing solos necessarily, but he is so supportive of me and allowing me to do things that help build my confidence. The first lesson was a blast, so I’m looking forward to the next one.

Christmas is coming a long slowly in our house. I cleaned our front yard with Lilah on Wednesday and we put up new Christmas lights. Eden was happy to help with the lights, but didn’t want to help clean the yard. I’m trying to get the inside of the house in order so we can get the Christmas tree up, but I fear that until I get the rest of the popcorn and truffles out of the house next week, there is no point. So hopefully we get the tree up on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

To close, I just want to post a couple funny things from this past week. I had them as updates on Facebook, but wanted them in a place that is controlled by me.

The set up: My girls had made a little fort and Lilah was telling me how the top blanket lets in air so it doesn’t get too hot.(It’s a lighter weight blanket.) I was peeking in, so I teasingly blew in a big breath of air and asked if that let in air and she said “Yeah, carbon dioxide.”

Eden: Stop tickling me!
Lilah: My fingers are exploring your armpits!

Lilah: I don’t feel like you love me.
Eden: I love you Lilah but sometimes you make me so fusterated!
Lilah: I just feel like it’s not fair for you to not give me that piece.
Eden: *sigh* Lilah I don’t think it’s fair for you to have more legos than me.
Lilah: It hurts my feelings when you say things like that.
Eden: I’m just so annoyed right now. *argh!*

And it continued in a similar like manner for about 5 minutes. Luckily Jon was home because it allowed me to sit back and laugh at the girls and the argument rather then storm in and take all the connects and legos away.

Eden also says fusterated, not frustrated. Lilah then repeated it as fusterated later in their argument. It was a good thing they were in their room and I was in the living room laughing to myself.

Yeah, it’s now time for Christmas, but since I never posted any pictures of the girls from Halloween I thought I would real quick. Now that I think about it I don’t think I even blogged about Halloween.

Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure I missed birthdays and I know I missed lots of fun trips because I just went through all our photos from last year and picked out what I wanted to put in our family calendar.

Yeah, I’m a pretty lame blogger.

Well, our Halloween was lots of fun. We went to Carolyn’s work party for part of our Halloween celebrations. The girls has a blast eating tons of junk food and participating in all the activities. Carolyn was in charge of the Cake Walk while the girls and their cousins were there and I’m pretty sure she rigged it since she was just spouting off numbers and looking at the numbers the kids were on.

We carved our pumpkins Halloween day, though we hollowed them out the night before. We did a little bit of Trick or Treating on Halloween night. I just love Halloween and trick or treating. Something I realized when I decided to limit it this year since it was on a Sunday. We came home a little early, though still late by Jon, and let the girls hand out candy. They had fun handing the candy out and we barely had enough this year since we had some large groups towards the end.

Really I was only going to post one picture, but I felt a little guilty since I haven’t been posting any pictures.

Enjoy, and I hope your family had a Happy Halloween!

Next to their pumpkins. I let the girls draw faces, then I carve them.

Story of the costumes:

I realized I couldn’t post this without telling the story behind the costumes.

I wanted them to be Alice and the Red Queen, but they wouldn’t even listen to my suggestion, even though Lilah wasn’t sure on what she wanted to be, but Eden only wanted to be a princess.

Lilah decided she wanted to be a witch once she saw some really cool fabric at the store, while we were window shopping and I was waiting for a sale. Unfortunately, they did not have the fabric she wanted when we went to go buy it at 50% off. She was still happy and choose this dark purple satin and a black lace that had bats in it. That’s why I posted the last one, so you could kinda see the lace and that’s it’s purple, not black. We found the purple hat, which also has bats on it, at Smith’s, and she just had to have this gigantic harry spider too, so I let her.

Eden wanted to be a princess, but I really wanted her to be Belle, from Beauty and the Beast. We tried to convince her, we being Carolyn and me, and she was kinda sold on it with Carolyn saying she loved Belle, but she did not like that it was just a yellow dress. Once we had chosen the pattern, though not the fabric, she started drawing pictures of her beautiful multicolored dress, and it was different in every picture and it looked like a rainbow in every picture. While at the store she was OK with the yellow fabric and she was going to be Belle, but while Lilah was deciding between purple and green satin, Eden found this beautiful purple and pink organza that had small rainbow colored stars in it. She was sold and decided she had to be a princess with this fabric. So I relented and she compromised on the pink fabric for the dress, because she wanted it to have the purple that Lilah had already picked out. She also thought the dress was a little too plain, so I made the flowers that are at her waist, and added those for her.

They both loved their costumes in the end, which is what mattered the most. I really enjoyed sewing the costumes for them also. I love that I can help them turn ideas into reality.

We all have our little bit of craziness that we deal with, I’m right in the thick of it for me, the funny thing is I’m finally motivated and doing things, even though I have a looming deadline and not enough hours in the day.

Since life was so crazy over the summer, and during the play, I was really ready to not do anything, and I almost did not do the homeschooling co-op. I got my brain together and figured it was for the best, so I decided to sign up and continue to have it has a part of our homeschooling journey. Well, I asked if there was anything I could do to help, since I know the whole preparation part can be hard, and they asked me to help our treasurer, since she had a premature baby over the summer and though he was home, was quite overwhelmed with regular life and now constant doctors appointments. I pretty much organized all the information, and am acting as treasurer. I like it because now I only have to teach for one hour on Mondays, but it’s also settled me into a very permanent role, though I could leave if it became overwhelming. I’m now in the inner circle of the co-op and get to help with making decisions and knowing what’s going on. It’s been interesting and I really feel I’m learning and growing.

Besides co-op I’ve been taking a once a week choir class. It’s been lots of fun and I feel it’s helping me gain some confidence in my ability to find parts and sing. I have a lot to learn still, but I love the choral music we sing and being a part of something. The choir class is really so I can get more confidence for the plays, and soon we’ll be starting meetings for choosing the director and getting the ball rolling for the next play. It’s crazy to think we’ll soon be starting all over again!

My main focus right now is sewing though. I started Sew Lacey, which don’t bother going to the link since I haven’t touched it since January, last year and participated in a craft fair out of a woman’s house. That time of year has rolled around again, and I decided I wanted to participate once more, only I forgot about it till she called me and only have a week and a have to get ready, since I had to finish the girls costumes and help her with set up. I want to do it because I have tons of fabric for bags, and when people see and hold the bags, they’ve been inclined to buy them. I’ve also decided to add hooded towels and burp clothes to the mix, with a possibility of nursing covers too. We’ll see how much time I have next week, since that’s all I have before set up begins and then I’ll need to devote some time to making chocolate covered popcorn for it also, since that’s a big hit and I want to try selling that too. So I have lots of projects to do and very little time.

And Wednesday I decided to clean and organize my house because it was pretty crazy, but more importantly I needed to get all my material in one place and bring some order to my chaos. I hate to start creating in chaos, but don’t mind the mess along the way. Like I’ll clean my kitchen and do dishes so I can bake, though this is something I have to do with how small our kitchen is. I had to clean and get my room into a little more order so I could sew, but really have space for a drying rack for the fabric.

Yeah, I have tons to do. I need to prepare a lesson for Sunday, a lesson for Eden’s class on Monday, finish Lilah’s costume so we can go to the Haunted Harvest, cut out and sew 6-8 bags, make hooded towels, burp clothes, prepare another lesson, make chocolate covered popcorn and get ready for a craft fair, all in two weeks, plus have family time and regular house duties.

It makes perfect sense that I’m blogging. Yeah, this is me and my craziness.

It was just a two weeks ago. Eden came out of her bedroom in the middle of the night telling me she didn’t feel well. I asked her if she felt like she was going to throw up and she said yes, so I got her the pink bowl, put a towel over her pillow and after a few uneventful minutes, sent her back to bed. She woke up just fine the next day, but the pink bowl followed her around for a little bit and then just hung out around our house getting dirty and taking up space.

This past Wednesday I finally got around to washing the bowl. It had been haunting our house, then our kitchen and with it’s large, awkward size, it wasn’t fitting into our rather full dishwasher loads, but that’s mostly because I was way behind on dishes. So it was finally washed on Wednesday night, at least a whole week later. Then Eden woke me up at 4 am Thursday morning, saying she didn’t feel well and like she was going to throw up.

Oh, I had heard that before.

So I gave her a drink and a couple crackers, then as she sat at our very full of stuff table, I watch as she got sick. Oh, she was a champ, trying to hold it in, but her mouth just not being big enough so that some exploded out onto the floor, and onto the table of Halloween decorations Lilah had just made that afternoon, luckily only the ghosts was lost. I picked Eden up and brought her to the kitchen sink to finish what had already started, and to rinse her off a little. I then took my poor little girl to the bathroom, so I could clean up the mess, get her some new pajama’s, cover her bed with a towel, and grab the freshly cleaned pink bowl out of the dishwasher, just for her.

And she needed it this time.

So a long time ago I thought my computer screen was going out, I’m pretty sure it still is, but for now it works, but the brightness is still bright. I went on a photo posting hiatus because of my screen, and my sheer laziness to upload and edit photos, but I decided that I’d post some anyways, and would just crop them, so the brightness might be off, but at least there are photos!

The girls and me at the Zoo!
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Comparing ourselves to gorillas.

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He was looking right at the girls. I could have sat and watched him for much longer, but everyone else wanted to move one.

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Lots of standing and looking. This was Jon’s view of the Zoo.

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Open your eyes on three! I was trying to not get squinty eyes, I guess it worked, kinda.

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The awkward bighorn sheep. I totally thought it was a goat of some sort because it did not look like the bighorn sheep I know, or even like the one they had pictured.

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After the bird show with the bald eagle.

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The cool owl after the bird show.

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The mama and baby elephant!

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None of the other carousel pictures turned out, and you could argure neither did this one, but I love ladybugs so Jon took my picture with the ladybug carousel seat.

Today the choir teach for the co-op saw me with the girls and our conversation went a little like this:
Her: Are those your daughters?
Me: Yes.
Her: They are so sweet. They are so nice to one another. I see them talk and have fun. What’s your secret?
Me: Oh, I think they’re just that way. I’m just lucky. Though half the time they love each other and half they hate each other.
Her: Well, they’re sweet and fun to have in class.
Me: Thanks.

Because of this conversation and some things that happened in choir they girls and I had a big discussion. There was a boy who wanted to be Eden’s partner and the conversation went a little like this:

Lilah: I was already Eden’s partner, but Kyle wanted to be her partner, plus Eden’s kinda shy, so I didn’t want her being a partner with someone she doesn’t feel comfortable with.
Me: Well, how about next time you ask Eden if she would like to be partners with Kyle, so if she wants to, she can, and she doesn’t have to be shy.
Lilah: But Eden is shy, and Kyle was mean after I wouldn’t let him be Eden’s partner. I want Eden to feel comfortable, and she doesn’t know him very well.
Eden: Yeah, I don’t feel comfortable with people I don’t know.
Me: Well, how can you get to know someone if you won’t be partners with them?

After this the conversation started repeating itself. Basically, Lilah is being the protective big sister and making sure Eden is happy. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not. In this situation I think it’s not good, because she’s letting Eden continue to be shy, and at other times Eden just has to do things with people and be partners with kids she may not feel comfortable with.

With Lilah being the protective big sister, and the choir teacher asking me how I’ve taught my children to get along so well, I wondered to myself why I have two girls who love each other so much. My answer.

I think it’s because there is only the two of them and they have to love each other.

Lilah and Eden get along about 70% of the time, and the other 30% is usually a battle of wills. The statistics vary from day to day. Some days they get along for 95% of the time, other days they get along for what feels like 1% of the time, but overall they really do get along and love to be around each other, and I think it’s because they’ve only got each other, and thus if they want someone to play with, they have to get along.

This evening I continued to think about the girls relationship. Eden and Lilah love one another and have so much fun playing together. I love homeschooling because they get to spend so much time together. I love that Lilah can get Eden to laugh so easily, she really is the one person who can get Eden to laugh and smile at the drop of a hat. I love that Eden lights up when she sees Lilah at lunch and they immediately want to sit with one another at the co-op. I thought of my own youth, and spending time with my older sisters, and how they took care of me and how they would let me do things with them and their friends.

As I continued to ponder on their wonderful relationship it was then time to make and get ready for dinner, and they decided to fight over who’s stuff was what, and how to put things away and a little yelling may have taken place.

Now they’re having fun in the shower.

Sigh, sisters.

So life is continuously busy here at the Blake house. Last week I was a little lonely with Jon gone on a business trip, so I had a goal of going out each day so I could have adult contact in each 24 hours. It worked until Lilah got sick on Wednesday, but then on Thursday I was able to get back in the game and do stuff. Here’s a break down of my week.

Monday: Co-op open house. Basically I went and paid for co-op and saw some of the other moms and new moms. I’m helping the treasurer, since she has a baby that was recently release from the NICU, and we have a lot to figure out this term since we have so many families, the most we’ve had yet. I also visited Anna and her cute baby Alex, and did some shopping.

Tuesday: I did whatever around the house and that evening we had pizza at the park with Carolyn. Then we went back to the Svilar’s to play games and visit with Derek who does not like to venture outdoors on such short notice. Carolyn and Derek gave the girls a few things and Eden told me how Carolyn spoils them.

Wednesday: Lilah was feeling a little sick so we stayed home from the park. I was a very sad Mommy though, I think I got a lot done around my house this day, I can’t be entirely sure that a lot of time was not wasted on-line.

Thursday: I did more stuff around the house, or wasted time on-line, I can’t remember. My friend Beth and her daughters watched the girls so I could attend my first Concert Choir class at CSN. Our orchestra director for the play directs the class and convinced me to join. It was fun, though I realized how bad I am at picking out alto parts. I get to go shopping for a black dress, which I’m always excited to go shopping, and I think it will be a rewarding semester.

Friday: I canned peach jam and pie filling with Sam all day, literally. I was there from 10:20 am till just after 4 pm. We were helping one another, and though she had a lot more peaches to deal with after I left, I was able to make jam and pie filling with my 12 pounds, or whatever half a box was. It’s always more fun to can with someone rather than alone, so we had fun. My girls mostly played and Matilda mostly stayed out of the way. I then procrastinated, cleaned a little more, and picked Jon up at the airport that night. We were so happy to see Daddy and have him home with us after having him gone for 6 days.

I did do school every day, the regular house work, and even some cleaning and organizing of my hall closet and stove top. It’s funny how I’m now cleaning places people don’t see, but really for the sake of cleaning places people do see. My hall closet has been such a mess that I had to organize it to put the winter blankets away that had been hanging out in my bedroom all summer long. They are now put away until we need them in 4 weeks, maybe sooner if we have any cold spells. My stove top was just gross, so I cleaned the grease catcher things and now I’m not so embarrassed for anyone who might see them. My bathrooms….that’s another story.

I hope you all had a great week and had some adult interaction every 24 hours. I think adult interaction is greatly recommended for stay at home moms. 😉

Lilah and I went to Sea World with the Girl Scouts. We decided to use her cookie money to pay for the trip and it would be the big event we got out of the cookie sales. When I signed us up I thought we’d be staying in a hotel for one night. It wasn’t until I went to the mandatory meeting that I realized we’d be camping out in Sea World, in their exhibits and I would not get to shower Saturday morning before I spent all day in the park with Lilah. When I told Lilah the plans she was rather excited to sleep in the exhibit, and we knew we’d be sleeping in the Wild Arctic Exhibit, the coldest one of all. I thought there was a wall of ice in it, but there was not, but they keep it a cool 50 degrees in there, which is very cold when you’re sleeping.

We rode on bus to San Diego on Saturday morning. I knew I would let Lilah make most of the decisions on the trip. This was my time with her, and I knew that I wanted her to have fun, and since I wasn’t having to referee two girls, I would just let her make most of the decisions, with some guidance since I didn’t want to be going to one end of the park and back again. Her first decision came in Barstow, where we stopped for lunch. She decided we should have In and Out for lunch, the busiest place there. There were several tour buses in the area and apparently lots of families making the stop to eat together. The line and food went rather quickly and Lilah got to enjoy her first In and Out hamburger. She loved it and I enjoyed letting her be in charge.

After lunch we continued onto Sea World and arrived early and waited to begin camp. The girls played games, and at times hung out on the bus. At 6pm the Sea World staff came out. They did a luggage check and we got ready to put our luggage into a shed till we needed it later that night. During this process Lilah noticed my luggage was making a noise, but I decided it was just the vibrations from the tanks behind us, since I couldn’t think of anything that would make noise in the suitcase. Once our luggage was safely locked up we entered the park.

We were split into smaller groups and given bright green t-shirts to wear. The shirts were to help the staff be able to keep an easier eye on us. We did a couple things, but they fed us right away. We then did different activities with the camp staff and visited different sites. It was kinda a whirl wind so I can’t remember all we did. I do remember after we visited the penguins the girls did a little relay race, where they dressed up with big penguin feet and wings and then had to walk and pass an egg to another girl. One girl was also dressed up as a polar bear as we learned about different things that help them survive. We saw the Shamu Rocks show that night, and my camera battery decided to die while we were watching it. It was an amazing show and I think Lilah really enjoyed it. At this point she was walking and hanging out without me so she did not sit with me during the show, but was with some of the other independent girls scouts her age. Sea World had a nice fireworks show shortly after the Shamu show, so we stayed in the stadium and watched from there. (The group we were in for the night was mostly all IGM’s and just one other troop and around Lilah’s age, which was nice. )

The final thing we did that night was feed the sting rays. That was so cool. The water is rather deep, so it was hard for Lilah to get her hand in there, especially since we had our jackets on under the bright green shirts they had given us and it was hard to roll up the sleeves. Lilah was too nervous to feed them her fish, so she gave it to me. I was also a little scared so I ended up dropping it in the water when one came up to get it. They said they just go over your hand and suck up the fish, but since I was not able to get my arm down all the way I was rather scared that I might get bitten. I worked up a little more courage and was able to feed one of the rays my fish. Lilah did work up the courage to pet the sting rays, and she really loved that. The sting rays were probably my favorite part of the trip.

We got settled into the Wild Arctic exhibit after the park had closed and as I opened my luggage I realized it was making a noise. My air mattress pump had gotten turned on and had been running for at least 5 hours. It was a little hot to the touch, and though it was on, it was not doing anything but making noise. I worried we’d have to sleep on the hard ground, but luckily one of the other leaders had an electric pump and let us borrow it to pump up our mattresses. Phew. I also felt really blessed that my pump had not caught fire, because the plastic had melted off of the batteries and they were really hot to the touch. That would have sucked had a trailer of girl scout stuff been caught on fire due to my negligence. (Hint: always take one battery out of your mattress pump when traveling.)

Lights out was round 11:30 pm and I slept very badly. It seemed like I was awake for most of the night due to someone snoring, or having to ignore my urge to go to the bathroom, or my face being really cold. It was not fun and the 6:15 am wake-up call came way too quickly. Lilah slept just fine, and was right by the manatee tank. She said she was awake during the wake up call, but she sure didn’t want to move or wake up when I tried to get her out of bed 5 minutes later. It was a very early morning for these two late sleepers.

We packed up, put our luggage on the buses and then headed to breakfast. I asked Lilah if she wanted to hang out with some of the other girls and their moms or if she wanted it to be just her and me for the day. She decided she just wanted it to be her and me for the day so after our final activity of feeding the flamingos we headed off to be by ourselves in the park.

We had about an hour before any of the rides started, so we hung out at different exhibits and planned what we wanted to do first. We did see one of the other girl scouts and her mom so we hung out with them for a time and I rode a water ride with the girls. The other mom hadn’t purchased a poncho yet, so I went on the ride with them three times, since there was no one else in line and they were having fun. We then went our separate ways but met up once more for the other water ride by accident once again.

Lilah and I rode most of the rides and saw three of the shows that day. I forgot the sunscreen in another bag so we got a little toasted. I now will spend whatever amount needed to buy sunscreen at amusement park to keep from getting sunburned and to protect my children’s skin.

Some highlights of the day where: Sitting in the splash zone during the Shamu Believe show and Lilah getting drenched because she decided she did not want to wear her poncho. Feeding some ducks and Lilah wishing Eden was there since she knew Eden would love feeding the ducks. Lilah pretty much thinking about Eden the whole day and saying how she would enjoy this or that. The third time on the rapids ride getting sprayed by bystanders, but not knowing at the time that’s what was happening until later where we noticed you could pay to spray people. Petting the stingrays during the day. I was petting one, and another one came on top of the one I was petting and tried to slurp a nonexistent fish from my hand. I squealed and Lilah laughed at me while the other bystanders thought I was crazy. Eating a cream cheese stuffed pretzel and cotton candy for lunch while we watched the Sea Lion show. Getting along with Lilah the whole day.

We loaded onto the bus at 6 pm and left a little later. We stopped in Barstow for a meal break at 9 pm and got back into Vegas around midnight. Jon and Eden had to get out of bed to come get us at the girl scout office. Luckily we don’t live that far.

It was lots of fun, and Lilah now thinks Eden and Daddy should go to Sea World together. I really can’t wait to go back and maybe in two years when Eden is old enough, we can do it again.

So I’m now, and have been for over a week, a mom to two school aged children. I think it’s nuts that all my children are now old enough to attend school. Strange.

For Eden’s birthday we went swimming at the Zurflueh’s. This year Lilah had her turn for the big party, so it was Eden’s turn for a small, immediate, as in only our family, family party. Eden did want her Auntie Carolyn there though, and since she wanted to go swimming and we’d be using her boss’ pool, it only seemed natural to have the family party with Carolyn.

The Zurflueh’s were in town this year, so we were pleasantly surprised with a decorated back yard when we got there Saturday. Jenny and her daughter Irelynn had taken it upon themselves to make the birthday party very special for Eden and bought Happy Birthday signs, and princess Pez dispensers. It was so sweet, and I almost felt bad that it wasn’t my whole family coming, and just our little group of 5. Irelynn made a special chocolate sheet cake for Eden. It was her grandmother’s recipe and the cake is only made on birthdays. Irelynn was so excited to do this, so I left the flower cake I had made for Eden inside to be used on Eden’s real birthday with our family at Family Home Evening, since it just happened to fall on the same day this year.

The girls went swimming with Carolyn, Jon, and Kai while I waited for the pizza to show up. Kai is the Zerflueh’s youngest and he’s 8 years old. He was rough housing a lot with Carolyn, and then me once I was in the pool. It was fun playing rough with a boy, we were keeping him out of the spa and playing around, but I sure am happy to be the parent to two calm girls, calm for the most part anyways.
We enjoyed pizza for lunch and some fruit and then lots of swimming. The girls had just finished two weeks of swimming lessons the day before, so they were all over that pool. Lilah is pretty confident and can be on her own, with just a watchful eye to make sure all is well. Eden can swim rather far and was even trying to take breaths and looked under water without goggles. It was wonderful to see how much they learned in two weeks.

Our family gathering for Family Home Evening was on Eden’s real birthday so I brought cake and cupcakes for the family to enjoy. We made a small special flower shaped cake out of a baking kit we won at the family reunion. We all sang Happy Birthday to her that evening after the lesson.

It’s really funny that Eden is now five. I see her getting older and behaving a little more like Lilah, and not such a little, little girl. Lilah and I have the rule, you spank me I spank you, and now Eden uses that rule too. Not only for spanking, but for tickling too. Lets just say I love being the tickler and not the ticklee. She too is testing her independence!

Eden’s learned so much in this last year and is really changing. One thing is reading. Eden began learning to read in September last year and now is an excellent reader. She constantly surprises me with how much she knows, because she doesn’t like to read to me, though she’s getting better about it. Eden is very giving and if you asked her to share, she will often say yes. She loves to cuddle and even though she hasn’t been taking naps for a while, will still come and cuddle with me at times throughout the day. She won’t in the morning though, because she knows I’m just trying to get her to go to sleep longer so I can sleep more too. You can tell if Eden needs cuddles because she stands next to you playing with her hair and tickling you with it. Eden’s very imaginative. She can play with almost anything. Today she started playing with the spoons as she was putting the dishes away.

I’m very happy to be Eden’s mom and love having her as my daughter. I really would like her to stay little. (Really, I’d like both girls to stay little.) So if anyone finds a way to make that happen, please let me know. 😉