If You Were Sitting Next To Me On My Couch, What Would I Say?

It has been way too long since I really and truly updated this blog. I had a hard time coming back from Indiana. I missed my parents and coming home to Massachusetts felt good but there were still so many things to miss.
I finally feel like I have my feet back on the ground. From moving here 7 months ago. (Can you believe it has been 7 months? Yeah? Me too.  :) ) Like I know who I am again in this new land that is now my home and I realize how much I like who I am and how happy I am doing the kinds of things I've always enjoyed. I know that may sound immature? young?  Whatever. I had lived only 2 places in my life before this and one of those places I was too young to really remember what that felt like. It's different to move somewhere new, thinking that maybe the person I was back in Idaho wasn't really me and how I could try on some different stuff to see how it fit me. The fundaments of me didn't change. And maybe I needed to figure out what my fundamental characteristics were, for myself. For my family. And I'm feeling much better now.
On to more fun things!  My girls make me laugh so much.
     Aftyn is becoming such an emotional girl! Maybe I just never noticed it as much as I have recently but she can certainly cry a lot especially when she's sick or hasn't had enough sleep or is especially hungry! She astounds me more and more each day with the responsibilities she can handle. It is now her special job to go and get Bronwyn after her nap and tell her "good morning" and get her out of bed. Bronwyn sometimes responds by crying and sometimes she has nothing but smiles for Aftyn. Aftyn likes to be the helper and to do such big girl stuff.  She has also mastered picking up Bronwyn under the arms but Bronwyn is still a little heavy for her to pick up more than a few inches off of the ground. Bronwyn makes me laugh as I have noticed the last few times Aftyn has lifted her, Bronwyn says "up!". I can't tell if she's just giving us a play by play or being bossy. Aftyn has also more and more consistently been eating ALL her dinner! Yay! All the more surprising that more often than not, she is eating things she doesn't really care for but still manages to eat what we've given her. I am so glad to see that her pickyness really is starting to wear off. I think 3 is a fun age for Aftyn. She loves to sit and look at books. She loves to sit and study the pictures and then asks me questions about the pictures or asks me to read it to her. She is getting to know so many things. While we were recently waiting for a VERY long time, she learned the whole rhyme for "one, two buckle my shoe" but once I got to "nine, ten a big fat hen" she INSISTED that hen was actually pen. No matter how many times I tried to tell her that it's hen like a chicken. Oh well. At least she knows that hen and pen rhyme.
         Bronwyn is such a character. One of the games I love that she and Aftyn play is when Aftyn starts laughing maniacally and then Bronwyn just giggles and giggles. I love to hear the two of them just giggling and giggling together. It's so sweet. Bronwyn adores her Aftyn. Bronwyn decided yesterday that it was okay for her to get up and walk around after being put down in her big girl bed. She also began to understand the words "back to bed" rather quickly as well. Whenever I would say them, she would just start to cry and lay there in her bed and cry at me. Poor little thing. It doesn't help that she is starting to get 3 SETS of teeth on the top of her mouth. Yes, that would be 6 teeth. And they all seem to be coming at the same exact time.  Bronwyn goes through periods of time when we think she is doing so good with her words and then for a few weeks where we wonder why she's not talking as much. Today she said these words clearly: milk, yes.  She always repeats what you say to her and sometimes it comes out clearly and other times it is completely garbled. Which is completely and totally normal for this age. But she still astounds us when she does things on her own such as: she nods her head on her own all the time for yes, she walks to the fridge saying her own word for milk, "more more" on her own for food if she wants some and if she wants more of it, she says "bwwb" with her finger in her mouth for when she wants to brush her teeth. Tonight she even stuck out her tongue on command so I could brush it! She likes to have her hair done, especially if Aftyn just had hers done. She plops herself down in my lap immediately after I finish Aftyn whether I've already done her hair or not. She is getting much better at not pulling bows out of her hair now that I've been putting them in more often. She knows where her diaper is and when we occasionally put Aftyn's panties on her over her diaper and then we ask her where her panties are, she pats them with a big grin on her face! Oh my goodness she is so funny!  The best parts of when we laugh at Bronwyn is when Aftyn is laughing too because she thinks she is so funny.

I love my kids. They make my life happy. As does my sweet, hardworking and loving husband.

Reed is gearing up for school in about 2 weeks. I feel much more prepared for this semester since this time I know what to expect from him and from myself and how to deal with all of that. The girls and I are trying to plan a full and fun weekly schedule so that we're not stuck with nothing to do as often as we did last semester. That's what makes life hard for the kids and me is when we have nothing fun to look forward to, especially since that fun thing normally would be daddy. So hopefully that means more regular postings with pictures of all our fun excursions! And I am also planning on getting new pictures on here and hopefully a few videos of my girls because they are growing up too fast and too much of it is going undocumented!