Oh my Mirren

Mirren's words lately:

     In the last 3 minutes, she's used the word actually twice. Except it sounds like this:  act-u-wee
        She loves phones, and she's always "talkin' to somebody, Mom".
    I love it when she tells me "I wove you Mom!". 

 This girl makes me smile with all of her talking lately!

         I love you too Mirri!

Butternut Baby

One day, many weeks ago, my mother in law gave me a butternut squash to take home from her garden. Having my hands full at the time with lots of other things, I creatively handed it to Mirren and said, "Here! This is your baby!".
 She loved that. She cradled, cuddled and cared for that baby for a few days, until the fateful day I had appointed to make butternut squash soup. And that was the end of that baby. And Mirren was totally okay with it.

Well a week and a half ago, Reed came home with another butternut squash from his mom. And it sat on our counter for about a week, until a few days ago, Mirren told me that it was her baby and could she please have it. I decided to really embrace it this time, so I drew eyes, a nose, a happy smile and some hair on this squash with a ballpoint pen. Mirren didn't like that I drew it all on, but she really went full out with this baby, taking it to bed with her, feeding it bottles, putting a bonnet on it, wrapping it up and carrying it around with her in her little play bag so she could take care of it. When asked, she told me her baby's name was "Crying".  Here's a little snapshot I got of her baby lounging in her bed after a nap.
         

She had a good life there for a few days, and then well, today came. I cut her up, put her in the crockpot and made some really yummy food with half of her. As I prepared dinner, Aftyn came in and said to me "Oh, are we eating Mirren's baby?".  Anyone listening would think we were cannibals!

Perhaps this is the end of the Butternut Babies this fall, but I guess we shall see. Maybe they'll come back to live at our house next year again?

   

Pickle Problems

I've recently been consuming A LOT of pickles thanks to my recent weight loss efforts (22 pounds down!), and Bronwyn, Mirren and Lochlan are always eager for me to share. After finishing off this BIG bottle of pickles just this week in large part to the 2 older hoodlums, I caught Mirren with a fork in the pickle jar. Doing just as you see, sticking her fork in and just licking all that pickle goodness off. Ha ha ha!!!! I definitely think we better start buying bigger jars of pickles!

Loch-er Walks

 This past Monday, Lochlan decided that he was just going to start walking. By 8:30 am, he had already taken 6 straight steps and by the time Reed came home from work at 6:30, he was up to 18 steps in a row. He is unstoppable and still walks as much as he possibly can, but when speed is needed, he drops to his knees and goes full steam ahead. He started clapping a few weeks back and it's so fun in the car! When I start clapping along to music, I see him start clapping in my rearview mirror. Ha ha!! He's such a fun boy. He always has a smile for whoever gets him out of his crib in the morning and after naps. I took down our front room fan this week to replace it with a light and as I brought him into the front room for his first time seeing it, he automatically looked up at the ceiling! Ha!! He totally noticed it right away! He sure surprises me with some of the things about him. He LOVES to laugh. He loves to be played with when he is in a playful mood. We just love him and love the part he plays in our family dynamic.

Mirren-isms

Mirren has recently been surprising me by coming and saying to me "I love you Mommy!" in her sweet little happy voice. I am eating it up!!  A few days ago, she was looking through our books and said, "I see Jesus!" to which I said "You do?!?  That's nice! Jesus loves you!" and she said to me "And Jesus loves you too Mommy!".  It was so so sweet and felt like a little message from Heavenly Father straight to me via my sweet little Mirren. She has such a sweet and tender spirit.

Also, when she is feeling stubborn, Mirren says, "I don't want _____  aaanymore, Mommy."  *Sigh* This girl is an independent stubborn little cuss, which is probably good in some instances and just hard in others.

All My Bags Are Packed

 Bronwyn and Mirren have been playing the most interesting things this week. It has usually involved a bag filled with a cell phone, some books, and any other thing they deem worthy to be in their little purses. Also a hit: babies and bottles. They are still learning to play together well because Bronwyn REALLY wants to boss Mirren around and little Miss Mirren is still struggling to use her words instead of screaming, crying, hitting, kicking, etc to make her point. Miraculously the past 2-3 days have been so much better! Mostly because Bronwyn has been busy doing other things away from Mirren and Mirren is independently playing her own games. She has been coming up to me and telling me what she needs, and she seriously has such nice manners with lots of pleases and thank you's. I keep hugging her and thanking her for being so nice and using her words and telling her how proud I am of her. She seems to like that. :)  Ha ha!! She can be such a sweetheart when she's not having to dig her heels in and do what her big sisters tell her to do.

Shine on, Harvest Moon.

                      We had a harvest moon the other night, so I went outside to see if I could capture a shot of it.
This picture doesn't do any justice for how beautiful the moon was that night, but it's a nice memory and I love the shot of the barn behind our house with it.