February 2012

February blurred right by. Time seems to pick up speed the older I get, and in February I hit 36. It was a good birthday month filled with fun memories, most of which I hope to remember right now. Again, things might not be in order.  Kenly and I started playing "school."  We are not doing a formal curriculum, and I'm not going to home school.  She's just an absorbent little sponge right now, so I thought it would be a fun way to give her some special time while riding the "learning is fun" wave.  We started with the letter O for lots of reason.  The main reason is so we could memorize Colossians 3:20 which says, "Children obey your parents in everything for it pleases the Lord."  I loved this verse because of the everything and because it gives a reason for the obedience.  Kenly always needs a reason. She memorized the verse with ease, and I've been able to reference the verse several times since then.  We are working on obedience.  Obedience without question and without hesitation.   I think this will be an uphill battle for the next 18 years.  We are working on sight words, a shape, and a number when I introduce a new letter.  So far we have only completed O, A, B,and C.  We've memorized a verse with each letter.  Kenly has memorized the D verse even though she has not done the letter work yet.  I'm praying that hiding God's word in her heart now will  help her with struggles later.  I want God's word to pop into her head when she faces a fear or struggles with anger.  I want her to be proud of being young and know that youth does not mean that she's not important in God's eyes.  Her questions about God are comical.  She frequently asks cute questions like "Does God get wet when it rains?"  Or "Does God have a cell phone?" 

At Christmas I didn't have the time or energy to create or buy presents for Kenly's teachers.  She loves Mrs. Kathy at the library, both her dance teachers, and her Sunday School teachers as well.  I wanted them to know what a difference they make her Kenly's life.  So, for Valentine's Day we made salt dough ornaments.  Kenly put her thumbprint into the dough and we baked them until they were hard.  Kenly painted them with acrylic paints and then I wrote "you make an impression" on all of them.  We threaded beautiful ribbon through them and gave them to all of her teachers.  I think they were a hit.

Here are some of the hearts just after they were sprayed with a clear coat. 

Valentine's Day was an adventure.  I woke up and attempted to make heart-shaped pancakes for Kenly Shae, but all I really managed to do was melt the cookie cutters to the griddle.  Brilliant, huh?  I guess my sleep deprived mind forgot that plastic melts when exposed to high heat. 

After breakfast, we painted coffee filter hearts with water colors.  Coffee filters are amazing crafting materials.  Kenly never get tired of painting them, and they make beautiful window clings once they are dry.

Beautiful heart and beautiful girl.

She decided to paint this one chocolate brown.  It looked good enough to eat.  :)

Corah is growing like a weed.  She continues to be a very chill baby.  I love cute little baby hands.  She gets tired of laying on her back, so we started using the Bumbo to give her a new perspective on life.  She likes it most of the time.

She's getting better at playing with toys.  Everything goes in her mouth.

I'm loving watching my girls become sisters.  Corah loves Kenly.  Kenly is by far her favorite person.  Believe it or not, Corah will bounce and squeal in order to make Kenly laugh.  It is too cute.  Kenly is still learning to like Corah all the time; she loves her, but she doesn't always like her. 

I love my Bethie Boo.  She is learning to speak up and be heard.

What's not to love?

I think that one day they'll look at this picture and wish they could be that little again. 

Corah doesn't cry until she does, and then she throws a complete fit.  One day she screamed for over an hour until she passed out from exhaustion.  I didn't have the heart to move her.  She looked so relaxed and cute.  She sleeps like me.

Kenly will let me play with her hair on occasion.  I'm fond of the double braid.  I haven't mastered a French braid or a double French braid yet.  She wiggles entirely too much for me to accomplish much.

Sometimes we play "school" in her room.  She loves doing worksheets.  Here she is practicing her name.  Just last week she wrote her name for the first time without tracing it using dots.  It took up an entire piece of paper, but she did it, and I love it.  I'm so proud.

We also do other worksheets too.  It this worksheet is asking her to color items that begin with a particular letter sound. 

Kenly, Corah, and I have bad days at home from time to time.  I am so blessed to be married to a man who encourages us all on those "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days."  One night we came home to these notes.  I found a People magazine and Kenly got a bouquet of flowers.  Adam is super cool because he used all of Kenly's O and A sight words to write the notes which means that Kenly was able to read some of both of the notes.  How cool is my man?

Here is what the bulletin board looks like on any given day.  Can you tell what the letter of the week is?

These are Kenly's beautiful flowers.

We were invited to Davis's birthday party at the Playlodge, and Kenly nearly lost her mind counting the days until she could go celebrate with him.  Adam went with us, and I think he had as much fun as the kids.  I love my superhero. 

We started getting prepared for Saint Patrick's Day pretty early this year.  It's May now, and Kenly still doesn't want me to take down the two rainbows we made to celebrate.  We used foam shapes to make this rainbow.  She stamped each color of the rainbow with a different shape.

The finished product.  We cut the white off and hung it in the living room on a closet door.  Instant decorations. 

Awhile back, Pops gave us some cookie mix with a cow cookie cutter.  Adam and I decided to have a family baking day.  Kenly always love to cook up some baked yummy goodness. 

I love when Adam gets behind the camera because then there are cool shots of me and my girls in action.  I love these pictures of  our hands.  Corah slept through most of this adventure, so there are no shots of her.

Don't those cows look good enough to eat already? 

We decided that our cows need a little embellishment, so we added chocolate chips to the cows.  I love Holsteins anyways. 

Like I said, these pictures are all out of order.  Here is Davis getting ready to blow out the candles on her Batman cake.  I love how it is made of about 24 cupcakes. 

More cow cookie pictures coming right up...

Ready to go in the oven.  I love how Adam made a barn out of the leftover dough.  He's clever like that.

I look like I have 'GoGo Gadget" arms in this picture.  If you know who Inspector Gadget, you grew up in the 1980s like me.   Sometimes I wish I had GoGo Gadget arms...they would come in really handy.

The finished product...YUMMY!

Remember me saying that we are all about painting coffee filters?  Well, here we go again...
This time we cut out shamrocks for Saint Patrick's Day.  And once again, Kenly had an amazing time painting them.

I love watercolors.  I've never bought watercolor paper, but I think I really need to try it soon.  I love how shiny the paint looks.

When Kenly got  her cupcake at Davis's party, she didn't waste any time. 

The second rainbow we made was a repeat performance.  We made a similar rainbow last year and it was a miserable experience.  It turns out the craft wasn't the issue, a stomach bug was.

Rainbows make me smile. 

The finished product.  Again we cut the white off the rainbow and hung it in the living room hoping to attract some leprechauns. 

At the very end of February, the girls and I headed home to Augusta.  There will be more pictures from this trip in March's review.

Nana and Papa came up to visit us so that I could have the Essure procedure done.  Our family is complete, so we wanted to go ahead and take measure to assure that pregnancy would not visit us again.  I had 24 hours of drug induced sleep, and then I was up and ready to face the world the next day.  We found out on May 17th that the procedure worked.  My tubes are blocked, so unless God has some really funny plans, we are done birthing babies.

This is some of Kenly's excellent school work.  Her coloring is much more controlled, and she's pretty good at following directions. 

When Kenly is really naughty, we force her to spend some time in the stocks.  Just kidding.  The Playlodge has a bit of everything. 

One Sunday afternoon, Kenly was feeling artistic.  It was beautiful outside, so we headed to the porch with her dry erase markers.  She created quite the masterpiece.

Playlodge fun.

Davis enjoyed his birthday song.

Corah enjoyed some time outside while Kenly created her dry erase masterpiece.

Busy at work creating the most beautiful drawing of a ......

CHICKEN!  Yes, Kenly says that this creative drawing is a chicken.

Let's just tell it like it is.  Everyone enjoys the back porch.  Chance just wishes he could be on the couch too.

I love them.  With every fiber of my being...

Kenly received both of her recital costumes this month too.  She cried when I made her take off her tap and ballet costume.  She's going to look stunning up on that stage.

I had an amazing birthday this month as well.  I was able to go out to dinner with my husband, and I also received that fuzzy brown blanket that Corah is snuggling in this picture.  It's a grown up version of the blanket Corah sleeps with every night.  I love it!  I adore it!  I want clothing made out of the same material.  Mops and Pops came up for the weekend to help celebrate.  Pops made me delicious dinner and bought me cinnamon rolls and chocolate cake and chocolate covered strawberries.  Can you tell my birthday was sweet?

Valentine's Breakfast.  I don't think the plastic that melted into her pancakes did any real harm.  I jest! 

Watching the masterpiece evolve.

Sweet baby Corah at 3 month of age.  She is made of sugar.

She likes for Adam to walk her around the house.  She like to look at everything as she chills in his arms.  He can rarely sit and hold her.

Coffee filter hearts.

Kenly felt a bit under the weather at some point during the month as well.  Hot chocolate helps a sore throat feel better.

Corah started getting really curious.  Because she was always looking around, she rubbed all the hair on the back of her head off.  Most of her hair fell out anyways, but she helped it along with her constant rubber necking.  This is proof that I needed to give her a little more tummy time.  Mops says she looks like a little monk.  I agree.

Corah loves this elephant.  We call him elephante.  She shakes him with great gusto.

She hugs him very tight.

She also chews on his nose and ears like they are made of chocolate. 

We did some bubble blowing on the back porch because the month was unseasonably warm.

Corah started her evening sleep on me quite often.  I didn't mind.  I loved snuggling her while watching Friday Night Lights.  I miss Dillon, TX.  When Kenly was a a baby, we spent many an evening watching The Wire.  It is funny to me that I associate each of their early infancy with a television series.

A blast of bubbles.

Catching bubbles.

Blowing more bubbles.

And more bubbles.

And maybe a few more bubbles...

Corah likes bubbles and being outside.

Corah smiles a great deal of the time.  When she smiles, she smiles with her whole body.  Her eyes gleam and she wiggles from head to toe.  It is as if she can't contain her joy.

Mixing up the cow cookie batter.

Rolling out the dough is a tough job.

Mops and Pops came up for my birthday.  I love this picture of both of my girls snuggling them.

Using the cow cookie cutter.  Kenly loves to cut out shapes from any dough.  She loves to peel off the extra too.

Hard at work. 

February flew by at mach speed.  On the 9th of February, Kenly Shae turned 3.5.  We had a little celebration with miniature cupcakes.   The month was filled with a million tiny treasures.  As each month passes, I'm growing more confident in being a mama to two girls.  It's the hardest job I've ever had, but  I wouldn't trade it for anything.  I love watching both of my girls become individuals.  I love being there every step of the way.