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People have been asking me about how Lizzie is doing. I guess a more detailed account of her comings and goings is needed. Be warned this really IS a detailed account so if you are not into Lizzie, Lizzie and more Lizzie.. skip this post.
She is now 14 months old!! I can't believe how the year has flown. I am so NOT ready for her not to be a baby anymore but at the same time it is so fun and exciting to see her learn and grow. Her vocabulary is taking off like a speeding bullet. At 10 months she was signing "fan," "milk," and shaking her head to say "no." When she turned 1 she was able to sign "dog" the right way! Not patting her leg but actually doing the d to g thing. I have never seen a baby do that, the first time I saw her sign that was walking home from dropping the girls off at school. We passed a woman walking her dogs and she pointed and signed "dog" I thought it was a fluke but decided to test it when we got home.. sure enough she saw Max and signed it again. Cool! Now she has learned she can also make a cool snapping sound doing that so she will hold her hand up to her ear and snap and wiggle her head like she is listening to a groovy song.. it's a hoot.
Another fun incident.. I started teaching her to sign "1" when people asked "how old are you?" One day just after her birthday we were at Costco talking to a lady giving out food sample. She was adoring my cute Lizzie and after a bit of small talk asked me "How old is she?" Lizzie immediately stuck her little index finger out to show "1" and grinned like nobodys business... The lady was totally floored! She stared at Lizzie for a minute and looked at me and said.. "That's one smart cookie you have there!" I was a proud mommy tee hee. She loves to read and handle books. She has never ripped a page in a book, I guess seeing her sisters with their noses in books all the time has given her an idea that there is something special about them. But give her a newspaper and she has no qualms about ripping it apart. She is developing a nice repertoire of words... her favorite is "Daddy." She LOOVVEEESS her Daddy and I know she misses him as he is gone so much. When he is home getting her away from him is like getting gum out of the carpet.. nigh impossible! She signs eat, more, finished, ball, shoes, bye bye, mommy, baby, please, diaper, grapes, cracker, milk, pumpkin, apple, banana etc. She has a generic sign for Sam, Emma and Mandi. She can do happy, surprised and tough faces.. we are working on sad face now - she bursts out laughing every time we demonstrate though, so she isn't very sad looking.
Lizzie took her sweet time to get walking... 13 months old. I have no complaints as the other girls walked between 8 to 10 months which got a bit crazy. However now that she is going there is NO stopping her. She loves to be chased and she loves to make mommy run across all the neighbors lawns to and from dropping the girls at school. Who needs sidewalks? She mastered going up and down the stairs around 11 months and loves her freedom getting around the house. It is very hard for me to watch her on the stairs at times though. She loves to climb and like Emma I have found her on the table, on the computer desk etc. I have not found her on top of the entertainment center yet thank heavens. She is a miniature Houdini. Anything I put her in, she can get out of - high chair, swing, stroller, playpen, you name it. A great deal of her time eating she is standing up despite the constant admontions from her mother to sit down please!
She even got out of her car seat once and scared the the pants right off me as we were driving. I think possibly that time was a fluke or I didn't get one of the buckles in all the way as the incident as not been repeated (knock on wood.) Lizzie will not tolerate anything in her hair or on her head. Bows, hats, headbands, clips... you name it, she will have it out before you can spell mississippi. I did get one shot of her with her hair in a pony tail before she got it out... This is the only documented proof that I DO try to do her hair (I really do! sob...)
Lizzie loves music.
She loves to play with balls of all shapes and sizes
She loves her big cuddly bear that Aunt Barb gave her.
She loves to eat (spaghetti is a favorite) and loves to laugh.
She also loves Max! He is such a good dog with her, she really pulls on his fur and torments the poor guy but he takes it in stride. 
He even lets her share his bed when she is tired! Notice who takes up most of the space.. story of her life.
Lizzie is such a delight to have in our family. She keeps us laughing and keeps us on our toes and we are so blessed to have her! It took a lot of time and a bit of heartbreak before we were able to get her here and I am so glad we didn't give up!
Boy, I am behind on posting! Sometimes life gets in the way of the very important business of blogging (snort.) Technically I am still allowed to post about Halloween as I have only gotten half my Halloween decorations taken down tee hee.
Pumpkin carving is always great fun. I learned a new trick this year that I am kicking myself for not figuring out years ago. Our family LOVES pumpkin seeds.. we have tried them every way you can think of. After several years of experimenting, we have come to the conclusion we are purists, we like our seeds not rinsed (the little bits of pumpkin actually add a great flavor) and baked with just salt (maybe a bit of garlic for one batch.) Anyhow, in the past we scooped all the guts out, got everything carved, enjoyed the finished product and then time for bed. Once I got everyone to bed I was up for an hour or two more separating the seeds from the pulp. This year I decided to scoop the guts earlier in the day and started separating the seeds out before even removing the guts. Oh my gosh.. SO MUCH easier, SO MUCH faster! Why didn't someone tell me this a long time ago? Anyhow if you are like the old me... its time for a change. Reclaim a few hours in your life! Get the seeds out of the pumpkin before ya scoop!
Samantha created her own design A-Z. She did a great job! She has a nifty witch shouting BOO! and some great little trees in there for bats and owls (which were awol at the time of carving.)
Emma opted for a spooky face which turned out great.
Mandi found a design from the pumpkin lady for a horse, and we turned it into a unicorn! This one was quite a bit of work but looked awesome.
Lizzie was so overwhelmed by the excitement that she fell fast asleep snicker
Finished product. Great job girls!
On Halloween, Sam's school had school spirit day. The theme was wacky hair! I think Sam pulled off getting Halloween into the mix quite well.
With all the PC rubbish here, people aren't allowed to refer to Halloween in the schools but Emma and Mandi's school came up with a clever disguise... Book Character day! The kids all wear their costumes and of course locate a book with their character in it and they have a parade around the school to show off their "books." Mandi was a baby bat. She found a book about animal mothers and their babies that had bats in it. I have to credit her costume to my sister Heidi who made this for HER kids. Sadly the leotard has had it and this is the last day it was worn, it has now gone to clothing heaven as I could no longer keep up with the rips and tears in it. Still, that thing lasted a good long time, thanks Heidi! People really got a kick out of Mandi's costume as it was very unique.
Emma LOVES The Secret of Droon books. She opted to go as Princess Keeah ( I bet I spelled that wrong, I will have to fix that later.)
The secretaries at their school are fabulous. They really live it up over the holidays. Last year they were the 3 little pigs. This year they were the 3 blind mice. Can't wait to see what they come up with for next year!
Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts....
We had a lovely dinner of cow tongue baked in roach blood, fried maggots, witch fingers mixed with troll eyeballs and of course our annual delicacy of chilled brains. Choices for drinks included ghost blood (milk), monster drool (water) or beetle juice (cider) Yum!
Mandi loooovvess chilled brains! "They make you smarter!" she says.
.....and IIIII forgot my spooooooon!
Samantha always chooses very unique characters to be for Halloween... one that either you have never heard of (like being a leaf witch last year) or that you at least would never find in any store. I have resigned myself to the fact that I am gonna need to plan on just making her costume myself every year haha. This year she chose to go as the wind. She designed the costume herself and I with my very meager "man, I wish I paid attention in home ec" skills attempted to make it. I am afraid I didn't do her design the justice it deserves but her grace and dramatic swishing of the cape more than made up for it.
At night Emma abandoned Keeah (... what is the name really? Now its bugging me, I am gonna have to go sneak in their room and grab one of her Droon books) to become a Boa Constrictor. She has been a winged night creature for the last 4 years. A bat for 3 years and then an owl last year. Reptile was a nice change. At least she is not following the crowds of Cinderallas, Belles and other princess whatnots heh. So, as you can see here, a Boa has swallowed Emma glasses and all!
Mandi, as noted has now taken up the squeek of the bat in Emma's place.
Lizzie, despite all our great plans for her as a wee lion, was once again overwhelmed by all the excitement. Note she has not yet developed a taste for witch fingers.
But her sisters did share their halloween candy. Here she is tasting candy for the first time.
Trick or treating with friends.
Til next All Hallows Eve... Happy Haunting!
Lizzie is officially a one year old! Actually she hit one a few weeks ago on September 2, so I am a bit late in posting about it. Although we have no family in the area to celebrate with us, we had a marvelous time. We have an adopted "aunt" who came to celebrate with us. Thanks for the great pics Aunt Barb!
The cake: We have a tradition of naming the cakes I make if they are animals. It was over 90 degrees, very humid and of course our AC was broken. (Still is, thank heavens it has cooled off.) Anyhow the frosting was melting faster than I could pipe it out and running down the sides of the cake... thus the poor bear was named "Droopy."
We had to work with Lizzie a bit to convince her to blow out a candle, she is a bit more timid than her ferocious siblings and took a while to warm up to the idea. Here the girls celebrate Lizzie's success while practicing. I love how supportive my children are of each others' successes. Did you notice they seem to be wearing the same outfits they wore the first day of school? Wow, you are observant! This IS the first day of school. Poor Lizzie.. doomed to have her birthday on the day she has to go back to prison every couple of years ;).
Getting ready for the big moment! She was much more interested in getting her hands on the cake than she was in the candle. I finally had to take the candle off the cake and hold it up to her so she could blow it out.
Being a cautious eater, here she is making sure I haven't botched the thing.
Hmmmm not bad!
Grandy and Papa always send fun packages for birthdays and holidays! Here is Lizzy enjoy the first of many to come! She had a fabulous time with the box.. first it was a drum, then it was a table, then it was a thing to hold on to while she danced, then it was a thing to climb, then it was a thing to sit on... Mom decided to stop there before it became a thing to fall off of.
Once we got the box open lots more fun was to be had with the bubble wrap. At first she was rather terrified as her more ferocious sisters made a racket jumping on them. Then she became possessive and growled when anyone tried to pop her bubbles.
Fun picnic basket! So fun in fact that her sisters often sneak it away from her to play with it themselves.
Reading the card. Yes, my children are brilliant.. reading by age 1! Sadly they not only inherited my brains but also my terrible eyesight....
Everyone is in school except Lizzie. The first day of school is always bittersweet for me. I do miss the girls when they are gone. Everyone was pretty much ready to get back into the swing of things. Sam was a bit hesitant as she did not enjoy her teacher last year. However her teacher this year seems terrific and she is loving her class so far. She is in a 5th grade class of gifted students. They are digging into the 6th grade math curriculum. I better start brushing up!
Emma is in 2nd grade and really likes her teacher as well. She announced to me yesterday that she is the only kid in her class that takes lunch to school, but she is glad. She knows we reduce waste that way and she gets more of the food she actually likes, being a somewhat picky eater. Fairfax county provides pretty good lunches. There are some areas that need improvement but generally the food is healthy and tastes ok. Looks like Emma is going to be heading to the gifted center as well next year. It will be nice for her and Sam to be in the same school for a year before Sam heads to middle school (talk about feelings of denial!)
Mandi has started Kindergarten! She has the same teacher Sam and Emma had and is very happy, she was really hoping to get her. She is probably the youngest in her class as she turned 5 a couple of weeks after school started. She was very happy to be the first in her class to have a birthday. We will see how much she likes it when she is the last in her class to get her drivers license. Her picture really shows off her spunky personality. The P.E. teacher told Samantha the other day (while she was waiting for the GT bus) that once Mandi steps foot in the gym, she OWNS the gym. I will have to find out exactly how she is owning the place chuckle.
While the girls are in school, Lizzie has been having fun getting mom all to herself. Her favorite activities include stealing the mouse from the computer desk and removing the batteries, eating dog food when mom isn't looking, vacuuming the floor (its a competition to see who gets to it first, Lizzie or the dog,) climbing anything she can get a leg up on and, of course, learning to walk!
Well, I have not posted for some time. We headed up to Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah pageant July 18 - 20 then flew to Utah July 22 for 3 weeks. When we got back our house was devoid of beds, furniture and clothing as we had all our hardwood floors refinished. Our whole house is hardwood flooring except the basement and the kitchen, so there was no way to do it while we were actually living in the house. Here is Max enjoying our nice new smooth and pretty living room floor. 
Billy managed to get the entire house packed into the attic or the basement... my hero! We decided while all the furniture was packed away that it would be a good time to paint everything so we got busy painting. Sam's room became "paint central"
In the midst of all this craziness, we have had some trouble with our camera and it looked like we lost all 200 of our pictures from Utah in the process of transferring them to the computer. Man was I BUMMED!!!! However a few weeks later Billy, while working to delete a bunch of stuff off the computer so we could upload a video of Lizzie's birthday, discovered all my pictures hiding in the recycle bin. (Did I mention.. he is my hero?) I am very happy he found them and once again feel motivated to start posting although I continue to have problems with the camera. Perhaps it is time to send a letter to Santa. We are still working on putting the house back together and fighting off various varmints. The floor guys let in mice who apparently had a REAL party while we were in Utah. We found a dead bird in the basement, also let in by the floor guys.
YUCK!
Shortly after school started we discovered lice...yes LICE on Samantha and Emma. I have never in my life had lice and neither has Billy. Luckily we have contained it to just the two girls. Getting rid of them has been a P A I N! I am not sure if they picked them up from someone in Utah or from a friend here. They are nasty critters and going through two heads of hair every day for 3 weeks is not my idea of fun, it has taken me about 2 hours a day, sometimes more and really sucked up my time for other things. Well at least life is not boring!
She even got out of her car seat once and scared the the pants right off me as we were driving. I think possibly that time was a fluke or I didn't get one of the buckles in all the way as the incident as not been repeated (knock on wood.) Lizzie will not tolerate anything in her hair or on her head. Bows, hats, headbands, clips... you name it, she will have it out before you can spell mississippi. I did get one shot of her with her hair in a pony tail before she got it out... This is the only documented proof that I DO try to do her hair (I really do! sob...)
She loves to play with balls of all shapes and sizes
Lizzie is such a delight to have in our family. She keeps us laughing and keeps us on our toes and we are so blessed to have her! It took a lot of time and a bit of heartbreak before we were able to get her here and I am so glad we didn't give up!
