Still our Baby

Happy Birthday Brielle Bethany! 

Sunday (March 31) was the actual day. Oh the memories that came flooding back from 1 year ago!

The night before her birthday Nate said, "I vividly remember that day she was born. It was a very good day"
I wholeheartedly agreed with the exception that it felt like my stomach was going to flop to the floor. :-)

Wow. One year. Now she's a walking, jabbering, climbing, full of life mini person!

 - She started out 8 lbs 11 oz and is about 21 lbs at 1 year

- She started experimenting with walking at 11 months but it took her the entire month to get up the courage to walk full time. Now she walks around with a huge triumphant grin.

- She likes to carry stuff around and try to put clothes on her head. It's a common site to see her walking with a pair of tights strung over her head and one of Rhya's shoes in her hands.

- She thinks it's so fun to arrange things. On our recent trip, she spent hours putting sea shells in the bucket and then dumping them out...over and over. Last night we spent 30 minutes putting wooden pieces in and out of a puzzle.

- She has very important things to tell us and gets really involved with jabbering. She'll use her hands, lean into the person she's humoring, and look them straight in the eyes, 2 inches away. If we yell something to a person in the next room she'll yell over there too. Full volume is easily achieved. She loves to talk on the phone. If you want to hear her jabber just call us and you will have a willing participant.

- She knows what she wants and will let us know! Rhya and Jordan's sippies are hot commodities and she'll go to any extent to get them. She wiggles ferociously and says, "EH, EH, EH" whenever she is trying to tell us something that she wants.

- She knows how to do 'SO BIG!!'. She'll also put both hands on her head if she's asked where her head is. She's very adamant about shaking her head back and forth if she doesn't want something.

- Brielle and Rhya are starting to really enjoy each other's company. Rhya was zooming Brielle all over the yard in the umbrella stroller today and they had a BLAST.

These years of having small children are SO fleeting and SO precious. Where is the pause button? In the meantime, we are looking forward to a busy, fun filled summer of toddler-hood.

**The above pics were taken on our recent FL trip. I will blog about that soon! Meanwhile, pics are up on Shutterfly.

A Faceplant Into Florida!

Sunday Night Hymns

If You're Bored Come to the Lester House

At any given moment, there may be:

                                          potty sessions going on:

Parties happening (Happy Birthday Melanie!! Glad we could finally celebrate with you!)

Walking lessons taking place (Brielle took her first steps last week)

Endless snuggle opportunities

Not just spunky

I tend to write and talk quite a bit about the semi-borderline stuff that Rhya does. It's entertaining and slightly funny and amazing what she can come up with. However,

this post is to talk about how much this mama loves her kiddos.

For some disturbing reason I had a dream last night that Brielle died. It kept replaying over and over...my heart goes out to every single parent who's lost a child. I cannot imagine. I know one thing- it sure helps me to not fret over the petty matters and soak up all of the precious moments.

All day today I kept thinking of that awful dream and then looking at my girls, realizing the power between our relationship. I kept noticing the little sweet things that they do without me hardly realizing:

- When Brielle was fussing I looked over to see Rhya trying to cheer her up by smiling as huge as she could!

- Brielle still thinks hair is an awesome pull toy and Rhya does SO WELL to put up with it. She'll just sit in pain and wait for me to untangle the mess.

- Rhya loves to give and receive goodbye hugs and kisses and will usually plant a huge kiss on the receiving one's cheek without being asked:

- Both girls are huge snugglebugs, much to our pleasure! Rhya usually offers up her bedside body pillow at tuck in time and says in a hopeful voice, "You can lay on my big pillow if you want!" (hoping for all she's worth that we'll lay next to her and sing soft songs). She loves to fall asleep next to Daddy in the 'big bed' and then have me move her when I crawl in.
Brielle usually starts out in her pack 'n play (umm who needs the crib in the next room? ha) and then joins us whenever she happens to wake up in the night. Sometimes it's midnight, other times it's later. She burrows in right between us and feels for us every now and then. It's so heartwarming and I do not care one bit that she sleeps with us. I just think of everything we'd be missing out on if we didn't have that snuggle time!

- The girls were playing on my lap tonight. Rhya was trying to make Brielle laugh so she kept lifting up her shirt so Brielle could poke her tummy. One time their heads bonked and Rhya's tooth smacked into Brielle's head. Brielle screamed for a minute and Rhya looked horrified as well as slightly guilty like she might get in trouble for being too rough. However, a minute later, after Brielle had calmed down, I looked over to see Rhya's lip bleeding. I asked if her lip hurt and she got this watery look in her eyes, like she was trying to hold back her own pain because she felt bad that she hurt Brielle, when, in fact Rhya was probably hurt worse. It was SO sweet. I wanted to cry for her.

SO. Moments come. Moments go. My goal this week is to APPRECIATE the sweet, small, passing moments. Stop and smell the flowers of childhood. It's a beautiful thing.

Story after story

Where do I start? Hilarious things happen about every time I turn around.

I think the kids have spring fever. They are happy, but incredibly mischievous lately and flying off the walls.

I can provide examples:

- Sudsing up with fun smelling foaming soap that was in the downstairs bedroom (thanks, Heidi!). Crawling to the top shelf of the downstairs closet, and typing on the spare keyboard (still with sudsy hands)

- Unrolling FIVE rolls of the toilet paper all over the bathroom floor, then jumping, rolling, and spreading Vaseline all over the toilet paper. Then they wondered why on EARTH I ended the fun. They told me that I wrecked their house and even went so far as to tell me I was naughty to wreck their house. We proceeded to have a discussion. ;-)

- Pulling me into the bedroom to 'show me something'. Pointing out a sopping wet pack 'n play mattress, telling me that the monster went potty on the mattress. They then willingly took the mattress out to air dry at my request and were informed that the monster wears diapers! (full account on Kristina's blog)

- Spreading noodles ALL over the floor because I said that we could make noodles necklaces (she got one step ahead of me and informed me that she was just getting the noodles ready)

- Spreading chocolate on every square inch of hand skin available in the backseat of the minivan during a shopping trip with Kristina and Grady. I had given them each a little wafer cookie with a dark chocolate layer. I have NO CLUE what compelled this experiment, but I noticed their black hands and faces as we were cruising down the interstate. Not the most convenient place to stop and use up a pack of wipes!

Where was Mom in all of these situations? Somehow they must know when I am preoccupied!

**I wrote this post Wed night and didn't get around until posting it until today. I must say that they've been mostly angelic today- playing together wonderfully and even solving their own problems!
I only had to get after Rhya once today (so far- evening hasn't hit yet) and she changed the subject and told me that I shouldn't have a nose. 

Sisters

Mom graciously assisted me in a sister photo shoot and I think one (out of 30) is pretty good:

I find that I take more pictures of Rhya since I am either holding Brielle or she's a blur of activity.

Brielle's latest is to stand up without hanging on to anything. Then she looks around with a triumphant gleam in her eyes and plops back down on her tush.

We went sledding this past weekend. They preferred Daddy over me. I showered Rhya with snow a few times but Nate's slides with them were crisp and swift! Brielle went time after time with her mouth in a perfect 'o'.

Heading out to the hill:

We had a little 'sledding party' at the farm. It was incredibly fun!! All of the wonderful ppl who joined us made it even more so. :-)

Oh for the love of stairs. Can you hear Rhya saying, "Come Oooon, come oooon!" It's so cute to watch her be the big sister role model.

Speaking of role models, Rhya looks up to Saraiah big time! We came upon this scene one day: 

I'll leave you with this parting shot: I can't believe how much this kid reminds me of my twin!