The curious mind of a three year old

My last conversation with Addie:

A: Mommy, why does it rain?

M:  So that the grass can grow.  The grass eats rain like Addie eats fruits and vegetables.

A:  Why?

M:  That’s just how Jesus made it.  He made everything on the earth.  He made the rocks, mountains, trees.

A:  Oh.  Why is this sticker here?  (Pointing the the recycle sign on the table)

M:  Because it was made from recycled things.  You know how we put things in the blue garbage to get recycled?  This was made from those kinds of things.

A:  Did Jesus make it?

M:  He made the things that were used to make it.

A:  Mom, Jesus made me too.

I thought that was pretty cute 🙂

Birthday girl!

I can’t believe my baby girl is 3 already!  We finally had her birthday party this morning-it got postponed a bit because of illness, but it was sure fun today 🙂  All of her friends that are her age happen to be boys, so we figured we couldn’t quite get away with the princess theme, which is totally Addie.  So… we decided to go with one of her other favorite things for the theme-the beach!  It was supposed to be at the “blue park” near our house which has lots of sand, but the weather turned us to our house.  We did some last minute changes in activities and ended up playing “pin the fin on the fish” and the classic fishing game where you hook a surprise onto their fishing pole.  The kids had lots of fun and got lots of energy out 🙂  William won the pin the fin on the fish, and Addie thought she’d take the more comedic approach by sticking her fin on her eye. We had pizza, chips, apple juice and ice cream sandwiches.  Her cake was all ready and made last Saturday, but since she got sick, we enjoyed the cake to ourselves.  (when I say we, I mean I ate half the cake by myself and threw the other half away to prevent having to admit I consumed the entire thing)  So we’ve really been celebrating birthday time for about 2 weeks now haha.  She’s worth it 🙂

We also had another important member at the party which I haven’t even blogged about yet…Mr. Holden James Stirland!  Holden is 6 weeks old already and slept through most of the party 🙂  He’s such an incredibly sweet little boy, we love him to pieces.  He’s a lot easier than I remember Addie being, but I think it’s probably because we are more relaxed with him and don’t jump up at the slightest little sigh during the night.  He’s a great little napper and has just started with the adorable smiles.  He gives his daddy smiles the second he gets home from school, and I have to work them out of him 🙂 He’s a little daddy’s boy…so cute.

Happy Christmas

This Christmas was quite different from our past Christmases in the sense that it was tee-shirt weather and it was very quiet.  Since we’re just days away from James Jr’s due date, we decided to stick around California  and celebrated just the three of us.  It was lots of fun getting to spend so much time with James since he had time off from school (which he is doing AWESOME in; we’re super proud of him!)  Of course being pregnant and emotional-I had to throw in a small breakdown about missing family in Utah, but it was a great day nonetheless 🙂  I was soo excited for Christmas morning since it’s the first year Addie has really been excited herself and understood what was going on.  We set out the cookies and milk for Santa and put Addie to bed.  We then brought out all of the presents including ours because Addie had tried on numerous occasions to open ours-with two successful tries.  Harry Potter Bluerays made an early entrance to our collection thanks to miss Adelaide 🙂

Christmas morning, I heard a little elf walk into our room and when I looked up, there was Addie dressed with her sunglasses.  Gave me a good laugh to start off the day, but it was also fitting due to the warm weather!  We all went in by the tree and Addie was so excited to find her stocking.  We tried to get her lots of small things to keep her entertained for when I’m feeding the baby so she got books, puzzles, etc.

Later that day, we took a scenic drive up Mount Baldy which turned out to be a short one when we were motioned to turn around near the trailhead.  I guess due to all of the crazy rain we’ve been getting, the road was closed off due to mudslides or flooding.

So all in all, it was a great Christmas!

Today is the 29th and baby’s due date is Jan 8th so we’re expecting him any day now… Cross your fingers!  James goes back to school on the 3rd, so it’d be fun if babe came just a wee bit early 🙂  As of yesterday, we are about 2 cm and 50% effaced so not super close but at least something’s happening.  I can’t wait to meet this little guy and his big sister is soo excited too.  She frequently reminds me that she’s going to hold him, not me.  She’s also going to “teach him how to eat candy and ice cream, read stories, watch movies (which she affectionately calls “boobies” since she can’t quite say Movies haha) ”

Hope you all had a great Christmas and soon a happy new year!

The sun will come out…

With Addie’s new obsession with the movie, “Annie,” it was easy to decide what she’d be for halloween this year.  She was soo excited to wear the Annie red dress and color her hair red.  Her mom finished the dress a couple hours before the ward trunk or treat haha.  Yes, I did resort to using hot glue on a couple parts of it.  haha.  She thought she’d skip out on nap time and have a party in her room by taking out all of her toys and clothes and decorating for the occasion.  So by the time the trunk-or-treat chili party started she had the true red-head “fireball” mood going 😉

At the party, we ate lots of chili, cornbread and mac’n’cheese but all Addie could think about was the “tootateat” time.  Translation: “trick-or-treat”.  James took her around to the cars and I handed out candy.  There were some pretty fun costumes there –  avatar character, ratatouille chef, Cruela De Vil with her puppies, etc.  Pretty creative people we’ve got in our ward!

We couldn’t get Addie to sing her Annie song although she will sing it at home, but she didn’t hesitate to do her “Annie face” for everyone.  (When Annie puts up her fists and makes the intimidation look…when the boys are teasing Sandy)

LA County Fair

I decided to try out the LA county fair since I realized I’ve never actually been to one!  I figured Addie+animals=fun.  We teamed up with one of Addie’s favorite boyfriends, Wesley and his mom Trish.  It was so fun and so not what I was expecting.  It was huge and there was so much to do.  Here I was picturing pie eating contests and, well…we watch Charlotte’s Web a lot 🙂  They had a pretty realistic Jurassic display, which was Wesley’s favorite and a Princess house-which needless to say, was Addie’s favorite.  Although feeding the goats came in pretty close!  We went into a “petting zoo” which was a pin entirely comprised of goats and a couple llamas.  Addie was determined to hug each and every one of the 200 goats that were in there haha.  She gave lots of hugs then was repulsed to find that the llama was sopping wet.  “Eww!”  she yelled afterwards haha.  They had everything at the fair from deep fried clams to deep fried snickers.  We didn’t give into those, but did get a blue “slurpee” (icee) which stained both of our mouths blue for a couple hours.

Oh boy

I just think this photo is hilarious 🙂  All of Addie’s little buddies we’ve met out here are boys.  There are…5 other LDS families who Jimmy has met at school who all have kids-each of which is a 2 year old boy.  Addie loves it though; we had a playdate here the other day and this is her sitting on her bed with the chaos going on around her.  But don’t be deceived, she was definitely part of the chaos earlier…they had so much fun playing outside then dancing in her room.

It’s a BOY!

We had an ultrasound this morning and found out that we are having a boy!  Everything is looking great and he is VERY active in there 🙂  So much that the sonographer had a hard time getting him to stay still to see the gender haha.  Jimmy & I were both pretty crazy kids so we’re bound to have energetic offspring.  Addie came along for the ride and got to sit up by me.  She was really good and watched the screen pretty intensely.  At one point, the baby looked like he was waving, so Addie waved back excitedly and kept screaming, “HI!  HI!”   We told her she was going to have a baby brother, but she immediately corrected, “Girl!”  So we told her she’d have a baby brother like Kai Kai, her cousin, and she was happy.  It was so fun to see all of his ventricles, perfect little spine, fingers & toes.

So now, my scheming for the day 🙂  I told James I would wait until he got home to tell him boy/girl, but then after the ultrasound, I told him that they couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl because of the positioning.  He/she was in the perfect position to tell, but she hadn’t gotten to the gender part yet, when Addie started getting into things so I had to sit up then back down.  By the time I sat back down, he/she had shifted face down so we couldn’t get a clear shot.  Then after telling this tale to James, I pulled out a lunch made of all blue things.  We had blue gatorade, blue mashed potatoes, blue onion dip with chips, blueberries, etc.  I was pretty surprised that I could keep him fooled.  He totally bought it 🙂  So we are excited to say the least!  Due date still stands at January 8th 🙂

Sea World

So we decided to go to Sea World on Thursday since I got out of my summer class early. It wasn’t too bad of a drive down there from where we live and Addie took a nap on the way down, which was perfect. When we got there we told Addie that we were there and she perked up after and said, “Moo?”,which is Shamu for her.  Needless to say she was very excited once we got into the park. We ended up going to the Sesame Street park of the park where Addie loved the “Abby Abby” ride. We also checked out a new Dolphin show with aerialists and divers. It was fun to be down there. It made us really excited to go to Disneyland soon with Addie.

Go to the photos tab and click on the link to see all the pictures that we took there!

Baby Stirland #2

So two posts in one day is pretty unusual for me eh?  This was too exciting for me to wait though 🙂  We had our first ultrasound today for baby Stirland #2!  We are almost 12 weeks along and the baby is measuring exactly on date!  Here are some fun photos 🙂  It was kind of different getting the ultrasound alone, but it was thrilling nonetheless!  I got to see the baby jump and then swish back into place.  He/she just looks so cozy in there.  Of all of the fun new things to do with a baby brother or sister, Addie is most excited to play in the pool with him or her.  It’s about all she could talk about tonight 🙂  Going to the ultrasound warranted our first hiring of a babysitter…ever besides family/close friends.   It was a success!  Our cute neighbor across the street, Ashton watched her for an hour and since I got home, she’s mentioned “Annon” quite a few times.

Hands up by head

3D of baby with hands up by forehead. Shy little one 🙂 And no...it's not a boy that we know of; that's just the umbilical cord hehe

Doesn't he/she look so comfortable in there?!

Forgive and Forget

Addie has developed a fascination with bugs, which have collectively received the term, “bee” to her.   She is constantly finding new varieties in our yard and excitedly bringing them to James or me, only to get a request to take them back outside.  Last night, she ran towards me with a look not of excitement but rather terror.  I looked closer at her hand, and she had a dead bee dangling from her finger – the stinger in her finger and detached from the bee.  Poor thing was mortified at the thought of running her hand under water, not of the sting itself, but the water.  But all ended well when she got to put a Dora bandaid on top 🙂

Minutes later, she surprised me by telling me that she wanted to go say hi to the bee.  It’s apparent that she has no trouble in forgiving her enemies!

So...this has nothing to do with the post I just wrote, but I had to put a cute picture anyway 🙂