Potty Training...Again...Sort Of

So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Hannah pretty much has been trying to potty train herself. As I also mentioned before, I just couldn't handle it...it took too much time, clean up, and focus...I was doing my best to discourage her. (I won't be getting the parent of the year award this year...or any time soon for that matter). My friend Janae told me how she just potty trained her kid on the big toilet. That way, not only was there less clean up, but they also wouldn't stick with it unless they were very determined.

Well, I hid the little potty, and told her she was more than welcome to go on the big toilet like the rest of us. She tried it once, and decided it wasn't for her....until last week.

She came to me and said, "Stinky!" which is how she tells me it's time to change her diaper...only when I opened her diaper, it was clean.

I asked her, "Hannah, do you need to go popo?"

She nodded.

"Would you like to go on the big toilet?"

Another nod.

So we rushed off to the bathroom.

Sure enough, within seconds of sitting on the toilet, she had gone. She did it again the next day. Then we went to California and we didn't even bother trying, but we're back now, and she did it again today. She comes to us and lets us know whenever she needs to go popo.

I hear that normally training for popo is harder than pee, but for Addison it was the opposite, and I have a feeling for Hannah it's going to be the same.

And, also like her sister, she insists that you leave the bathroom when she's going. She wants you be just outside the door so she can call for you when she's done, but while she's going, she wants to be alone, so I leave her alone. Now if only I can convince her to do the same for me.

The Children's Art Festival

Last Friday, Bart & I took the girls to the Springville Children's Art Festival. Bart has known about it since he was in college, but for some reason we've never taken the kids.

We decided to remedy that this year, and told Addison when she went to bed the night before that the next day we would be going to a Children's Art Festival. Words cannot describe how excited this child was. I think she had a harder time sleeping than on Christmas Eve. The next morning we woke up to hear her singing a song she had made up about how excited she was to go.

And let me tell you, the festival didn't disappoint. Not only did the kids have a blast, but I got some new ideas for art projects I could do with them...this being my favorite:

The kids took one of those foam squares you can find at any art supply/craft store, and drew very hard into it. Then they covered it in paint, and made a print of their drawing on a piece of paper. It was sooooooooo cool!

This was my favorite part of the day though. This was the part of the day that the art teacher in my husband came out and attempted to teach my four year old, and my two year old about impressionism. When he said, "Hey girls, look at this, this is called impressionism." I had to stifle a laugh. Addison got that look on her face that I've seen so often when she has no idea what I'm talking about, but doesn't want to be rude and interrupt. It's this big fake smile, and slightly unfocused eyes, accompanied by an occasional nod. Physically she appears to be reacting to you, but you can just see her mind somewhere else. For all that, I think she did a pretty good job on her picture. As for Hannah, well, I think she thought the crayons were lip gloss.

Everyone had a great time, but I think I especially liked it because Bart got to bond with the girls. I think Addison is an art teacher's dream child. She absolutely loves any kind of art. But for how much she loves art, she and Bart don't do it together all that often, so they really liked spending time with each other just doing art.

We'll definitely be going again next year.

Weapon X Anyone?

Anyone else see a resemblance?

First Haircut

So a few weeks ago, Hannah came home from preschool with an interesting hairdo.

Did you see that? Here, let's get a bit closer.

I think her teachers were trying to tell us something.

We were perfectly aware that she had grown a baby mullet, but the rat tail was the last straw. On Saturday, my baby finally got her first haircut.

Here's a Before:

During:

"Hannah, can you smile for mommy?"

Never mind, stop smiling.

And After:

YAY! The baby mullet is gone!

Hannah's attitude toward her first haircut was remarkably like Addison's. She just sat quietly watching what was going on. In an attempt to get some sort of reaction out of her, I asked her to smile. At first she did nothing, but then she thought about it, and gave me the beautiful smiling face in that picture above. Seriously, is that not the saddest/most pained smile you've ever seen?

Anyway...this is how Addison's hair was done on the same day Hannah's was in the rat tail.

I'll give you one guess as to what is new with her hair.

Memorial Day

I love memorial day. I am embarrassed to admit that I had no idea why we celebrated memorial day until I was in college. I like to think that if I ever took the time to stop and think about it, I would have figured it out, but to me, memorial day meant a day off from school (yes, in California we were always still in school) and a wonderful picnic breakfast up in the mountains with families from our church.

It was a fun (and memorable) way to celebrate, but now that I know what it's for, I feel a reverence for the day that I never felt before. And since we were in Moab, we got to go and visit Bart's dad's grave for the first time since they got the headstone.

The headstone is beautiful. It's made of red stone, and has the temple Zeke and Maralee were married in on the front of it. It's just perfect for Zeke. The family history buff in me also likes how it has the names of all of his kids on back.

Bart took the girls up on the family's property before we went to the cemetery to collect flowers to put on the grave.

It was slightly warm with a gentle, cool breeze, almost as if the weather itself wanted to show the proper reverence for those who had gone before us, and left this world for the next.

It just felt right being there with family.

We also got to visit the graves of a few other family members buried in the Cemetery.

The cemetery had a beautiful memorial for all the veterans.

We were able to find Zeke's cross and flag.

Overall, it was a beautiful Memorial Day.

Moab Arts Festival

So we've been planning on going to Moab for Memorial Day weekend for quite a while now. We haven't been since about a month before the twins were born, which is way too long to be away from family. We went on the right weekend. They were having their annual art's festival.

There were lots of cool things to see.

And Eat

I didn't get pictures of everything because my battery died. Sigh. But Bart was determined to try all the fair food...especially the stuff he had never tried before. That included cotton candy, ribbon fries, deep fried pickles, deep fried cookie dough, home made popsicles, and ice cream. (fortunately we had lots of people to help us eat all that incredibly healthy food).

It was fun trying it, but honestly, I don't know if I'd get any of it again. Except maybe the ice cream. We came back in the evening for ice cream. Addison was a fan.

I don't know if I've mentioned this about Hannah. But she absolutely LOVES ice. I think she inherited an ice addiction from my mom. We got her a shaved ice. She was in heaven.

And we let her have the ice cream we couldn't finish too.

We sat under some pine trees at lunch and the girls had a blast gathering pine cones into a pile. Hannah's starting to really speak in sentences now. Whenever Addison found one, she'd run to show me and say, "Look mom, I found one" before putting it into the pile. In the spirit of trying to be like her big sister in every way, Hannah too would run up to me with her pine cones and say, "I found one!" before putting it in their pile.

It was a great day.