This is Jerry on the left, Dustin on the right, and of course-Avery!

Jerry is the guy who has taken photos of the girls for us, and just re-did my blog!

THANK YOU JERRY!

This is what the back of Olivia's head looks like right now. Yup, she has rubbed off a whole section of her hair, and yes, it looks pretty comical...

I keep track of almost every move the girls make in their baby books. Their first bath, first time sleeping through the night, rolling over, etc. The discovery that Olivia has been fasinated with lately is her hands. It must be such an odd thing to go through the process of learning you have hands. When she was 7 weeks old, she began to notice her hands. If she moved them, they would hit a toy hanging in front of her. By 8 weeks she would touch her hands to her mouth. At 9 weeks she started looking at her hands. At 11 weeks she realized that if she watched her hands, she could watch herself move them over to touch a toy. And now, she is obsessed with sucking on her fingers. Not only one or two fingers, but I once caught her with all 5 fingers in her mouth! You can hear her chomping on them from across the room. I remember with Avery, this is the time where their cute and soft little baby cheeks are no longer. Now, we have the wet, soggy, and at time chapped, cheeks. I guess she even likes to fall asleep with those delicious fingers in her mouth. So, Liv is obsessed, to say the least...

Last night, I was nice enough to take Avery to the movie store to rent a movie. PG and I wanted to rent one, so I figured it would be nice if she was able to have one. We searched the store, and she found not one, but two movies to get. Again, nice mom lets her get both of them. We get home...she's super excited to show Daddy what she picked out. Then, off to Mommy and Daddy's room to watch them.

First comes "Charlotte's Web", and next "My Little Pony...The Princess Promenade". PG and I were out in the living room playing with Liv, and watching the SAG awards. After her movies were done, Avery came out and began whining about something or another. I told her that I would talk with her when she was done whining, so she should go back to her room until she was ready to talk to me. Again, I spoke to her fairly nice.

Five minutes of crying and "Mommy" calling goes by, and finally she comes out. Then she says, "Mommy. You need to come with me to your bedroom...there's something wrong with your bed." I told her to just tell me what was wrong. She said something was wrong with the movie, so I told her to go get it and bring it to me. Well, turns out, while she was in my room crying and whining, she decided to maul the DVD case and insert from the movie store. She brought out the DVD case, and PG and I just looked at each other. She has NEVER done anything like this before, so we didn't know quite what to do. I went to my room, and all over my bed was the remains of the My Little Pony movie insert, ripped up. I brought out the pieces to show PG, and he was in shock. Avery, of course, began crying, and I told her to go to her room until daddy and I decided what her punishment would be.

I called the movie store to tell them what happened. Turns out this sort of thing happens a lot, and we were not in trouble, so that was good. We had a hard time coming up with a punishment. After all, she is 4. We decided that Avery had to take back both of her movies that she rented, along with an apology to the movie store guys. So, 9:15 at night, I bundled her up, while she was distraught and in tears, to go to the movie store. She cried the whole way there. I was suprised that when we gave the videos back, she did mutter an "I'm sorry" to the clerk. Then, she cried all the way home.

I guess this is the not so fun side of being a parent. Avery has always been such a good kid, so it is such a kick in the gut when she made such a bad choice. Let's just hope she doesn't make a bad choice like this again...

Oh yeah, when she wasn't looking I snapped a photo of her ripped up piece of art...
shhhh...don't tell her!

I am having fun doing this blog. I know my mom, my husband, my sister in law, and my friend Jennifer read it too. Just curious...who is reading? Sign my comments below...I'd like to know if anyone else is reading this...

Olivia sure has changed in her 3 months of life.
She doesn't even look the same as when she was born!
What do YOU think???

Here is our Avery with her Bible boards. When Avery was about 2 or so, she became a walking "movie player". She would play out whole scenes from her princess movies, and even use different voices for the characters. Her memorazation skills were, and still are, astounding! We found a series of bible movies, from the Beginners Bible, and she LOVES them. They are so much better than the Veggie Tales movies that we also have. Avery is able to relate the bible stories to actual people, and not vegetables! Well, her facination with the bible has gone to a new level this last year. We have enjoyed watching these videos with her and playing the stories with her also. Being a former preschool teacher, I have always hated flannel boards. Well, I gave in. We found the bible characters from her videos at the christian book store, and she was WAY too excited. So, we bought some of the stories so she can play out the stories with the real people, and not her barbies!

These are some chalk drawing I HAD to do for Avery this past summer. Suprisingly, my daughter does not like to color, or do much with chalk. But, again, I had to draw her bible friends on our driveway so she can play with them outside too! You can see the Nativity, Moses, and some of the Noah and David and Goliath stories above...I tried.

I hope that Avery shares her enjoyment for bible stories with Olivia. We just can't say enough how it puts such joy in our hearts to see her so "into" bible stories. I hope it stays that way...

My husband will not like this post. After he saw these photos, he wanted them deleted right away, but I told him I want reminders of this day forever.

It was a nice day in November at our house. While I was pregnant with Olivia, I planned out the perfect matching sister dresses, and purchased them online for the girls. I was so excited to put them on them, and start taking pictures. It took me about an hour to get them all dressed and ready. You know, tights, shoes, bloomers, onsies, shirts, dresses, hair pretties...the girly stuff. Plus, I had to plan it at a time where Avery was in a good, helpful mood, and when Olivia was fed, happy, and awake.

By the time I began to get the girls in their places, my patience was already almost gone. I took 30 pictures of them...this is what they all look like. I was in tears, they were in tears, and the whole thing was a BIG dissapointment. I even called PG at work and begged him to come home because I was so stressed and upset. He didn't, so I was faced to deal with all 3 of us crabby girls. It was by far, a no good very bad day.

This is what we all felt like at the end...this was the last picture I could bear to take...

I called a friend from church who took Olivia's birth announcement pictures and begged him to help me out. Boy did he ever. Below is our Christmas card picture...I am speechless....

I just couldn't pass up this outfit for Olivia. After all, it had a matching hat (that, of course, she hates)! Little did I notice that instead of snaps in the legs, there are buttons...who in the world made this outfit? Why in the world would anyone, in their right mind, put buttons in the one place of an outfit, a pooping-all-day-infant-outfit, that has to be undone at least 8 times a day??? Needless to say, after I took her 3 month pictures, I took it off, and will never put her in it again...

These is a photo of the day we came home from the hospital with Olivia. It was October 26th, two days after her birth. Avery was facinated with the fact that mommy's chest made milk for the baby. She then decided that she was going to give birth as well...to twins. She had them in her shirt, and then "pop" out they came. She then proceeded to go over to the couch with them, and undo her overalls. I, along with PG and my mother, watched her trying not to laugh. She put the babies up to her "tummy" and just sat there. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was feeding her babies, Jesus and Jamie. She also informed us all that her chest made sprite for them. Logical, I guess for a girl who is allergic to milk, so how could she make milk for them? Ever since this day, she has been giving birth left and right and now has 9 children...8 girls, and 1 boy...she sure is a busy girl!

One of the greatest things that a newborn can do to brighten up your day, is to smile. Next, comes the laughter. Olivia has been smiling at us since around Thanksgiving. It has been wonderful to see this little smile get bigger and bigger. I notice that when she hasn't seen me for a while, when we first meet each other's glance, there is a smile so big, that I think she is going to burst! We have been waiting for the laugh to come. Avery laughed at 3 months, and Liv will be 3 months on Wednesday, so we knew it wasn't that far off.

When I came home from work yesterday, I went over to her in her chair. We looked at each other, as we always do, and the huge smile came out. We did the normal silly mommy talk, and some "coochie coo's", and then, she did it...the laugh that we were waiting for...PG, Avery and I all were able to hear it, and Liv did too...although I think she was a bit startled at this new noise! I can't wait to hear more of this precious laugh...