21 months WHAT!

I cant believe that Malia is just a few short months from turning 2 years old. I am in complete denial about this. Of course this means that she has almost been home with us for a year too which is awesome! I cant wait to celebrate our 1st family day!!!
At 21 months old Malia is up to a lot and into a lot. So heres the low down...
*Malia loves to learn, she can...
-Start counting and gets up to 4 sometimes
-Can sing A, B, C, D.. then its bla bla bla
-Recognizes all of her #'s up to 10 (usually)
-Recognizes some letters sometimes
-Recognize a bunch of her colors but blue seems to be her fav
-Can read about 10 words, Clap, baby, arms up, arms down, cat, dog, elephant, gorilla, wave
-Still signs please, more, all done and all gone
-Reads more books in a day than any other baby Ive ever seen (she is very good and will mimic my tones when I read certain things and will point to all the same pics that I do)
-LOVES learning videos, she gets very excited when I ask her if she wants to watch her videos!
-After a LONG speaking strike she is FINALLY saying lots of words again.. I was getting worried!
-She has lots and lots of vocab words down and Im learning to recognize the ones that arent so clear but she knows what shes saying and gets irritated when I dont recognize.

*Her personality
-She has started to be sooo silly!
-She has been our comic relief this last week... when she saw us crying she would try so hard to make us laugh and it always worked she was such a good break for us!!
-She is starting to not like her hands dirty.. which I appreciate but also can be annoying when I have to clean her hands in mid feeding... which she is now doing herself
-She has her spoon and fork figured out so I think Im ready to move her to a the table with us in the booster!!
-Loves to trick us.. at bed time she will act like shes ready and then take off as soon as you turn to grab a diaper.. she runs to the other end of the house just laughing so hard
-Still loves her baths in the morning and usually the water is cold before I can get her out
-Still likes men more than women, she warms up pretty quick to women though after I reassure her which is good!
-She is a good little sharer.. most the time! She is super easy in nursery at church even when the bully takes things away and knocks her down!
-HATES the word no.. I tell her no and she acts like I just hurt her she starts bawling... shes getting over that now that shes hearing it more
-After a long time of not getting into trouble she is starting to find it.. which is horrible but nice at the same time!
*Bragging rights
-She is still pooping in the potty about 80% of the time
-Sleeps from 8-7:30 almost on the dot every night and day
-Naps from 12:30 to at least 4 still or else she is CRANKY!!
-Still pretty sneaky
-Knows she can get away with more with daddy than mommy!!

We just love this girl so so much and cant imagine life without her. I use to always have my guard up when I walked into a store... ready for dumb comments.. but now that she has been here this long she is such a part of us I often have to remind myself that we are different and that I need to be aware and on alert so that comments or looks dont throw me off.
After going potty last night I gave Malia a sucker and she got so silly with it I was dying laughing at her, she usually wont let me get a smile on camera, she is so serious most of the time but her new fun silly personality is so much fun and I was so happy that she let me capture it!!!!

Look mom!

OMG she was laughing so hard at really nothing... sugar high??

So dang sweet!

Her mischievous look... cant you just see it

LOVE LOVE her smile!!

She kept showing me her tongue with the sucker in her mouth and then of course drooling everywhere

She was coming after me here knowing she was supposed to stay on the tile and NOT the carpet with her stickiness!

Here are a couple pics of her watching her learning dvd's.. she just loves them and will sit for the 25 minutes... she will NOT do this with cartoons only learning videos.

She caught me but went right back to watching!

Love you little miss!!!

Texas or bust

This week has been a very hard one for our family.. our bestest friends have moved away. We found out about 6 weeks ago that Caleb was getting transferred because of a promotion (which is awesome) and that they were going to move to Texas ASAP. This all happened just days after we moved across the street, we knew this would happen but didnt realize how quickly and so the news was devastating, no really Im not being dramatic!
Our families have been friends for 5 years now, five years of dinners almost every Sunday and spending almost every Holiday together, 5 years of watching our children grow up together and watching each other have our babies (Jude and Malia) 5 years of a zillion hours of conversations. Tami and I spend an embarrassing amount of time on the phone each day! We talk pretty much all day. We talk through feeding and yelling at our kids to nap times and cleaning and ya Ill admit it even using the potty!! They have truly become our family I feel like Tami is a sister and the kids I feel like they are my own I just adore and love them so much and Caleb has been such a good friend for Rich and me too, we have looked up to them and learned from them.
It is not often that you find a whole family who meshes in every way with your family, wives get along, husbands get along, and kids get along. We have so much in common and enough not that we keep it interesting and not boring. I also dont think is common to find people who truly make you better people. When the Zimmies first had us over for dinner we came home thinking (and Im not kidding) that they were to good for us, we really talked about, well they wont ever invite us again! Im so glad they did, they taught us how fun Sunday dinners could be how to be better spiritually and financially and so many other things. I owe Tami my sanity during the whole adoption process, without her I think I would have either quit or gone insane, there were so many times that just her listening to me complain in pure frustration with some of the things we went through gave me the strength to move forward, I needed the encouragement. I often called Tami before I called Rich with good news ( I know horrible.. but he knew and always laughed) thats just how close we are.
I think Ive gone through every emotion in the last month, from sadness, denial, anger, frustration and now back to sadness and Im sure the rest will follow. The kids are just heart broken too which makes it harder on both sets of parents. Kaden and Elias made a deal with us parents that they needed 9 sleep overs before they moved and they got every last one of them done plus 1 extra on the very last night (there were a lot of late nights and sleepy boys this last month)!!!! They have had the best time this summer and I know now that their friends are gone that summer will not go as smoothly as it has, they have been playing pretty much all day everyday all summer now and it has been the easiest summer break I have ever had with them! I havent had to entertain at all! Its been awesome... I know that is at an end now and Im gonna have to figure some stuff out!
The last few days have been very hard, there have been a lot of tears. We have made sure we have spent a LOT of time together, they have had movers there all week so our house was kinda the hang out which was nice for the kids...and me! Yesterday while the movers were packing the stuff in the truck we ate every meal together played outside and when we realized it was time for them to go we all got pretty silent eating dinner and the tears started escaping and then the ugly cry came as we walked them to the door, we hugged said bye and watched them walk to their car, Kaden was bawling Maddie ran to the other room and I told her come wave bye and she yelled at me I CANT DO IT and she was just crying and crying but did come back to wave bye. After they pulled away we gathered on the couch and just hugged it out and cried for quite awhile. I have never seen Kaden so sad, it broke my heart. Malia realized we were all crying and started dancing and making us laugh which was so nice.
I have been asked over the last month "what are you going to do" which btw is very annoying but what am I going to do?? Good question, I feel like Ive lost a part of myself and figuring out how to live day to day without our normal Zimmie fix is going to be hard, but I know this is great for them and keeping that in mind and being happy for them knowing its hard for them too makes it easier for me. I just keep reminding the kids how great this will be for their family. We have been told so many times that we should just pack up and follow them which I find quite funny that people are so eager to get rid of us, like we would just pack up and follow... well dont think we havent disgussed that one! I wish it was that easy.
So its gonna be hard, anyone who has read my blog no doubt has read about the Zimmies a zillion times because they are such a huge part of our lives. I know keeping in touch will be hard but Im determined to not let our friendship slip away, I feel like its to rare to let it get lost between miles.
So to the Zimmers words truly cant express what you have meant to us or what you have done for us, never forgotten NEVER!! We love and miss you guys so much!
So heres a slide show from the last couple of days and then the last few years! OH to make sense of some, I had mentioned in an earlier post that we have been pranking each other since we moved here and we got the last prank in!!! I tagged their car with some Texas or bust and Honk if your horny.. naughty yes funny YES!! I did help clean it off though too! So enjoy the photos.. or cry through them like I did!

The 4th Celebration!

We had a really fun 4th! Maddie was in the parade with her dance company... bragging just a little.. SHE WAS AWESOME they only had 2 weeks to learn their moves and she had to do them walking which is really hard! She did great and when they finally got to us I ran to get photos of her and she was so in the zone she didnt even notice until her teacher finally told her and she glanced at me and then right back.. no smile no nothing she was all business! Rich was a little teary eyed just so proud of his little girl, it was really sweet!
So after the parade we walked around the town celebration then headed home to put the Malia to bed then Rich took Maddie and Kaden back for the rides. We spent the holiday with our friends we had yummy food and smores and then our own firework show...until the cops showed up and let us know that there werent any and I mean ANY fireworks aloud not even sparklers! So we quit and headed to the back yard where we had a view of the town firework show! The kids all had a great day and a blast!
I kept finding myself getting a little teary seeing Malia in her Red, White, and Blue and thinking back to last year where I was wanting my baby home so badly!! And now seeing her in her flag clothes watching her first parade, it was heaven... even though she was pretty fussy all day cuz of some naughty molars that cant decide if they want to make an appearance or not!
I had made the girls their tutus and never quite got the pics I wanted cuz Maddie couldnt slow down and Malia either had a sippy in her hands or anger on her face so here is what I got of the day!!! Hope you all had a great 4th! I like to sit and think and pray about all of our men and women fighting for us all around the world, I had a talk with Maddie about how lucky we are to be Americans and what the 4th is all about and she agreed that we are pretty lucky!
Maddie all ready for the parade


Malia wasnt sure what to think about the parade she never cried at the sirens and she wore this thoughtful look pretty much the whole time.

Sooo focused on her moves!

Nice moves Kaden!

Malia and Jude kept making Rich do this over and over and over he would spin or pretend drop them and they were loving it!

Tiny dancer

Malia has become quite the dancer the last couple of weeks.. pretty sure her big sis has a big part in this! She loves to wear dresses and I know this because as soon as I dress her in a pretty dress she stands up looks down and starts shaking her booty and watches the dress sway.. its the cutest thing! Today was one of those days, she has a new dress and giggled when she looked down and started shaking her groove thang! And when her hair was done and she checked herself out in the mirror she was in full Maddie mode and went to town dancing and twirling! Then she kept playing peak a boo around the corner from me and was busting up. Dang she is gorgeous right I LOVE that first photo!!
She also right now isnt so big into her shoes.. she loves Maddies shoes but is always taking off her own so today she was dancing around with one shoe.

You know they were good moves when she fell down doing them!

Escaping

She was laughing so hard and moving so fast my camera wasnt going nuts trying to focus

Right now Malias sleep schedule goes like this.. She goes to bed at 8 at night and is sleeping until 7:30 in the morning... I know most of you are jealous, I wont lie its AWESOME! Then she goes down for her nap between 12:30 and 1 and is waking up usually around four but sometimes I am finally waking her up about 4:30 if she hasnt gotten up. Makes it hard for afternoon activities and if you wake her to early OMG she turns into a monster, this girl NEEDS her sleep so I sure try to let her have it!!

So when she is waking up she is pretty quiet at first and seems to enjoy a few minutes of quiet wake up time, when I finally hear her talking she fully awake with messed up hair and sometimes has everything on the floor and like today partially dressed! I swear if you are right next to door you cant hear her do this, she is sooo quiet!! And she still sleeps with her sound machine which might be covering some of her sneakiness! Anyways heres how I found her today...

Standing and laughing and with her dress around her hips!

Before I had put her to bed she was playing with Maddies Hannah Montana bear that sings... she was TICKED that I didnt let her take it to bed with her so when she spotted it she got pretty giddy!

Found that dang button right away

Then the craziness started

She was loving on that bear like it had been years of seperation

Shared some love with big sis

She was laughing so hard at the bear and whatever she was telling it that she fell over

When she gives big kisses she says aaaahhhhhh

and she even told lil' Hannah that I duv dewwww

And some more open mouth kissing

K I love this pic of Malia looking up to Maddie its so sweet and she just kept staring at her while Maddie told me a story.. SO CUTE!

Then again big sis is pretty cute too, I cant wait to see their relationship grow!

Theres just no stopping her now!

Maddie found these glasses at Gap the other day and feels like quite the super star in them and well look at her she is a super star!! After getting dressed and telling me how she wanted her hair (to go with her glasses) she was in full pose mode and away I snapped!

She had a little tag a long that was trying to copy all her moves it was really cute, and Maddie was showing her how to do her arms!!

Maddie is a little super star and she enjoys dance and attention so much!!! I cant wait to see what life has to hold for her because I know it wont be anything simple or small!


Like this??

Uh huh!

Throwing in some new dance moves

And a tada

Looking pretty fly for a white girl! hehe

And then off she went to go show Silas how cute she was

NICE the look back while running... baywatch anyone?

And her understudy was ticked that she left

And went running through the hall calling for Mamatttssss (Maddie)