St Charles, IL Weekend

We spent the last 5 days, 4 nights in St Charles, IL while Jason worked doing sound at RiverFest!!  It was a lot of fun.  The company paid for us to have a hotel!  Jason has a few more festivals over the summer that we might be able to stay with him at as well, so we might just get a taste of that "traveling family" lifestyle this summer, lol!  I love the break from the constant cleaning, dishes, & laundry at our house!

The weather was great most of the time, warm but not too hot. It only rained some of the time while we were outside, poor Jason had to work quite a bit in the rain though!  We got to swim a lot in the pools, play at the park, go for walks, go to the festival there and see Daddy working, etc.!  I like getting the girls out of our area sometimes, I want them to be able to adapt easily to new situations and environments!   Both girls did well.  Venily usually fights anything that isn't routine, but I was able to get her to nap and go to bed fairly well (though she moved her bedtime to much later than usual).  She has been driving me CRAZY lately with her 2 year old sassiness, so it was nice to get her out of that steak for a bit.  She'd act up every time she was tired or hungry, but overall did pretty good!  Haven, as usual, just went with the flow (though we did have one rough night where she was up every hour again, I think it's her teeth!), she loves looking at new scenery and will sleep and eat pretty much anywhere, which is nice! :)

It's funny how a change of scenery can bring about so many new changes, or maybe it's just the fact that Haven is literally changing and learning new things every single day! 

I learned over the weekend that Haven's perceived "shyness" was actually just her playing! :)  She's so fun!  And don't worry about Haven in these videos, lol, Venily isn't always super gentle, but Haven is a tough girl and gets her back WAY worse by pulling her hair all the time! haha



Oh, and giving mouth kisses?  Now Haven's favorite thing ever!  I just say "Give Mama a kiss" and she does!  Big, sloppy open-mouthed ones, I love it!  Look out boys!  She'll even give Daddy's scruffily mouth a kiss!  :)


I have confirmed another word that Haven says as well.  I thought she had been saying it for a while, but wasn't positive.  She says "That!" while pointing at things, though it sounds more like "Dat!  Dat!"  :)  I'm not entirely sure if she wants to have "that", wants me to look at "that," or if she wants me to tell her what "that" is, lol, but it's really cute!


Haven also learned how to get down from the standing position finally!  I'm really glad, since she's always standing- she'll even pull herself up on the wall now to stand!  The only problem is that now while she's holding onto something and I'm sitting by her and I tell her to come to me, instead of taking steps to get to me sometimes she'll get down, and crawl the few feet away that I am and then pull herself back up, haha.


Overall, we had a lot of fun on our "vacation to nowhere"!  And I'll take it, since we can't afford a "real" vacation, though we did miss Jason since he had to work most of the time! :)  Some day we'll have a real vacation...


Unfortunately, I think we brought home some sickness with us!  Haven and I aren't feeling so well.  My throat hurts and Haven is clingy and keeps getting really sweaty even when it's not hot (I keep checking her temp though, and it's normal).  I was super germaphobic at first and tried to get Haven to only stay on sheets that I laid on the ground and not touch anything in the room, but that lasted all of a couple of minutes, lol!  She can't be restrained! :)

8 1/2 Month Updates!

Haven is 8 1/2 months old today!

Haven is most happy these days while standing.  Holding onto her standing toys, couches, tables, my hands, doesn't matter, as long as she's standing!  She pulls up on everything too.  She really likes her push toys and will push it across the room until she hits something.  (I put her excersaucer away since she hasn't used it in a long time).  She also ABSOLUTELY loves walking while holding onto 2 of my fingers.  If it were up to her, she would do this all day long!  She gets so excited that she squeals, lol!  She has still not mastered stooping yet though.  She can't get down from the standing position gracefully, so I'm always nervous she's going to fall!  And she has no fear of letting go of something and going after something else, so I have to keep my eyes on her all the time! She'll cruise from toy to toy, couch to couch, etc and let go in between to get there.  We have had a few bumps now, but nothing too bad yet, let's hope it stays that way!

She loves to stand by herself a lot too.  Oftentimes while she is standing and holding onto something she will just let go and stand there!  And when I stand her up she can stand by herself for several minutes as long as she has something to focus on (otherwise she is usually trying to walk somewhere).  5 steps is still her record for consecutive steps by herself.  But she wants to walk BADLY, haha!  I think that's why she likes all of her push toys so much!

If she is not standing, she is crawling around EVERYWHERE!!!!  We rearranged our living room to try and contain her a bit, but she always finds a way out, lol, or something to get into!  I absolutely love when she is crawling and puts something in her mouth (like her sippy cup, toy, toothbrush, etc.) and crawls while biting onto it to bring it with her!!  It cracks me up every time!  Especially when she smiles while doing it, it's so funny!  She has been trying to stand up without pulling up on anything as well.  She can get to her knees, but that's it.  She often goes up in a "bear crawl" stance as well, lol.

Ducks are her favorite toys and coincidentally her current favorite word.  That and dog (there is a puzzle piece with a dog on it that she absolutely LOVES).  It's funny that Venily went through an identical fascination with ducks and dogs!!!

I learned over Memorial Day weekend that she can now use a straw!  I had a drink in one hand and I let her bite on the end of the straw and then I noticed she was actually drinking it!  I stopped her (because it was LEMONADE) and she freaked out, lol!  I didn't know for sure if she actually got any, so I let her bite on the end again and, yep, she was actually drinking from it, so I had to stop her again!  I hope she got it out of her system because that's more sugar than I'm going to let her have in the whole next year combined! :)

She really loves doing things for us.  She is constantly trying to brush our teeth with her tooth brush, feed us her snacks, etc.!  Venily thinks it's hilarious! :)

Haven gets shy sometimes!  Not painfully shy where she will cry if someone gets close to her or so much as looks at her (though occasionally that will happen if she's really tired), but she will completely cover her face around people sometimes.  Even with my sister!!  She will look at her and Haven will smile and bury her head... then wait a few seconds, look up and if my sister is looking at her, she'll quick bury her head again... and so on and so on until she gets used to her!  :)  I think it's really cute, but I hope she outgrows the shyness, we are still working on some of Venily's shyness issues as well!

Haven is still having constipation issues.  We've had a couple of rough nights where she was up like every hour trying to poop, but wouldn't because it hurt! :(  I can't stand to see her in pain!  I'm still not giving her her vitamins and limiting baby cereal, bananas, rice, applesauce, etc. that would make things worse.  I'm giving her a lot of pears, which DEFINITELY help!  And I found prunes the other day.  Gave them to her once and within like 2 hours she had a large, soft BM, which made me so happy!  It's funny the things that can make me so happy, LOL!

I don't remember if I've written this before, but Haven gives the sweetest hugs ever.  She nuzzles in with so much love and then will rub my back or gently pat it with her hand!  I fricken LOVE it!!!!  It's easily my favorite thing in the universe! :)  We are working on giving kisses.  She will kiss objects and toys if you tell her to, but only people sometimes when you ask.  She usually turns her head fast so you can't kiss her mouth, haha!  I blame Jason's prickly kisses!!!

Her current favorite song is "Pat-a-cake".  I'm still trying to get her to "roll it", but she likes the clapping and the "pat it" part! :)

She still LOVES eating microscopic specks off of the floor, despite the fact that I am always vacuuming and sweeping.  The weird thing is that a lot of times she won't actually eat them.  She'll just keep them in her mouth like a little chipmunk, haha!  I can always tell when she has something in there she's not supposed to and when I go to get it out, she clamps it shut so hard, I can barely pry her mouth open!

"Rice"

So a couple of nights ago we had "Chicken" Fried Rice (with fake chicken) for dinner.  And over the last few days I have picked up a TON of brown pieces of rice from all over our house.  I couldn't figure out what the heck Venily did!!  I am constantly picking up every little speck off my floor because Haven is NONSTOP trying to eat every little speck, and I was finding rice in the living room, hallway, and both the bedrooms!!  Haven was chewing on something today and I took it out of her mouth (this happens a million times a day, she's a quick one, lol)  and it was a piece of rice!  I started getting really annoyed.  I had JUST vacuumed this morning AND the day before, how is there STILL rice everywhere?!


Then... I saw yet another piece of rice and went to pick it up and right when I was about to touch it, I saw that it was MOVING!!!!  It was actually some kind of bug with a lot of tiny little legs like a millipede or a larva or something equally gross, the size of a piece of rice!!  I yelled for Jason to come and get it.  Venily thought it was the coolest thing ever of course, haha, but I didn't think much of it.


Tonight I decided to tackle my MOUNTAIN of laundry!  I seriously have like 6 loads of laundry I need to do.  Our washer is broken and is ruining all of our clothes (about 15 of the girls' shirts/dresses I have to throw away) because we have rusty water and for some reason all of a sudden it is putting giant rust stains all over our clothes.  (And we don't have the money to fix it :(  ).  Well, Jason cleaned it out and now wants me to try again while we save up money to try and fix it.... I feel sick to my stomach thinking that any more of our clothes getting ruined, but oh well, sorry... back to the story! :)  I started going through the giant pile of clothes and I found another millipede/larva thing... and another.... and another!!!!  At least 5 on the floor in my room alone.  So I started looking in Venily's room, 2 more!!  And in the hallway, another!!!  YUCKKKK!  And then I start thinking about all of the times I actually TOUCHED them and picked them up to throw them away and then that Haven might have had one IN HER MOUTH!!!!!  Uh, it makes me so sick!  (though I'm still hoping that she did actually have a real piece of rice in her mouth!).


I don't know what to do!  I don't know if they are going to get any bigger and I obviously don't want Haven eating them!  I assume there are so many all of a sudden because it's been raining so much the last few days.  I can't STAND bugs!!  That has been one of the biggest perks to moving into a new home that we built ourselves instead of our last house, which was build in the 1800's and had a dirt floor crawl space!  Of course the bugs are nowhere near as disgusting as the ones I used to find, but I'd really rather there were no bugs at all!!  I'm hoping that once I clean the basement, we can fog it ourselves (we can't afford an exterminator) and hopefully that will help!  I'd do the upstairs too, but I'm WAY too scared to put chemicals anywhere near the girls, especially with Haven crawling all over the place and eating things off the ground all the time!  I'm really hoping they just disappear all by themselves once the rain stops!

I have a lot more updates on Haven, but am trying to save them for her 8.5 month update next week! We'll see how long I can last, lol! :)  And we might be headed to lots more festival fun next weekend!  The sound company that Jason sometimes works for has asked him to do another festival and will even buy us all a hotel room to stay in for the weekend, so that should be fun!  

UPDATE:  Apparently there really is rice all over my floor as well!  Because I was just cleaning and found a few more pieces of rice that were actually pieces of rice!  Makes me feel a little better! :)

Memorial Day Weekend

FRIDAY- We went and saw the Daddy working at Chocolate Fest, doing sound and we stayed for the fireworks.  Venily made some new friends that were part of the traveling family circus, lol!  Two girls, 4 and 6 and they were INSEPARABLE. 

They tried calling Venily up on stage for one of their magic tricks, but their Dad knew that she was too shy so had her pick someone else, lol.  The family has 7 kids and they travel around doing 350 shows a year.  The Dad was telling us that Wife Swap calls him every year asking to be on their show, lol!  I couldn't believe how well-behaved and sweet the kids were though, what a different life to live for sure!  We watched fireworks with the girls as well, even though Venily usually goes to bed around 7:30, we didn't end up leaving up 11pm, haha!  Haven LOVED the fireworks.  Venily was a little scared, but was brave and watched them because she wanted to hang out with her friends.  Sooooo cute! :) 

And I couldn't believe how good the girls were, even with the heat and with messed up napping and eating schedules!

SATURDAY- Back to the fair!  Venily loved, loved, loved the petting zoo!  I really see her doing something with either animals or children when she grows up!!  We also went to Grandma's and made lots of tie-dye shirts!  It was my first time making them and a lot of fun! :)  However, the heat and messed up scheduling hit both the girls that evening!  They were CRABBY!!!! haha.  And wouldn't go to bed! :(

SUNDAY- I wanted to get them back on routine a bit.  We went to Echo Park and played and watched the boats, got ice cream and walked around Burlington.

MONDAY- We went to the Chocolate City Parade!!  It was Haven's first time at a parade and she did great!  Venily was unusually shy, but said she really liked it!  I think she was just taking it all in.  She especially liked "the little cars with the guys who were too big for them", haha!  We then hung out at Grandma's house. 

Went HOME for lunch and naps (learned our lesson, lol) and back to Burlington for more Chocolate Fest!!! :)  (P.S. Venily is really going to have fun this summer, she LOVES fairs!!). 

She played with her friends again and I let her go on one ride since it was the last day.  She has been talking about it ALL weekend and begging to go on a ride! 

She hung out with her friends some more and fell in love with Olivia's snake, Buttercup!  I was soooooo nervous!  She was making him lick her hand and petting him and kissing him and grabbing him!  Ahhhhh!  I kept picturing the "when animals attack videos"!  But the snake was really used to all the attention!  
After her friends were done with their last performance I took all the girls on a walk around the fair.

And a super amazing woman gave me TONS of free ride passes for the girls to go on rides!  I almost cried, here I was not having the money and making Venily wait until the LAST day to ride ONE ride and this woman gives me probably $60 worth of ride coupons!  Needless to say, the girls had a lot of fun.  And I was so surprised at all of the rides Venily wanted to go on, she wasn't scared at all!  And even Haven went on some, the merry-go-round and ferris wheel and was very interested the whole time!  And Venily was sad that they had to leave!  Hopefully we'll see them again next year!  And they have a website and blog, so we'll be following them while they travel across country!  [I looked at his blog and he talked about me and Venily and Jason on it, LOL!]

[Side note:  I was so impressed with this family we met!  They were all so wonderful.  Jason became good friends with the Dad, despite our many differences.  They have 7 children (ranging from 4yrs-20yrs old) and travel 4 months out of the year, across the country, doing 350 shows a year!  The children were the NICEST, SWEETEST, MOST WELL-BEHAVED children EVER!  I never saw them fight, they were very respectful, very independent and smart (the 6 year old reads at a 6th grade reading level).  And the Mom wasn't even with them (she was at home with one of the children who can not walk or talk and both of them were going to join the tour at a later date).  Part of me wanted to take the girls home with me and give them a "normal" life, but the other part is like "how do I raise children to be that amazing".  It was an eye-opening experience for sure.  I'm not really sure what to make of it, but it has got me doing some serious thinking... no worries though, we're not joining the circus! :)


[A separate side note:  I don't know what changed this year.  Maybe it was turning 26.  Or maybe it was the fact that I now have 2 children and was pushing around a double stroller.  But, SOMETHING happened.  I was called "Mom" by the carnies on SIX different occasions over the 3 different days we were there!!!!!  What?!  I'd walk by and they'd be like "Hey, Mom, come here!"  Lol, it really bothered me!  It was like a total shock every single time it happened!  But then I was thinking about it while walking back to my car and how much it bothered me and I got hit on by some guy in a car WHILE pushing my double stroller, so I felt a little better! :)  I even smiled and waved at the guy when I usually would have rolled my eyes and looked the other way!! LOL!

[And a third note- I feel like I rocked being a mom of 2 this weekend!  Yay!  I've always known that I can handle it pretty well, but having to load all of our stuff and organize and plan and everything all by myself all weekend and take care of and make happy 2 children at once while Jason literally worked ALL WEEKEND LONG, well, it went pretty well and that makes me VERY happy! :) ]

SUCH A GREAT WEEKEND, hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!!!  It's sort of the 'unofficial start of summer' and makes me really excited for what the rest of summer brings us! :)