Harrison's vocabulary

I love listening to this Baby Guy talk!  His vocabulary has exploded over the past month! 

He used to call Elizabeth "Sissa" (sister) but now? Now, he calls her "Guhl" (girl). It is so funny!  I finally figured out why - when we call the girls for dinner or anything else, we call out, "Gi-irls!" and Elizabeth is without fail the first one to answer the call.  Every time.  So, apparently Harrison has decided that her name is no longer Sister, it is now "Girls".  I love it! It makes her giggle, thankfully.  I do try to get him to either call her "Sister" or whatever version of Elizabeth he can say - but no..."Guhl" it is.  He is insistent.  I'm sure some day in the store a total stranger is going to think I'm a horrible mother when I say, "Hey, Girl..." to her. 

He has also decided that his blankie (a wonderful white flannel blanket with his name and birth stats embroidered on it - a gift from a friend in Houston) is now called "BeeBee." So, we are never without BeeBee and Ba.  Ba is his little pillow. 

The other night there were storms in the area. He climbed into my lap and said, "Mama. I 'kared. Nurt!"  (Mama, I'm scared. I want to nurse).  As he nursed I asked, "Does nursing help you not be scared?" I looked up at me and said, "Yup." [love the "yup" though I'm trying to teach him "yes ma'am/sir"]  Such a sweet boy.  Nurt is one of his favorite words. Six months ago I thought we were close to weaning.  We're not. 

And, since he's actually still asleep - I'm heading to bed while I can.  We're about 30-45 minutes away from his usual wake-in-the-middle-of-the-night time.

Photos of the Week - Weeks 7 through 10

Here are my photos for weeks 7 through 10...

Week 7 - February 7 - 13, 2010

Playing in the snow

Told ya this would be one of my "photos of the week".  I love this shot of the girls and their pitiful attempt at making snow angels.  So stinkin' funny.  They were just having a blast in the 7" of snow we got here in Central Arkansas.  (a rarity!!)

Week 8 - February 14 - 20, 2010

My sweet baby is two!

Harrison's 2nd birthday was on Monday of this week.  We had a very small gathering of family at our house for cake and ice cream.  I knew I wanted a farm cake - but it wasn't until a few days before his birthday that I decided what I *really* wanted.  By then, it was too late to order it from Blue Cake. So, he got an airbrushed Cake Wreck from Kroger...poor baby.  We'll make it up next year...I'm already searching for killer pirate cakes. I do love the Little People farmer, cow and pig, though (but then...you know, I love Little People!)

Week 9 - February 21 - 27, 2010

The Egglets!

We had some errands to run today, plus Harrison had his well-child visit.  Everyone was dressed, hair fixed, and so of course, Mommy had to take a picture!  And I love, love this picture of them!  Harrison in his skater boy hat (love this little outfit - flames on his sleeves, orange pants, black tennis shoes with flames on them - adorable), Nin in her beloved dog-ears; Annie in her Race for the Cure outfit (her leggings are zebra stripe); Elizabeth in her "I love Daisies" outfit.  I think this is one of my favorite pictures of my kids ever!!

Week 10 - February 28 - March 6, 2010

Happy 20th Anniversary to me.

These were sitting in a vase on our dining room table the morning of our anniversary. Brad and the girls surprised me.  I loved it.  And what I really loved was the sweet card from my husband - the last line in it was "I adore you."  {sniff}  It's hard to feel adored when you're the mom of four little kids.  Glad to know I am.

A little belated...Happy Anniversary to Us!!!

It has been crazy-busy around here the past few weeks.  My brother-in-law's aunt had been having some issues - she went in for an MRI of the brain at 8:30 one morning. By 9:30 the same morning, she was told she had brain cancer.  She saw a neurosurgeon 48 hours later and learned she had stage 4 glioblastoma - what the radiologist had thought was two tumors was actually one very aggressively growing tumor.  Within 48 hours of seeing the neurosurgeon, she was having brain surgery.  Since she is our business office manager, everything on the admin side of the office was in a total uproar (and really, it still is).  Then my Nana died - so I had family/funeral stuff. Brad and I were in charge of some stuff for our church Missions Conference that ate up my schedule (exhausting but so wonderful!).  And then there was the (blessed) end of the basketball season.

So...in the middle of all that was my 20th wedding anniversary!  Brad, Elizabeth and Nin went to the store on March 2 to pick up some stuff  (and honestly, I can't remember what they had to buy but it was some grocery-something) - I didn't think anything about it.  I woke up the morning of March 3, walked into the family room and there on the dining room table was a dozen white roses and a card.  Oh. What a surprise!!  Nin was right behind me, beaming.  She said, "Mommy, are you proud of me? I kept your roses a secret!! Do you love them?!"  Sweet girl. She was so excited for me - and excited that she'd kept the secret for her daddy.

What was really funny was about three hours later as I was getting everything ready for lunch, Nin says, "Daddy is coming home early and taking us to lunch at that place you ate when you got married."  Say what?!  So I called him, "Are you coming home early and taking us to lunch?" (translation: do I need to go get in the shower right now?)   As it turns out, no, we weren't going to lunch - we were going to dinner.  Phew.  So, we had dinner, took the kids to AWANA, then we went to WalMart. Whooo-hooo! :)  Seriously, though, a happy day.

My New Favorite Laundry Detergent

First of all, let me be clear - I have in no way been compensated for writing this blog post. I purchased this laundry detergent with my own money (and a coupon...it was either $2 off or $1 off, I can't remember).

I have four children.  Can I even begin to tell you how much laundry I do in a given week?  Trust me, you don't want to know.  So, I've read on blogs about method laundry detergent, and everyone raved about it.  I was in Target one night, needed some laundry detergent, had a coupon, decided to try it.  I bought the 25 load bottle of the Fresh Air fragrance.  As I recall, it was $7.99/bottle before the coupon.  Yes, that is expensive for just 25 loads - but like I said, I've read raves.

Now that I've used it, I see why I have read raves.  This stuff does a great job!  Four squirts from the pump are all I need to wash a full load (remember, I have the washer that can wash "16 pairs of jeans" in one load...well, different brand but same size washer).

Obviously we can have some stinky and dirty clothes in The Shoe.  The Fresh Air fragrance of this detergent is perfect. Very light. And it really does make our clothes smell like they're fresh off the clothes line (man...I miss the clothes line from my childhood days!).  Elizabeth and Nin are very particular about how things smell.  When they help move the laundry after I've used Method, they both swoon and get silly while saying, "Oh, Mommy! I love the way this laundry smells! I love it!!" 

As for dirt, I've not had any issue with stains.  Granted I do pretreat the stains around here because it's usually stuff like mud or KoolAid or marker.  But on the general dirty-because-we-played-outside dirt...it's been great. The clothes come out of the wash nice and clean.  And did I mention they smell good?  (yeah, E and Nin come by it honestly)  This is especially important for the girls' clothes since they get handed down from sister-to-sister-to-sister (and soon to Baby Cousin).

I also like that none of us are allergic to this detergent!  Yes, you read that correctly.  Me, woman who is allergic to almost every detergent under the sun, is not allergic to this one.  Finally, I can use something other than All Fresh Rain (and let me tell you, after the 100oz of that stuff that I had to clean off the laundry room floor...I'm ready to use a different fragrance!!)  or All Free & Clear.  Harrison has such horrible dry skin (it cracks and bleeds in the winter) that I have to be super careful what I use for his laundry as well.  He's not reacted one bit to this new detergent. If I should ever develop an allergy to the Fresh Air fragrance (oh please NO!) then they also have a free and clear that I can use. 

So, there ya have it.  Method Laundry Detergent. Approved by The Shoe.  Oh, and as I grabbed the link to their webpage, I noticed they're offering a $2 off coupon.  Be sure to print it!  And if you decide not to use it, you can give it to me.