To My Kendi and My Aydri

You two are the funnest girls in the whole wide world. I love how you fill our house with giggles, squeals, and excitement. When you're playing together it makes everything feel so right. I love how Kendi is so sweet to Aydri and Aydri feels loved and taken care of by her big sister. Aydri is so eager to return that love.

Kendi, you are so full of life. You help me be the adventurous person I always wanted to be. My life never felt so fulfilling until after you came along. You are unbelievably smart and talented. You excel at everything you set your mind to. You have wonderful ideas and come up with creative things to surprise us with all the time. Lately, you've been testing your hand at cooking in the kitchen during quiet time when I'm resting. It's funny to see what you've come up with everyday when I get up. I can't wait to be your mentor and have many great experiences and discoveries. I think that the both of us will learn a great deal together.

Aydri, you make me smile every moment of your life. All your little antics and mannerisms are so cute. The way you run with a bounce in your step and ask questions in your high tone. If I'm ever stern with you, you say so sweetly, "Sorry, mommy." Despite the handful you can be sometimes, no one can ever stay mad at you. You have an energy for life that no one can keep up with. You love to run and play and sing and dance. You seem to have no fear. And then you can turn into the cuddliest little sweetheart at the drop of a hat. I hope we always have that closeness.

I love you both so much and hope to be able to provide you with everything you need. Love, mom.

Another Brag Post

Aydri has started putting words together. Some I've heard her say today are: "Ew, gross," "Drink of water," "Bye, Deh wee" (Cari) and "I don't know." She says new things everyday. Some words that surprise people because of how clear she says them are, "What!" "YES!" "uh huh" and "uh uh." I love this stage, she is so funny.

Aydri loves to sing. She will sing for hours. She wakes up singing and sometimes we hear her singing in the middle of the night. She loves to dance too.

Kendi and Aydri have been playing really well together lately. They will play together non stop for over an hour. It's so fun to hear them giggling together. Occasionally, they fight too. I have to talk them through their conflicts to show them how to get along.

Kendi has quite the imagination. She comes up with creative names like, Shula, Ellie, Pellie, Jellie, Jeskie, Leesie, Mulan, Crasie, Barbie and Chellie.

Update

There's no way I'm going to catch up with everything that I should be writing about so I won't even try. Here's the things I love about my kids lately.

Kendi has so much personality and she is getting so grown up. It almost scares me how independent she is. I love spending time with her and try to take her with me somewhere everyday just because of how much fun we have. Lately, she has been coloring a lot for the local coloring contests. She has entered seven so far and is still coloring everyday to enter more. She loves it. She loves her preschool group. She is good at writing all the letters and numbers and doing all the activities. She is really outgoing and loves to get involved in whatever is going on. We are living with my parents while the house is being built and there aren't a lot of kids here. She made friends with the seventy something year old man next door. She talks to him for hours. Recently, Jared and I took her to St. George with us to check out some furniture sales. She loves chinese food and we wanted to go somewhere fun so we took her to Mongolian BBQ. She loved picking out items to put in her bowl, but she was so hungry that she grabbed it while I was filling my bowl. I lost her for a minute. I found her sitting at an empty, dirty table eating her raw noodles with her fingers. I had to convince her to come back and add sauce and have it cooked. She smiled at the guy that cooked her noodles and he was friendly back. They made her some spring loaded chop sticks and she ate with them the whole time. She had a blast.

Aydri is growing up so fast that I can't get things written down before she into something new. I just decided to sit down and write whatever I can remember. She is talking and communicating a lot lately. Her words aren't exactly clear, but her cute little voice is so sweet. She loves to give squeezes and kisses. She likes to play high five games and sing itsy bitsy spider. She knows when she is tired and last night she asked me to go "night night." I was surprised and didn't think that was really what she meant, but she led me to her bed and went to sleep. Just now, she fell asleep next to me on my bed. She has gotten tall like her sister and is predicted to be 5' 7.5". She copies phrases that her sister says like, "mama, mama, mama" and "daddy, daddy, ummm." She likes to sit on top of whatever I'm trying to do.

We sure love our kids.

Aydri's words

Aydri seems to be learning multiple words everyday now. My favorite is "Bumpa" for Grandpa. She finally figured out how to say no. No matter what questions she is answering, she doesn't just say, no, she always yells it.

Creative

Kendi's recent made-up words are "Chicka chicka wow wow!" and "Shoosh!"

Several months ago her favorite words were, "Okie dokie, artichockie!" and "Chicka chicka boom boom, will there be enough room?" These last two she got from books and movies, but the ones she's saying now are her own creation.

She's also been very creative with making things lately. She's seen me take apart clothes to make into birthday presents and other things and she wants to do the same. I've limited her to paper though. She has made all kinds of costume creations for barbie like crowns and dresses. She drew pictures of baby chick body parts and cut them out and taped them together. I was very impressed. I love to see her be creative with ordinary things

Daddy's Girl

Lately, Jared has been working from home. He gets up at 4 am to get a full days work in before he goes to work on the house for 10 hours. Aydri doesn't understand that he's working. If he doesn't have the door closed then he ends up working with Aydri on his lap. If the door is shut then she stands outside knocking with her little fist and yelling, "DADDY!" It's kind of cute.

Hard Worker

Kendi has learned to read. It's been a process and I don't know why I haven't mentioned it yet. Right now she is four sets into the Family Reader books. We've been reading these books since Christmas when we got them from Gma and Gpa Barnes. Before that she learned the alphabet and letter sounds with hooked on phonics. Her attention span has gone from just a few minutes to over an hour. She can read the books all by herself. I'm so proud of her. I feel inadequate to be her teacher. I'm going to try to find a program that can help me help her. We are planning on home-schooling our kids. I started teaching Kendi a little at a time just to see what would happen. Her ambitions for learning are what have kept us going. It is our favorite time of day and we don't seem to have any conflict during lessons. I've tried to figure out what makes this time of day run so smoothly so that I can apply it to the rest of our day.

"Break"fast?

Usually, I'm awake before my kids and after Jared has left for either basketball or work. I normally get to eat my breakfast in peace. Lately, I've been sick and have lost the ability to hear, smell and breath while I'm asleep. So I don't get much sleep and Jared has to stay home and work while he waits for me to get up and watch the kids. So lately, when I eat my breakfast the kids are hanging on me and needing me to get them food, bottles, wipe bums, etc. This morning Aydri was hanging on me and wanting me to pick her up. When she throws a tantrum I try to ignore it. Aydri's tantrums are wild. She got to the point of screaming her head off. I was calmly eating my breakfast and repeating "Say up, please" to her over and over. All of a sudden she stopped crying and quietly cried, "uhh, peese."

Aydri doesn't talk much so this was really sweet. Needless to say, I picked her up.

Aydri's First Year

I know this is more than a month late. I just wanted to be able to remember everything when I sat down to do it. I'm sure I'll come back and add what I'm going to forget right now.

Aydri is truly as unique as her sister and even more so they are unique from each other. Aydri is generally mild and soft spoken until she decides to get stubborn about something. Then her temper flares and she shows an angry streak that you wouldn't think a one year old was capable of. At this point in time, it is funny and entertaining, but I'm sure we'll have to come up with some coping strategies for her as she gets older. When you try to help or distract her she will swat and grunt at you and then throw herself in the opposite direction. She's had this temper from the moment she was born.

Aydri is very funny about dangerous things. She seems to have no fear. She will throw herself down stairways and laugh and want to do it again. We tried teaching her how to go up and down the way we taught Kendi, but she loses interest in doing it safely.

Aydri is also a little feisty with her sister. Kendi is good to not fight and get mad at her, but Aydri seems to think she can take her on. Lately, Aydri gets jealous if Kendi is in my lap or has a blanket that she wants. Aydri will decide that she wants that blanket and no other. Aydri will push and pull on Kendi and does not give up until Kendi gives in. I'm glad that Kendi is a great big sister, but this is another thing we're going to have work on as Aydri gets older.

Lately, Aydri likes to act like a big person. She will climb up on chairs and just sit there like big people do. She's tries to put on clothes and shoes that bigger people wear and use utensils at mealtimes.

Aydri has always been full of smiles and hugs and kisses. If you ask her for a kiss she will blow you one from her forehead. When she gives a hug she will lay her head against whatever part of you she can reach. She always, always has a smile, even when she doesn't feel good.

Her personality has been growing bigger everyday. I'm going to miss the sweet little baby that she's been, but I know we'll love getting more and more of her personality as she gets older.

Aydri - 11 months old

I've been avoiding this post because eleven months is not a baby anymore. She's transitioning into being a toddler. Its sad and exciting at the same time. Aydri has developed so much personality lately. She is a very loving and cuddly little girl. She's always been happy and smile, but lately she gives everyone hugs and snuggles. Its so precious. She gets excited easily and loves to laugh just because everyone else is laughing. She sings along and tells big stories when there is lots of conversation going on. I can tell she understands a lot more now. I can ask for loves and tell her "no, no" or "give that to mama." As sweet and quiet as she is, she can put up a good fight. If I try to give her a bottle and she doesn't want it, at first she will swat at it and then grab it and throw it. The day that she had an allergic reaction to eggs we were told to give her medicine whenever her rash started to come back. If we didn't she would have a much worse reaction than the first one. For this reason we didn't want to go to sleep that night not knowing how long the medicine would last. We decided to give her blessing. She did not like having hands on her head. Throughout the blessing she would grab at them and try to throw them off. She loves to do patty cake, Here's Where the Cat Sits and Shoe the Little Horsey. She likes to throw stuff in the toilet and pull trash out of the trash can. She like to stand backwards on the church benches and play with whoever is sitting behind us. She is starting to interact with kids more. She tries to get Kendi to play with you. She is pretty independent and can entertain herself for long periods of time. She makes the most adorable animal sounds, but most of the time she will only do it for Gma Bulloch. She won't perform for anyone, ever.

Aydri's Quirks

• Aydri loves to jump on and snuggle with pillows. She has to try all of them out.
• She loves to climb up to windows and knock on them.
• She puts her hands on her head when she's mad.
• She thinks she needs to help you wipe her dirty bum.
• At church she moves from person to person and stares at them until they smile at her and then she smiles back.
• She answers "yes" to every question.

Good Sister

This morning I woke up a 5 am to the sound of Aydri crying. We've been doing the delayed response method with her and so far its been working. She's been sleeping really well lately. We've even been experimenting with letting Kendi sleep in her own bed again with Aydri in the same room. So when Aydri started crying I wondered what Kendi was going to do. After about a minute I could hear this really sweet singing. Kendi was making up a song to sing to Aydri. She immediately settled down and went back to sleep. I couldn't believe how precious it was. Kendi is such a sweetheart to Aydri.

Also, today, Aydri has been teething worse than ever. She whines, screeches and cries incessantly. Tylenol doesn't seem to be helping. I feel bad for her, but its really wearing on me too. Kendi got mad about it at one point and I had to explain why Aydri was upset. I had gotten to the point where I just wanted to put a pillow over my head and go to sleep, but that wasn't an option, so I bundled her up and sat in the rocking chair with her. When Aydri gave up sitting in my lap I went to check on Kendi and I found her in her room asleep with the door shut. Apparently, she had had enough too.

Stomach Flu

Kendi came down with the stomach flu a couple of weeks ago. We would tell her she looked very pale. She would wake up after resting and say, "Mom, do I still look like a pail?" I tried to explain to her that this was a different kind of pale that meant her face didn't have any color. A few days later she told my mom that when she was sick she looked like a pail that didn't have any color.

Dear Aydri - 10 Months Old

You're pretty good at keeping up with your sister. You crawl very fast and quiet. You sneak away from us or get under our feet without us even realizing you moved. You also stand up by yourself and walk if someone is holding your hands.

You've learned how to explore by yourself. You spend most of your time emptying drawers and cupboards. I have to follow behind you and clean up. Staircases don't scare you at all. You prefer to go down head first even after hours of teaching you how to up and down. You think its funny to stand up and fall down them. All we can do for you now is keep you away from them. You say words like, "yes," and "it is," but the only ones you say and understand are, "Bah bye, Dada" and "Mama." You wave "night, night." You know when its time for bed. We snuggle your blanket around you and you don't even move, you just go right to sleep.

You make the funniest "talking" sounds. You pick up the phone and the remote and hold them to your ear and yell into them. Your very animated like your daddy. You prefer certain people at certain times. You yell for daddy when you wake up in the morning, but when you're hungry and when you were sick you only wanted mom. You get excited whenever you see your grandma's. You still smile at everything. Even when your sick and lethargic we can get a smile out of you.

Sunbeam

Kendi's version:
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My version:
Yesterday, Kendi gave the prayer in primary. I went in to watch her. When I went in the back door I realized there was no where to stand. So I went back out to go in the side door. Apparently, Kendi saw me leave because when I came back in she was puckered up ready to cry. After she saw me she still wouldn't stop crying. I kind of knew this was going to happen. She is so good as long as I'm not there, but if I'm there she gets moody. So I pulled her aside and tried to talk to her about giving the prayer. For some reason, she was set on giving the talk and was refusing to say the prayer and was getting more upset. Finally, I told her I had a candy bar in my bag if she would say the prayer. She immediatly perked right up and went back to her chair. I wasn't sure if Kendi was going to need help. She is so good at giving prayers at home. Some time inbetween her going back to her seat and giving the prayer I got trapped between two isles of chairs. Yes, we have a huge primary. There are thirty sunbeams alone. Anyway, I figured the leaders could help her if she needed it. When it was her turn she got right up there and said a very well thought out prayer all by herself. Even the other primary kids were impressed and kept telling her she did such a good job. It was a proud moment for me.