Enjoying!

Among the seemingly endless to-do lists, I had to stop for a moment and realize how much I'm enjoying this stage of my life right now. Both of the kids are so much fun to play with: Emerson with his adorable always-smiley face and calm nature and Ophelia with her endless supply of energy and hilarious stuff that comes out of her mouth. I love being able to sleep in till 7 or 7:30 (if I'm lucky) and being woken up with Ophelia's soft steps up to my bedside. I love not needing to rush anywhere in the mornings and just snuggle in bed, play on the rug and, enjoy breakfast together. I love to be at home with the kids and not needing to work and I love the kids not needing to go to school yet. I love watching them explore the world, make connections, and little discoveries, like that a raisin is a dried-up grape. I love the excitement in the house when PJ comes home from work. I love making delicious meals that my whole family enjoys. I love looking into my babies' faces and examining every little beautiful feature, trying to store it in my memory forever. I love my sweet little girl telling me lately: "Mama, you know what?.... I love you!" I love the quiet evenings with PJ after the kids go to sleep and I have been loving a couple of dates we've been able to go on in the past couple of weeks.

Of course this is a blog about the good times (mostly), but our little family is far from perfect. We have our moments... We struggle with parenthood on a daily basis - discovering more things we need to work on. I've been exhausted this whole week because everyone but me has had a cold. I forget whose dirty tissue I'm holding in my hand when there's another runny nose to wipe again... But everyone is starting to get better, and Emerson is sleeping through the night again, so I am happy :)

A couple of weeks ago, I gave Emerson a haircut...and the next day we decided to shave his head :) It's a good thing I went to school to be a dietitian, and not a barber. Here are the boys with their shaven heads:

The good news is that now his hair will grow even and lush :)

We love it when our cousin visits. Winston is crawling everywhere and has energy to match Ophelia's, so they love playing together. Emerson mostly just sits and observes his cousin and sister. He'll make a good supervisor in a couple of years :)

My attempts at getting a picture of matching shirt cousins:

PJ and I had so much fun painting the kids rooms. Well, I painted and then we did the borders together. We love how it turned out! Ophelia loves it too! We're still a long ways away from decorating our home, but this is huge progress and makes us feel more "at home".

It was nice of Grandma and Grandpa to have Ophelia over at their house for several days, so that we could actually accomplish this.

PJ drew and cut out the stencil for Emerson's room. I think it turned out awesome!

Here are my little детки в клетке (kids in a cage).

Ophelia feeding Emerson (and herself), while I cook dinner:

PJ and I went to a 50's style mystery dinner with some friends from the church. We had fun dressing up:

Big thanks to Mom and Judy for the clothes and ideas!

I am a minimalist as far as the decorations for holidays are concerned and if I do decorate, I like it to be a family project, so Ophelia and I painted some pumpkins for our entryway.

Our church "trunk or treat" kicked off the dressing up part of the holidays. Ophelia loved being a Rapunzel with that looong braid, until it got stepped on a couple of times at the party, then she did not want to wear the braid any more. Emerson was our little missionary. This past conference the age minimum requirement for the elders was lowered to 18 years, so we decided it was about time to get Emerson all excited to go on a mission :)

Ophelia had just as much fun handing out the candy as she had receiving it:

Texas with its fall weather is all over the place as usual. We had days with highs in the 80s and days with highs in the 50s. That night the temperatures were dropping quickly, thus Emerson has a little red button nose:

Me and the kids went to a fall festival in Round Rock on the 31st with some friends from church. We went on a hay ride (a first one for Emerson) and played lots of games, got lots of candy and even ate some cookies with juice.

The cat in the hat made an appearance at the festival:

More pictures of brother and sister playing. Here Ophelia was reading the "Five little monkeys" book for Emerson:

Good times:

And Emerson hit two milestones in the past two weeks: he learned how to sit up by himself and then a week later, he learned how to pull himself up to a standing position and stand by himself! So exciting and at the same time sad, because I have been enjoying the stage of development when you put him in one spot and he stays there until you come and get him... But he is a healthy growing boy and you can see the pride in his eyes to be able to stand up all on his own:

No new pictures of my garden, but as an update it has been a struggle and a learning experience... My tomato cages are upside down and I have been overwatering everything, so half of my garden is nothing but dirt... The ants are loving my garden though! Battling with them over my tomatoes. It does look like we'll have a good tomato crop this fall! We ate ONE strawberry two weeks ago. I paid $2.50 for that strawberry plant, so it was an expensive strawberry...but all organic though :) More pictures soon!