What is the deal?

I'm writing a book.  I'm cheating, just a little.  Fairy Tale rewrite.  Sounded like a good idea.  But suddenly there are not one, but two new film versions of Snow White coming out (and I also noticed a third in the horror section).  I guess I'm not the only one to take a cheater's method to coming up with an idea.  Lame.

P.S. What makes it worse, I have to admit that I want to see both Snow Whites. 

March photos

I hear Zeke starting to wake up, so I don't really have time for writing much.  But here are some of the latest photos of my little ones (although Zeke keeps reminding me, both verbally and just by me looking at him, that he is not little, he is big).

Zeke always wants to come with me to get Ashlynn when she wakes up.  He loves to get in the crib with her and give her big loves and then play ring-around-the-rosies and pull her down.  Sometimes he is gentle...sometimes he forgets.

This little cutie pie is 8 months old now!  I'm so glad she's ours.

yep, still cute

Ashlynn surprised us last week by taking some steps (not real steps, but while holding onto a moving object). She grabbed Zeke's tricycle and it started rolling away and Ashlynn's little feet just kept up the pace.  My current predictions are 12 months for walking.  But we'll see.  I wouldn't mind much later, and she may hope for earlier.  Although maybe if she is walking it will become easier to defend her from the "food" she is constantly eating, since it won't always be inches from her mouth and oh so tempting.  I'll look forward to that.

Ashlynn is figuring out the stairs.  A dangerous pastime, I know.  Time to get a soft rug at the bottom.

Zeke had a blast flying kites with Uncle Kalani and Aunt Erin.

Ashlynn and "Natural Food"

Natural food is all the rage these days.  Ashlynn wants in on this health secret.  So our little broom/mop/vacuum has expanded her self supplied diet.  She now has a fairly steady diet of eucalyptus leaves from the backyard (because it makes her breath smell mossy).

And she found that the all natural Vegas clay is quite tasty too.  She even went back for seconds.

Shortly after these pictures were taken Trustin decided to refresh my knowledge of how to help infants who get things lodged in their throats.  It is impossible to keep Ashlynn's mouth empty. I feel like I can open her mouth at any given moment and find a ball of lint, or a piece of leaf, or onion skin, or carpet.  At least she seems to not be picky!

March Madness

For all who don't know: Trustin loves basketball and is mad about March Madness.  The first several months of our marriage we went along just fine without access to any tv, just movies on our laptop.  Then March came along.  We had to track down some bunny ears.  Quite important, you see.

For our second March Madness together I was pregnant with a baby boy, and it was time to pick a name.  So naturally, we assigned a name to each team in the NCAA tournament, and vwalah: Ezekial.  Actually, Jarik won the official tournament, with Bob in second place, but we did a simultaneous tournament in which we eliminated the names, rather than letting fate fully decide our childs name.  Thus, Ezekiel.

For our third March Madness...hmm...we must have just sat around and watched.  I do recall eating some really good taco salad....

Now for our third Zeke is in on the excitement.  Last night Trustin had Zeke fill out his bracket.  Trustin would tell him the two teams and Zeke would choose who wins.  Almost every time he picked whichever team Trustin read second.  Almost.  Zeke had a few teams that he favored.  BYU did pretty well, as did UNLV.  St. Mary's did okay too.  For the final two: Lehigh (Nephi Daddy?) and Temple, with Lehigh winning.

A New Rendition of Old MacDonald

Zeke's additions to the classic kid song:

Old MacDonald had a farm.  E I E I O.

And on his farm he had a Po, with a Kung Fu here and a Kung Fu there.

And on his farm he had a Tigress, with a ROAR here and a ROAR there.

And on his farm he had a Rhinoceros, with a hit Ti Lung here and a hit Ti Lung there

And on his farm he had a Po's Dad, with a (uhg...I can't remember...but I know it was cute)

Zeke's first nightmare

Zeke had his first bad dream the other night.  In his own words:

"I had bad dream.  Somebody push button and it was noisy.  It scare me."

Ashlynn 7 Months

Despite my wishes, Ashlynn is growing and developing like crazy.  Okay, I am loving it, but I do wish she could just pause right here for a little bit.  And I realized I need to take more pictures of her.  I have close to nothing since her six month pictures, which is really a shame, and blogger does not seem to want to upload videos at the moment. Here are some of her latest little things though:

Ashlynn's absolute favorite thing to do is dance with Mommy or Daddy.  We hold one of her hands and sing and dance and bounce and dip her and she is all smiles and laughs. 

Ashlynn began pulling herself to standing on Feb 8th and now does it all the time. 

And I think because she wants to make things easy to record, one day after turning 7 months she started actually crawling, although she has been the master of the scoot for a month, and she still resorts back to that now too.

She decided this month that she does not like to wear headbands.  They are meant for eating only.  I keep putting them on so I can enjoy them for about ten seconds.

Ashlynn has also started to love bathtime with Zeke.  I usually bathe Zeke first and let Ashlynn play on the floor with toys until I'm ready for her, but now that she can pull herself up she instantly crawls over to the tub, stands up and starts reaching her hands in to splash with the water.  When she is in the water she doesn't act particularly excited, mostly just contentedly chews on Zeke's alphabet ( I gave up protecting the letters) and does a little splashing.  But she always gives me a little squawk and cry when I take her out.

She is a full time smiler now.  She is a very happy little lady, and about the only thing that makes her upset is when she realizes that she is playing by herself.  She prefers to play with Zeke, Mommy or Daddy, although she is getting more entertained by toys too.

I also call her my little sweeper, because since she started crawling I have been horrified at my sweeping skills because I am constantly pulling things out of her mouth.  Last week I fished something out only to discover that it was a piece of a Christmas decoration that Zeke broke (and I consequently swept up) clear back in December.  Seriously? There was still a piece of that on the floor and I have swept how many times since then?  But then, Ashlynn is a very skilled finder of any and all things bite sized.  Not only did she take a bit of Zeke's ham and cheese last month, she also managed to get a good bite out of a chocolate peanut butter candy on Valentines (lucky no allergies, eh?).  She was not too happy when I took that one away.

She has started to sing a bit.  Even never hearing it before, she knows the whole chorus to The Beach Boy's "Barbara Ann." She is yet to say Mama, or even mamamamama.

 One last little tid bit.  Today she fell asleep at Church completely folded in half. She was sitting on his lap in Sunday School and then she just folded over, put her head completely on her knees and was instantly out.  Comfy.

Well those are the memories and details I can think of for now.