"If I fall asleep while I am walking, you should probably hold me"

Monday:
Today we went and played at my parents house. We went to visit their chickens to see if they had laid any eggs. Farrah spotted the one egg straight away, she is going to be Grandma's helper spotting the eggs. We then played on the swing set for awhile. It was a beautiful day.
Monday Quotes
Adra: "I need to find Daxie's daddy." Me: "Who is Daxie's daddy" Adra: "You know, Daxie's daddy.....You find my belly button!" I know it doesn't make sense....it's Adra

Farrah was playing with all her polly pocket dolls (she has a ton!) and they were all sisters and one at a time she had them come and lay on the table....they were all looking at the clouds. She would say, "Sisters, sisters, what are you doing" (as she brought out a new doll), "Oh, you are watching the clouds, I want to watch the clouds too." - She continued doing this for like 15 minutes.
No pictures today

Tuesday:
We colored little Leprechauns this morning. Farrah is doing so well with her coloring. I have noticed a big improvement in the last month. Instead of just using one color, she uses a lot of the colors, and she colors in the whole thing, and really tries to color in the lines! (She colored in the "L" too, I just didn't get a picture of it finished).


While Farrah was finishing up coloring, Dax and Adra played some music, and Adra danced.

I had a good idea for the girls to get a little more involved with the whole planting process. I had a packet of wildflower seeds (most of the seed packets I bought were 20cents at Walmart!) that I hadn't done anything with. So I got a folder our and poured the seeds on it. There were at least 6 different types of seeds. We looked at all the different ones, and talked about what they all looked like. Then the girls got to pick out 6 seeds each, and we planted them. Once the seeds sprout, I am going to take the girls shopping so they can get their own little pots and we will plant them and put them outside. I know they will love having their own pots of flowers, plus it will be a surprise to see what kinds of flowers they will get!

Today was so beautiful outside, so we played outside. I got the sidewalk chalk out again and I drew another hopscotch (I am really not sure the correct way to draw it, so it is probaby wrong, but Farrah didn't seem to notice). She LOVES this game. I got a video this time of her doing it.

hopscotch from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

We then used the chalk to build a town with roads. Each girl had a car and we (we I) drew a house, a mall, a church, a park, and a pond. Farrah really loved this!

FarrahCity from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Adra relaxing

Back to playing

Farrah then brought out her Polly Pockets.....and made her own road to the Candy Shop.

Lunch time.
A fun beautiful day!

Wednesday:
Farrah came in my room this morning, "I thought I was going to throw up, but it's ok, I just threw up bubbles". I have no idea what that means, but she didn't throw up at all.
She has had a bad cough all week though, and it keeps her up all night, I feel so bad for her.

Joshua left for Canada this morning around 5am. I hate it when he is gone....not only because I love him, and miss him when he is not here, but he is also such a great help to me. In the morning he usually gets the kids fed for me, before he leaves for his run. We missed him this morning. The weather was supposed to be all rainy today, but instead it reached almost 70degrees outside and was sunny, with just a few clouds. To celebrate spring arriving soon, the girls each made a flower garden (on paper) this morning. I just cut out flower stems, and petals, then when they were done gluing them, they got to add some sticker bugs.



Most of my seeds that Farrah and I planted have spouted.....it amazes me how much they grow in a single day.
After lunch we went to Grandma's house to play outside. Grandma surprised the girls with gardening tools, so of course they had to go and dig.


While we were there Dax popped his nose on an empty dog food bowl and the poor baby got a bloody nose. He didn't complain too much about it....his is a touch little guy. Yes that is blood coming out of his nose.

The poor thing also got a bad diaper rash. He started getting it yesterday, and I have changed his diapers frequently and kept a lot of diaper cream on his sweet bum, but today it got much worse, it was even bleeding! Luckily it was a nice day, so we stripped him naked and put him in a little bowl with some warm water. He loved it! Isn't he so precious. I need to get a big enough bowl for my house so he can do this when we are hanging out outside, because he just had so much fun!

outside bath from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

The neighbors came over and played a little bit too. Farrah and Adra love when they have playmates. Dax only peed on me once, and once in the house, which is good since he spent most of the afternoon and evening diaperless. I finally put one on him when we left. I hope tomorrow it will be better. Farrah said our nighttime prayer tonight, and I reminded her before she started to bless Daddy, since he is traveling. She said a sweet little prayer, and when she started to talk about Daddy, I noticed she was sniffing a little bit, so I took a peak at her and she was rubbing her eyes. After the prayer, I could tell she was crying, so I scooped her up and asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she missed her Daddy. She is so sweet and tenderhearted. Unfortunately she didn't get to talk to Josh today, but she is going to call him tomorrow morning. Both girls are turning more into Daddy's girls everyday....I know he just loves it! I can't wait to see Joshua tomorrow night, too.
Thursday:
Daddy came home! The girls were very happy to see him. Dax's diaper rash drastically improved, I think all the fresh air helped a ton!. It was triple bath night. Dax got a fun sink bath, which he loves.

While Josh was blow drying Farrah's hair she fell asleep.

Fall asleep Farrah from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Friday:
We went back to my parents house. It was a little colder today. Adra had fun jumping in the puddles....without shoes on, I might add!

Here she is asking to go inside because she is freezing.

She ended up just striping, and then headed out to the back yard to play on the swing. Then the girls insisted on eating popsicles....did I mention it was chilly outside?

Friday night my parents watched the girls. Josh and I took Dax to the Cincinnati Home and Garden show to get some ideas about our back yard. It was a fun trip.
Saturday:
BLAH! It rained and rained and rained today! I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen and playroom. Around lunch time I was ready to get out of the house, so we loaded up the kids and headed to McDonald's. The kids love playing there, usually it takes them a few minutes to start playing....they get a little nervous....but this time they headed straight for the jungle gym thing.
We then headed to Meijer and picked up some paint for Dax's room....they are discontinuing their paint department, so we got a great price! Now we just need to find the time and energy to paint his room!
Sunday:
We went to church, of course. I agitated my back sometime during the day, and by the time we got home, I could barely walk. I laid around most of the night, and Josh got to deal with the children. My parents left this morning for Florida......we are very jealous!

Please don't judge all of the many errors in spelling and grammar that I have in my posts. Most of the time I am juggling at least one child on my lap, while another one is crying, and the other one is asking for a drink while I am trying to type....I do the best I can!

"Whats your favorite word?"

So since I seem to be having memory issues, I am trying something different.....each day I am writing a little summary of our day (saving it, but not publishing it)......at the end of the week I will add the pictures......and then, viola, I will know what we did during the week.
Monday:
Today we watched home movies. It was fun for the girls to see video of themselves as babies.....well mostly Farrah appreciated it. Farrah was such a sweet baby. It makes me sad that so many of those cute little things that she did as a baby I had forgotten. I forgot that we always called her "stinky", I forgot that she used to make all these funny faces, one being the "bitter beer face", and she used to do this thing where she would breath really heavily. We would always ask her, "Whats your favorite word?" and before we could even finish the sentence she would say, "DOGGY!". We would also ask her, "what do grownups say?" and she would look down and kind of shake her head and in a low voice say, "Ah agh ah agh ah." I love all of those things....and there are many many more, and I had completely forgotten about them. I am so grateful for video cameras! And that made me think that I have been very bad at getting my video camera out lately! I use my digital camera all the time and do little video clips on it, but I love having those little tapes of our home videos, so I vow to do better. Most of the videos were of Farrah before or right after Adra was born. It made me think of what it was like to have just one baby. I love all my children with all of my heart, but I have to say that it is so special when you have just one child.....your first little baby. Nothing can compare to that feeling. Things are a lot more crazy in our house now with three, we have a bigger house, more laundry, tons more toys, things were just so much simpler and easier when we just had Farrah.....of course I wouldn't trade my life now for anything, I am just glad that we had that special time in our life....and I have it on video. I really can't believe that Farrah is going to be 4 in April. I can't believe that time has passed us by so quickly; I really wish I could freeze time for at lease a couple years (does that make any sense). I just want Dax to stay a sweet little baby, and Adra........hmmm well she can go back in time to about a year ago.......and Farrah is just too big.....I don't want her to grow anymore! OK I will stop with the whole, "memory lane" thing.
On with the rest of the day:
I had the sudden urge to make hair bows. The girls colored pictures of fish.....Farrah even put worms in front of his mouth. Well that was pretty much it, it was a pretty mellow Monday for us.




Tuesday:
Today was a babysitting day. This afternoon we had Joseph and Emma over for a couple hours. The girls just love having buddies to play with. They love to play to run around around and play "super powers" with Joseph. Later that night (around 6:30) we had the Allen kids over, while their parents went to see Wicked. The kids had such a good time. The kids brought their sleeping bags over, so around 8:45 we got the sleeping bags all spread out in the living room (Adra asked repeatedly to go to bed around 7pm, but we kept her up till 7:45). Farrah and Nadia shared a sleeping bag, and we watched a movie. They all stayed awake for the whole movie except for Livy. Then after the movie I put Farrah to bed, and all the other kids fell asleep. We put Piper to bed in Dax's crib around the same time as Adra. Joshua took Dax in our bed, and I just stayed in the loft and read until they came and picked the kids up. Farrah and Adra had a blast!!!!

For a couple days, Adra insisted on wearing swimming diapers....I think they look nice with her church shoes, don't you think?

Even Dax had fun playing with the big kids in the play room. He now knows where the play room is, and crawls there frequently. I have to make sure it is nice and clean all the time know.

Wednesday:
Craft day! I covered our kitchen table with my Ikea paper (LOVE IT!). I set up four stations for the kids: paint (with paint brushes and sponges), markers, crayons, and stickers/gluing. I set the timer (I varied between 5-10 mins per station, depending on how into it they were), the kids took their seats.....and they were off. They crated a beautiful table. Of course after they were done, they wanted to keep it up so that their Daddy could see it. He was impressed. This was in the morning. In the afternoon we went to my parents house and played with the Allen kids again. Mom took a few kids outside (kids would trickle back inside, and other would go out). I stayed inside with the Dax and Piper (and whoever was inside at the time). Adra stayed outside the whole time, which I was surprised about, because she usually freezes when she is outside (guess since it was close to 40 outside she was ok). They played on the swing set and took a walk. We came home and I made brinner (breakfast for dinner). Then we had our Family Home Evening (a couple days late!). It was a fun day.

Stations everyone from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Station 1

The painting station was the obvious favorite.

When we were all done, Farrah went back to do some more painting.

Thursday:
Hmmm, I can't really remember....but I do have this cute video of Dax.

Untitled from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Friday:
Today we played "boat". The girls started playing this game all by themselves (once I realized what they were doing I quickly got the fish and octopusses that, and the fishing pole. They has fun rowing places and fishing, and then they would stop, build a fire and cook all their food. Farrah said the octopus wasn't very good, and it needed salt and pepper.

Lets go fishing from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

We also planted seeds. Farrah helped me do this while Adra was napping. She has so much fun! I am so excited to have my own little garden. This year I growing everything in pots, but maybe next year (after we have a patio) I will put in a real garden. I let the girls pick out flowers too, so we can plant those in the front. Farrah has to check on the seeds every day, and she is so excited to see them grow.




Saturday:
I had a stake Primary activity in the morning, which was a Father Daughter carnival, and each ward was in charge of a country and an activity. We had Korea, and it was very successful because of Stacy Funk. I got home around 1pm, and then we went on a walk to the park. It was a beautiful day! When we got home, we played with chalk on the driveway. I finally had to drag myself inside to start working on dinner for that night and Sunday night.

i knew she was a monkey from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

So I know Josh sort of helps her in this video, but the first time she did it, she climbed the whole thing by herself!

They both like to climb

I did it!





I know, I made the hopscotch backwards.....it has been a long time. Farrah watched an episode of Curious George about 3 weeks ago, and it was all about hopscotch...so she asked me to draw her one. She is so cute (I wish I had a video!), she found a little rock, and she would throw it on a number (then we would say the number....a little teaching moment). Then she would hop till she got to the little rock, then she would, while balancing on one leg, bend over and pick up the rock. She told that is was really important to do it while on one leg. She is so precious. Joshua and Adra went for a little walk, and she stayed back with me and just kept doing it over and over. She LOVED it! Next time I will have to draw it correctly.

On Sunday we had a family over for dinner. I made apricot and orange glazed pork tenderloin....it was amazing,
To make the glaze you combine 1 cup apricot preserves, 3/4cup orange juice and the juice from one lemon. First sear the meat in a little oil, till it is brown on all sides. Then pour the glaze over it, and pop it in the oven at 400 degrees, and cook for 10-15 minutes. Put a foil tent on it, and let it rest for ten minutes. You won't regret it!
Joshua made the mashed potatoes, and they were delicious too. For dessert I made chocolate cabin cake, and it was really good too. I will have to post the recipe sometime, because seriously it is a great cake. We had a fun weekend, and we are so grateful the snow is melting, and we are seeing the sunshine again.

PS - My flowers sprouted today....Farrah was so excited!

DaDa

By the time the week is over, I can't remember what we did at the beginning of the week. I need a new brain. The girls LOVE wearing their swimsuits......which kind of depresses me since there is still snow on the ground. I hope in the future we can travel more during these winter months......I just hate being stuck inside all the time. I know soon it will be easier for me to manage the three kids by myself, but unfortunately right now, there is no way I can. Dax is great, and Farrah listens to me, but as soon as we step foot in a store Adra changes into "Destructo Adra"! She just throws fit after fit, and screams, and runs away. If I had just her, I would be able to do it, but I can't deal with her, and make sure Dax and Farrah are safe, and then also shop. And yes I strap her into the cart, but she can wiggle her way out of it very quickly, even though I tighten the straps. We went to Kohls and Target on Saturday, and Josh had to take her out in the van for a little while to calm her down. Once he did, she was fine the rest of the trip, but you just never know what will set her off. Even though she is a stinker, just look at the beautiful face.....she is a sweetie too.

We painted some pictures, and here are the girls cleaning up after painting.

We watched Emma and Joseph and they had fun playing "Super Powers!"

Super Powers from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

Farrah just loves her baby brother.

We had pizza night! The girls love to get out the cookie cutters and pick out the shapes they want to make their pizza. Farrah did a gingerbread man, and a heart, Adra did a star and a fish. I got a bag on mini pepperoni's from Costco, and they are so much fun, and the girls love them!


Farrah made a card for Anabelle. She even wrote "Belle" and "Farrah" on the inside. What a smartie! The front of the card is a picture of Belle, and she gave her a hair bow, and lots of jewelry.

Grandma bought them umbrella's and they have just loved playing with them....Farrah keeps hoping that it will rain so we can go outside and try them out. I just wish for like an hour of sunshine!!! I feel like I am living in Forks (Twilight reference)

We had a coloring day. I love to color!

Here is Adra showing off her page (that she didn't color, she instead colored on the table.....of course!)

Adra and Farrah love to play with Dax's hats. Isn't she so cute.

I made this little name game....I did "Farrah", "Dad" and "Adra".

Dax is getting so big! He is saying "Dada", and he says "Da" when you say Dax to him. He is also pulling himself up on things and letting go. He can balance for about a second or two. I am so not ready for him to start doing all this standing and walking stuff! I just want him to stay a baby forever!!!! We have been watching home videos this morning, and it just breaks my heart seeing my Farrah as a baby. While we were watching it I told Farrah she needs to stop growing up, and she responded, "Ah, mom I like diet coke, so I have to keep getting big so I can drink diet coke". Nona will be proud :-)

DaDa from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

I got some on my bum from Chelsea Childress on Vimeo.

If you can't tell in the above video they are saying, "Strawberry yum, strawberry yum, I got some on my bum" (It is from the Wonder Pets).

Friday night my mom took me to go see Wicked again (there was a group of us that went), and my wonderful husband stayed home with the kiddies, so I could go. He is so good to me.