shelby's first somersault

she finally did it! she would walk her legs way up to her head and we would flip her over. today, she made it over all by herself!

and then she did it off of the kitchen step... okay, so she's not real wise about it yet.

i wasn't ready and missed the picture. check back on this post, i'm sure it will show up, soon!

bummer

we had to leave y-town today. i'm not mad at anyone, but i'm really bummed. bob needed his space back, dad's house was over-run with dogs, and karen's and nick's houses were under construction.

i'm not ready to go home! i really wanted to hang out with people this week.

stephon's happy, though. he's been home a whole 24 hours by himself and he's lonely. he misses us :)

merry christmas x3

our christmas with mom and bob was on the 26th. there was the old faithfuls that showed up such as boxers for all of the guys, nail files for everyone, and the unfortunate steeler's paraphernalia for steve. however, we missed one of our dearly beloved... the sugar wafer cookies!

shelby and elizabeth seemed to cooperate a bit more today, but shelby and karen were having words! shelby kept trying to get into karen's candy, which included lemonheads. if shelby would have waited a few minutes i'm sure bob would have snuck some sweets to her and elizabeth while no one was looking, anyway. she didn't need to risk her life with karen!

the world dairy expo played a large part in our christmas this year. many, many, many gifts came from there! we all have lots of interesting cow gifts. mom went with her friend rita and apparently snagged items from all of the vendors in sets of six!

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merry christmas x2

we had our family christmas today at mom's. i'm determined to get stephon to look forward to holidays! bribery works, i think. i got him an electronic reader that he's talked about for months. i believe that's the last we've seen of him this holiday.

nathan and shelby seemed to like their gifts. we didn't do a lot, but what they got they are having fun with. hopefully they will appreciate the time with family more than anything.

elise slept through christmas today. she's not quite ready to jump up at 5 am and run to see what santa has left her.

bob has been sneaking sweets to shelby all day. i guess a week of sugar won't kill her, but bob may end up cleaning up after a baby with an upset stomach.

we ended the day with a very competitive game of monopoly. stephon, nathan, and i engaged in real estate battle for a couple of hours. nathan was the first to bankrupt. there are some real life lessons this boy can learn here! stephon lost his rear end, too. oh yes, i was victorious! and since i'm the one writing the blog, i will let everyone know :D

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merry christmas

we spent christmas eve at dad's. stephon missed it because he was in-route to y-town. other than that, it was a lot of fun. the family has multiplied exponentially in the last couple of years, it seems. all of the babies were there!

shelby and elizabeth take turns chasing each other, and stealing the other's toys. sharing isn't real high on the skills list at this point. shelby is 23 months old, and elizabeth is 15 months.

cookies are apparently real high on the 'gotta have it' list, though! shelby kept getting into the cookies in the kitchen so we were trying to keep her out of them. i walked in just in time to see karen trying to get her out of them. shelby growled, snarled, grabbed a cookie and crammed it into her mouth! it was somewhere between really funny and very scary. karen decided not to come between her and cookies anymore. i was on my own.

gabrielle and elise are four and five weeks old. they napped and ate together, but aren't even aware of the other's existence.

nathan and bill hung out in the back room playing with the mp3 player that bill, sandy, steve, and karen got him. in some aspects, such as electronics, i guess they're about the same age ;) dad tried to go back there to play online poker with nathan, but he got in trouble with kathy and had to come back out to be sociable.

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shelby

shelby said 'sheby' several times today. we haven't heard that one yet. she doesn't seem to associate it with herself, though. if i ask her where shelby is, she doesn't do anything with that like when i tell her to go find naint or dada.

she's also learning to count to 10. we found an on demand channel that is all about teaching toddlers to count. we just started, so look for a post in the future bragging about how smart she is :)

smile !

i have found that instead of definite firsts with the kids i have days of 'i think, maybe' and then one day there's a confirmation that what i thought might be happening was! that's what happened today.

i thought elise was starting to smile a couple of days ago, but wasn't sure. could be gas, you know ;) but today i was able to make her smile a number of times in a row! i even caught pictures.

get real

today was less than the fantasy of horsepower tv and bon bons that my dad would like to believe is the life of a stay-home-mom.

today i have been spit up on, pooped on and then peed on by both of the girls. nathan has taken exponentially longer to get next to nothing done making my school teacher role much, much more difficult. all of this after getting an hour and a half of sleep last night.

i realized at 21:30 when i was finally starting dinner that i hadn't even had a chance to get out of my pajama's. oh yes, it was one of those days!

i had a moment at the end of the day, though. one of those moments that many women have when their husband caresses their cheek and tells them how much they love them and gently kisses their lips. no, stephon has not been possessed... no, those moments are very different for me. stephon looked at me with a crying baby in his hands, a toddler throwing a tantrum at his feet, an arguing teenager at the table and said to me "i don't know how you do it. i've never been dumb enough to think that your job is easy." be still my beating heart!

i can't believe i have a picture.

four generations

the girls and i followed mom and nathan to grandma french's today. nathan quizzed me with history trivia on the way there over my new walkie-talkies. i did pretty good! i didn't know i was so smart! okay, maybe i did ;)

grandma has the same toys at her house that my cousins and i played with! and let me tell you, i have some older cousins ;) it was very nostalgic to watch shelby play with them.

i do feel a bit guilty for being in medway and not stopping to see stephon's family in dayton so let me defend myself real quick because they know where my grandma lives... :) it was late when i left and the babies were asleep! i promise we will see you soon!

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and my birthday continues...

sandra and the kids came over this evening. they got here just in time to help nathan unload the groceries from the car and me to put them up after our trip to the store. they may never come back!

sandra brought me her tex-mex and chips and some cream of mushroom soup from zuppa for my birthday :) i love her tex-mex and i love zuppa's cream of mushroom soup, it's made from scratch.

nathan and bradley got to hang out, and the girls played with shelby. elise got attention from all of them. again, i felt a lot less housebound after they left.

we had a good time. and the only thing better than tex-mex and tortilla chips is tex-mex that you can double-dip in and eat the whole thing, if you can!

happy birthday to me!

it's my birthday!

i love my birthday :) i am usually pretty good about celebrating for weeks! however, elise is too little to take out to public places, nor do i think she would do well roaming around a tree farm. typically, we have a family tradition of going and cutting down a christmas tree for my birthday as well as putting up our christmas decorations and torturing stephon with christmas music :)

stephon delivered as well as he always has for my birthday! he got me electronic toys :) i got walkie-talkies for nathan and me to use if we're separated with the babies. or if he's in the florida room and i'm in the family room... looking at him through the door while we chat... whatever, it's fun! he also brought me chipotle's for dinner :)

nathan shovelled the driveway for me for my birthday! that would be really important since the driveway has a pretty decent incline to it and i have to get a running start to get the van in if it's icy.

mom left me a present when she was here that i've had to stare at for almost three weeks now. i finally got a farmall t-shirt! you have to understand that nathan has had a number of farmall t-shirts, jackets, pins, etc. for years. i've been waiting for mine forever! she also gave me a really neat western belt with real silver decorations on it. hmmm... i think i could really hurt someone with that one! thanks mom ;)

babies, babies, babies!

we finally got to meet gabrielle! we went to sandy's and bill's house for dinner. karen, steve, and elizabeth were there. kathy and nick were there. and ofcourse, sandy, bill, and gabrielle were there. there were babies everywhere!

you would think i would have taken pictures, but i didn't. i had my camera with me, but there was so much going on that i didn't even get it out.

disappointing, i know.

birthday party

terry came over today and we celebrated our birthdays :) her birthday is december 2, mine is the 6th.

she ran and brought back chipotle's... my favorite! and we made cheesecake... my favorite! okay, i'm feeling a little bad now, i did ask her what she wanted to have, but i think we ended up with all of my favorites!

it was nice to have company since i can't really take elise out just yet. i feel a lot less house-bound since she was here. we talked about taking pictures so that we could scrap our day, but then i forgot to get the camera out. i can't even play the pregnancy card any more when i forget things!

happy birthday to us!

i think i can do it!

well, i survived my first day alone with the kids! stephon went back to work today, and so did i :)

nathan got through school, the babies were clean and fed, i was dressed, dinner was made, and i even vacuumed the main living areas of the house. woo hoo! i think i can do this ;)

gabrielle lynn buckley

gabrielle lynn buckley was born on december 1, 2008 at 11:05 PM. she weighs 7 pounds and 1.5 ounces and is 20.5 inches long. mom and baby are doing great!