For the record I'm Shawn T

My hard drive broke last weekend so I was without a way to blog for a week or so. I lost about a months worth of pictures :( but I had the rest backed up so it could have been much worse!  So to get into it let's talk a little Pantera. I found this awesome checklist she wrote in her room it went like this:
Perfect outfit (check)
have mom curl hair(check)
shoes ready(check)
attitude and psas!(check)
lotion on face(check)

I guess she was gearing up for quite the day, with all that psas and all! I nearly peed my pants when I read it. She was asked to be a flower girl for some May queen pageant thing tomorrow...it entails dressing up fancy and sitting still for several hours, it should be interesting to say the least!

Ezekiel was so busy digging up dinosaur bones beneath our trampoline yesterday. Each time he would pull up dirt he would run over and proudly show me and even let me take a few pics. He was especially proud of his dirt clumps, I must admit they were awesome. He pushed me to the limit last night, he just doesn't listen sometimes and it is so hard because he is in his own little world most of the time. I was getting him out of the bathtub and he spit on me, I got upset and started lecturing him and he was obviously zoning until my lecture ended with "And you are clueless to the fact I am upset with you!" He happily repeats "Yes, clueless, clueless, Lewis, Jeff Gorvette, Francesco Bernulli, Lightning McQueen!" I just love him.

Amari has to claim to be a character from everything she sees. This morning it was my workout video, she says she is the instructor "I Shawn T!" If you want to tick her off say "No, I'm Shawn T." It will send her through the roof, also don't sing "I am a child of God" that's her song. And she's Rainbow dash from My little Pony, here she is with her sweet pony shirt I had to make to get her out of her Perry shirt one day...

She asked if I would put her "up" on the ceiling so she could fly today, when I told her those wings wouldn't actually work she said "oh man." She is so fun to be around.

 Katurah almost got away with a free chicken dinner last night. While we were eating dinner Zeke walked over to talk to her, this is normal so and I wasn't paying to much attention. I heard him say something about chicken and looked over and she has a huge hunk of grilled chicken in her mouth and she is happy as can be. That is until I took it out and she cried. He meant well. Katurah sure gets excited to see her daddy everyday, and can your blame her?

 Here's a little eye candy for you...you're welcome.

Where did the last 6 months go?

Where do I even start? My baby is 6 months old today. In the past week she has learned to roll from tummy to back, then from back to tummy. She also has started sitting unsupported and will now object when you take something away from her.

 Seeing as she is likely our last one, I am having a REALLY HARD TIME with all of her progress! It is so bittersweet, I try to cherish every moment, every smile, every giggle, every time she rests her sweet little head on my chest. But I can't help feeling a little robbed in the process. Not being able to nurse has KILLED me, I absolutely hate having to hold her at arms length while hooked up to the pump, I just miss that, I crave that bonding that can only come through nursing...ok waa, waa...I'm going to suck it up now.

 But seriously, why does it have to go so stinkin' fast?!? If I could freeze time I would pick right now, my kids all at the ages they are now.

 More about my sweet Katurah...she is always waiting with a smile. She is such a happy little girl. Jess gets jealous because she saves all the best laughs for me. I figure it's only fair seeing as I birthed her and all. But she does just crack up everyday and when you get her going it makes you feel pretty special. The only other person she's ever laughed really hard for was my sister Meredith, I still maintain that her vision still hadn't developed and she thought Meredith was me...fine Ruffy she likes you to.

 Now that she can move more I'm seeing her feisty side come out. Amari will lay next to her and automatically Katurah rolls to grab her and gets a kick out of it when Amari tells her no...payback stinks little one;)

 Her cute open mouth laughs...LOVE THEM!!!

 My favorite time is at night with her. When the other kids are in bed and I can hold her without any distractions (not that they are distractions, but with potty training and getting snacks and someone always needing something, I just don't get enough Katurah during the day!). Even better is at night when she falls asleep laying on me, if I ever need reminded why being a mom is the best, there's a great reason.

 Look at those chins!

 One funny thing, when she doesn't have a flower in and I comb down her hair it looks like Hitler's. I know that is a terrible thing to say, but I'm not the only one to point that out! Considering our Jewish ancestry that just seems wrong.

Happy 1/2 birthday kiddo! We are so glad you are a part of our family. Mommy promises to try not to be to much of a cry baby forever. Someday you will understand.

Great art and unibrows go hand in hand

Amari is constantly cracking me up. She has so much personality and HILARIOUS facial expressions. She is talking alot more which comes in handy when she wants to pick on her siblings.

 Amari still LOVES the Perry shirt that Grandma and Papa Hammond got for her. It is gray, so are alot of other shirts at our house. Unfortunately, this cute little one sometimes reacts before getting all the facts, like the other day when she attacked Zeke from behind because she thought he was wearing said shirt. Boy did she feel sheepish when she saw the front had Lightning McQueen on it...maybe not sheepish, it was more of a-you've been warned-reaction.  Word to the wise, don't mess with Perry.

 Dear sweet Amari, the world is her canvas...at least that's what she thinks. I have never seen a kid so obsessed with coloring on EVERYTHING. What does a girl got to do to get discovered? Maybe a little unibrow action will give off the next great artist vibe.

 Wait a second, that's been done...dangit!

 If you ask Amari to see her cutest face, this is what it looks like...

 Amari loves My little Pony. Pantera secretly loves them as well. They all pick which character they are going to be each night. Amari waits until after Pantera picks one out then says she wants to be the same one. This really makes Pantera upset and really makes Amari happy.

Do you love the purse? It reminds me of a feed bag, so appropriate that she would be carrying her ponies in it. That's my little Rainbow Dash for you!

INSANITY!!! SKGO!

Today was my last workout in the Insanity series. If you've never heard of it, it is basically 63 days of torture. We did alot of this:

Yeah, those are called power jumps and they are AWFUL!

I am very proud to say that I stuck with it, I only missed 2 days (one when Zeke was in the hospital and one I just wasn't feeling), and I feel so much better then when I started! I highly recommend this series, after 4 babies and 3 of them so close together, my muscles were trashed/non-existent. For the first time since high school I can feel some stomach muscle and since starting the workouts I went from a size 7 to a 3...not to shabby!
 Before:

After:

Dramatic results eh?!? Ok, ok, I should have taken a real before pic...but you get the point, progress. Now to see if I am insane enough for round 2, yikes!

Blucollection

 Zeke has made amazing progress over the past several months, so much that last week was his last session of speech therapy! He is always more than happy to share his opinions now and he has a whole lot of them.  He has been sending people to time out lately, including me. I love the way they mimic your tone and everything "Amari we don't hit! Hitting hurts people, go to time out!" I guess when I repeat that several times a day, they pick up on it.

 Ezekiel is, as always obsessed with his Cars toys. He can tell me exactly which ones he is missing (we are down to characters from the first movie that are ridiculously hard to find), he even was talking about one in his sleep last night. He rolled over and said "Tex Dinoco" I was laughing pretty hard. He is also big into watching "blucollection" on youtube whenever I allow him. What is blucollection you may ask, it is a guy who collects car toys and opens them and describes them in detail for the camera. It is very BORING to everyone but Zeke who gets so excited that he often exclaims "Oh YEAH!" or "Oh my gosh! I can not believe it! I want to put them on my table!"

He is also starting to use his imagination a little bit more. This is something I try to work on with him. He is more open to new games, we are just working on the repetition aspect of it, branching out is progress.

A couple Sundays ago he was singing so sweetly after church. I didn't catch the whole song but it ended with "...my heart." He had actually stayed in primary that day so I was super pumped thinking he was singing a new primary song they were working on. So I asked him to sing it again and it went a little like this "He gives me wedgies, there's a bully size hole in my heart." Nope, not a sweet spiritual primary moment, a song about a bully and wedgies from Phineas and Ferb, it was still cute.

Lice

 Pantera is almost done with the first grade. She is such a great student and I am really proud of what a good example she always strives to be for her classmates. She is a very smart girl, but even the smartest of the smarty-pants don't always think everything through. This was the case last week, you see her school had sent home a note a month or so ago about head lice (EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!!!). Her school had an outbreak so they were taking precautions. Well one day Pantera comes home wearing a half a heart bff necklace, before I could ask her about it she wildly exclaims "Victoria got sent home with lice today! We have lice in our class! But don't worry Mom, she gave me this necklace, so we are still bffs." Seriously?!?  So far no knits, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

This is her face every time I take her picture.

She came home from school all jazzed up about Cinco de May-O. She informed me that tomorrow she would be dressing up like a Mexican, I informed her that was not really appropriate. I wonder how many of her cute little classmates have the same plan that will likewise be foiled. They did get to have a dance in class and according to her she was "surrounded by boys" who all wanted to dance with her. After she showed me her sweet salsa moves, I am not surprised.

Da Vinci

We had the opportunity to see a traveling exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci's inventions. A group of people took his intricate sketches and brought them to life using materials that would have been found in his time. It was almost all hands on and the kids loved moving all the levers. I LOVE Da Vinci, he was such a genius. Looking at his ideas, it was like he had traveled through time. And now my kids love him too.