Purple Princess Party

So Emma's party went well and it is so nice to have that over and done. She has been looking forward to it for a long time now. She had been to so many parties and kept asking when it was going to be her party. We met at a park and just had some finger foods, Crown and Sword making, a Princess Castle Pinata, and a game of "Duck, Duck, Goose" provided by Daddy. She originally wanted a princess cake, but I was easily able to convince her to have just cupcakes instead. She was so excited to have all of her friends come and was surprised when people brought her presents. She was so excited and grateful for all of the nice gifts she received. She sure was spoiled. We had around 15 kids there, including most of their parents. Emma is just so friendly that everyone she has any contact with is instantly "her friend". We're lucky to have such an outgoing and friendly child. She teaches her parents a lot

Our little girl turns 3!

I can't believe that Emma is 3 years old today.  It's amazing how quickly she has grown up and she sure brings so much joy to our lives.  She has been looking forward to her birthday for a long time and was so excited to wake up to the balloons that decorated our house.  "It's my birthday"  she exclaimed.  We are having a pretty low key day today because on Friday she is having a friend birthday party at the park.  She wanted to have a purple princess party and she just can't wait.  I'll post pictures after the festivities.  I have a ton of posts that I need to catch up on so expect a few coming your way.  For Emma's birthday she got books from her Grandma's, some little princess dolls from Grandma Marla and a play vacuum from Mom and Dad.

  I also went a little crazy and made her a couple princess dress ups.  She loves Cinderella, but I think the "Tangled" dress turned out so cute.  Pretty good I should say for not having a pattern.  :)  Luckily I found some cheap fabric and had a lot of help for this cute lady. Dress Tutorial

*Bless her heart she thinks that saying "cheese" involves tilting her head and closing her eyes for all of her pictures.:)

Here are some things we love about Emma:

• She is so social and just loves people
• She is very positive and I love to hear her say thank you. 
• She is the best cheerleader.  At play practice she is the one you can hear clapping and shouting Yay!!  Good dancing mommy!
• She is a wonderful sister.  She is always willing to help Vivian.  She helps cheer her up, keep her out of trouble and just loves on her.
• She is finally becoming potty trained!  A work in progress, but we are 2 days down.
• She loves animals
• She wakes up (and wakes us up) extremely happy.
• She has a wonderful imagination and loves to pretend and make up songs and stories.
• She enjoys arts and crafts.  She loves to color and paint
• She is very good at puzzles and loves to play games and read books.
• She is usually a pretty good eater, but right now she has been in love with hot dogs of all things.
• For a 3 year old she is a pretty good listener and helper for mommy and daddy.
• She is a good friend and thinks about other people. 
• She loves Jesus
• She gives great hugs and kisses

Here she is with curlers for the first time. She was excited to look like Grandma.:)

We are sure loving conference as well and have enjoyed being able to spend some quality time together as a family.  We have all been so busy lately that it is so nice just being together.  Tomorrow Mike has to work up in Oakland so we are heading up for a trip to Sanfrancisco as well.  Hopefully the girls will do well.  It will be nice to see another part of California as well as the San Fran zoo.  Pics of that trip to come. Me and my girls!

Gifts

This post is going to be about all of the "gifts" that I am thankful for. It's funny as you get older how birthdays are pretty anti-climatic, but I have been blessed in so many ways. I have a beautiful family that I love so much. It makes me so happy to have Vivian get the giggles when I act silly, and when Emma tells me thank you for saying a prayer, or watching how wonderful Mike is with these sweet children as well as me. They are all some of the greatest gifts I could ever have. Here are some pics of these cuties. .

<

Vivian is 8 months old today and is such a joy. She continues to learn to sit and crawl better. It also looks like she will be getting some more teeth in the next little while. She loves attention and gets very upset whenever she does not have your full attention. Emma will be 3 in a couple of weeks and she can't wait for her birthday party. She wants a purple princess party and she's been telling us for months now that the present she wants is a "vacuum". Too funny. I guess she wants to help me clean. I'm also grateful for my talents. I don't use them as much as I should and I tend to hide them under a bushel in an effort to not seem arrogant or anything, but I'm thankful that I have the chance to share my gifts of music and dance in "The Music Man". It's true that if you don't use your talents that you lose them, and I am truly out of practice. This is a good opportunity to sing more and luckily my family hasn't gotten sick of me yet. To go along with that I have the gift of a supportive husband who knows me so well and what I need and is willing to help out anyway he can. (He also got me a Belgian waffle maker and a sweet night out for my b-day.) So temporally I am also grateful to be finally getting a kitchen aid.

I will let you know how my first batch of bread in it turns out. Yay! No more hand kneading for me. Also, the gift of finding long t-shirts with spandex in them. Who knew they would be so hard to find.:) Random, I know, but I'm grateful nonetheless

Growing Girls

So my kids are growing up so quickly.  Emma has been working on her potty training and she has been doing pretty well.  It really depends on the day for her and how reinforcement aka candy she wants.  I HATE bribing her with candy, but so far it is the only thing that has been working.  She knows how to do everything it's just up to her having the desire. 

Speaking of desire, Vivian sure hasn't had the desire to sit very much.  She can do it, but she prefers laying down.  She likes to be able to move, mostly roll and get the things she wants.  Well this rolling has turned into crawling.  She is so determined and it is so funny watching her figure it out.  She is very proud of herself.  I can't believe how quickly they grow up. 

Vivian at 7 months and Funny comments by Emma

So Vivian is 7 months old today.  At her last appointment she weighed 14 lbs 14 oz., so she is slowly, but surely gaining some good weight.  She loves her rice cereal and sweet potatoes.  The other day I bought her her first "sippee cup".  It is a training bottle that eventually can turn into a sippee cup.  At that moment I realized that she is only getting bigger.  I love this stage because they are still babies, but you can interact with them, and you can see them growing and learning so much.  It is fun watching them explore the world around them.  It is also hard when they are upset because they just look at you like, "why are you being so mean to me!"  We sure love Vivian.  This past week has really thrown me though because I am so used to her being my "easy" baby, but after getting her shots, 2 teeth, and a cold, she has been so miserable, and so has mommy.  Like I mentioned in my last post she has been having a hard time sleeping because of all these discomforts and it has been a real trial and error trying to figure out how to get her some sleep.  Mike is superman because he sure know how to calm our kids down.  We are all so lucky to have him, he is so patient.  At 7 months Vivian is rolling all over to get where she wants to go, she has 2 teeth, and is working on sitting up.  She is a little behind in this area, but we are working on it.  She just has no desire to sit, she can't get the things that she wants from that position.:)  Vivian loves to babble, grunt, and squeal.  She scrunches her nose in a super cute way when she smiles, especially at her daddy.  She loves sitting in her saucer, and she also loves sweet potatoes and rice cereal.  She has super fluffy brown hair on top of her head, which is fun since Emma was completely bald at this age.  We think we might have a toe head as well as a brunette.  At this point her eyes are blue-grey so they could either turn blue or hazel.  It will be fun to watch and see.  She has just brought so much joy to our family.

So I have to add some funny things that Emma has said lately.  Oh she is a funny kid.  While we were at the doctor the other day she saw a little boy that she wanted to play with.  She goes up to him and says, "My name is Emma" and then proceeds to bend as low as she can into a very respectful bow. :)  I was cracking up so much, I had no idea why she was bowing to this little boy. She continued to do it as well.  Too funny.  I remembered at Disneyland that they taught the kids that they should bow and curtsy whenever they meet royalty, or a princess.  I wonder if that was what she was trying to do. 

So on to the funny comments

• "Mom it will be so fun when I am big like you."

• "Mom are you going to go to play practice and have yellow hair?"  (I had shown her a clip from my high school musical days and she couldn't recognize me because of my "yellow hair".  So now she thinks that my being in a play means I go and have yellow hair.)

• Another funny thing she did was when I went exercising the other day.  We were doing step and weight workouts and she proceeded to grab some dumb bells and did a VERY good job at imitating the moves that we were doing.  She was also laying on the mat and trying to do the same stretches as well.  She loves to try and imitate me when I am exercising. 

• "For my party I want a purple present and purple balloons because purple is my favorite color!"  She also wants a play vacuum for her birthday.

She says so many funny things each day that I can't remember them all, but she just makes us laugh all day long.

Shark and Sleep Deprived Kids

So I know it has been forever since I've posted, but up until the past week there really wasn't a whole lot going on.  Our biggest news and excitement has been the purchase of this little baby.  Our vacuum (which we spent like 50 bucks on) finally died and it was past time to get a new one.  I never realized how many different vacuums are out there and all with glowing reviews from some and terrible reviews from others.  It made the process of finding a good, yet reasonable vacuum somewhat frustrating.  After weighing the pros and cons we decided to by this Shark vacuum.  So far it has been wonderful.  According to Mike, whoever designed it did it in a very smart way.  Everything is so easy to access, and it is super good at sucking things up.  I have been loving it so much that I have been wanting to clean just so I can us it!  Oh, it has been lovely having clean carpet.  So yeah for the Shark!

For the past week or so Emma has been having a hard time sleeping.  She doesn't want to go to bed at night and has been waking up at 6:00.  She also does not want to be taking her naps.  She seriously just plays in her room for 2 hours.  I keep thinking that she HAS to be TIRED!!  I am not about to consider the possibility that she is just growing out of her naps.  Argh that sounds terrible!  Both she and I need her naps.:)  Also, Vivian has been having a rough few days as well.  She cut her first tooth, got her 6 month shots and developed a cold all within 3 days so she has been pretty miserable.  Because of this she has also not been sleeping.  She maybe gets 2 hours of sleep ALL DAY LONG!!  I don't know what to do and it is getting really frustrating.  Poor Vivian just wants to play or be held and she is not one to be "rocked" to sleep by mommy.  Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.  So at Viv's appointment she is doing pretty well.  She is almost 15 pounds and is a little behind on some of her milestones, such as sitting up by herself, but that is to be expected since she was born 5 weeks early.  She is getting stronger each day, and loves to "roll" herself all over the house. 

Sick Kiddo

I needed to post something new, but there hasn't been a whole lot going on at the Sharp house beside the usual and now my play practices which have been minimal so far, but this week Vivian got sick.  I hate when my children get sick, especially when they are infants because they cannot tell you exactly what is wrong with them.  She started out just acting lethargic, then the fever came, some vomiting, and continued fever and irritability.  She hasn't had a fever for a day now, but I am still wondering if I should take her in to check for an ear infection.  I just figured she had caught a bug, but she was still having a hard time sleeping, etc.  Any suggestions.  She is acting more like normal this morning.  Emma never got ear infections so I don't really know what to look out for.  I'm just glad she is feeling a little better and hopefully tomorrow night she will be back to sleeping throughout the night.  I was liking that routine.  If all goes well we will be off to the Bakersfield Museum of Natural History today for pre-school.  Unfortunately I hear it is pretty run down, but hopefully the kids will enjoy it.  Emma keeps asking me if we are going to go see dinosaurs for preschool.  Hope there is one so she won't be disappointed.:)