There are no words to express how glad I am that springtime is here!!  I hate, hate, HATE cold weather....so I am so excited that it is pretty outside.  The grass is turning green again, and the weather is so great all day long.  The babies love being outside, so we are spending lots of our playtime in the backyard. We've started eating our meals again outside.....sigh.  I love it!

Livi: 19 months old

This past month was a big one for my tiny girl....she has turned into a BIG talker....(was there any doubt, seeing as I am her mother??)  She repeats EVERYTHING, and voluntarily talks all day long now.
Just off the top of my head, here is some stuff she can say:
Mommy, Daddy, Bubby, Sissy, Mimi, Bop-o (Popo), no, okay, moka (milk), waner (water), bottle, paci, shoes, boots, baby, car, beep-beep, hi, whoa, book, more, uh-oh, bucket, ball, cookie, cracker, shies (fries), watty (wyatt), dickie (dixie), slide, poop, stinky, book, truck, light, Mickey, pees (please), snoopy (her alligator toy), cow, bow, elmo, duck, out, down, jump, boat, cup, kee-cat (kitty cat), Snow White (random!)....She'll also try to repeat anything I tell her to say, which is SO cute.
In addition to making all her animal noises, she also has attempted a few sentences, like:
"Daddy working", "My cookie", "Uh-oh, paci!" (when it falls on the floor), and the longest one yet:
"Mommy coming pees (please)?"  when she wanted me to come get her out of her crib
She understands EVERYTHING now, and amazes us every day with the connections she is making.  She is a big time comedienne, too.  She knows she is funny, and will do almost anything for a laugh.  She is going to be a spit fire, just like her sissy....she likes what she likes when she likes it, and doesn't like people standing in her way.  I don't see her being a "typical" third child...passive and content.  This one is determined, stubborn, smart, and full of emotion.  Somehow I managed to give birth to three firstborns. :)
Livi loves to be read to, and have her head scratched or hair brushed.  She still loves to eat, but has slowed down on the amount she can put away at one sitting.  She loves her people, but doesn't melt down around strangers.  She thinks she is big, and wants to do/have whatever the older ones are doing/having.  We call her our little billy goat because she can CLIMB.  You have to watch her, or you'll leave a room and come back to find her perched on the highest thing she can get up on.  If she's hungry, she'll just go climb up into her high chair and we'll find her waiting there to be fed.  She loves to dance, and busts a move whenever music comes on....even if it's cheesy elevator music.  (She doesn't discriminate)  She loves carrying stuffed animals and baby dolls, and loves pushing them in her little baby stroller.  The stroller is falling apart, but I can't bear to get rid of it because she uses it every day.  She also loves to push the little toy grocery cart, and wants SO badly to drive the John Deere ride on.  When the twins drive off without her, she stands there bawling like her world is falling apart.  She LOVES the slide, and can book it to the top of the playscape before we even know where she went.  She is sweet, and tenderhearted....if she finds something she knows is Bubby or Sissy's, she will take the item to them and hand it over.  Of course, they usually end up hollering "That's mine!!" and jerking it out of her hand so they end up getting a "talking to" about how she was trying to be sweet.

Since she's been on the go so much lately, she's thinned out a little bit.  She's still our chunky monkey, but you can tell she's headed towards that leaner, "big kid" look.  (sigh)
She's got more than one little curl in the back now, which we love! Her eyes are still really blue, but I think they are going to have a little more gray in them then we first thought.  She still has tons of nicknames, and answers to them all.....Pipkin, Popkin, Schmipkin, Schmopkin, Pibs, Piblet, Schmiblet, Schmibs, Livatini, Livatini Helene-y....the list goes on and on.
It's so hard to believe that nineteen months ago, she wasn't even HERE yet and now she's such a huge part of our little world.  She was our little "homemade surprise" and I can't even fathom what we would have done without her!!

Day One: Magic Kingdom!

Disney is amazing.....really, I was almost more excited for Shawn to see it than my kids.  It just blows my mind how you NEVER see trash, or gum, or smell barf.  It is literally the cleanest place on earth.  The bathrooms are so clean you could eat your lunch in there!  I am not sure why I felt the need to start this post with overwhelming comments on cleanliness, but there you have it.
The babies LOVED the Magic Kingdom.  We rode almost everything, and the big ones were pretty good riders.  A few times Hayden would quietly ride something (Pirates of the Carribean) and then burst into tears the minute we got off the ride.  I guess she was holding it in the whole time....meanwhile, we think she's enjoying the whole thing!!  She said she didn't like things that were "dark" and had "mist"...She didn't like the Thunder Mountain railroad, either....but Cale did!  He was screaming in the beginning, but we quickly realized it was because Shawn had his arm around him and he wanted Daddy to "stop holding me!".  At the end of the ride, he laughed and laughed and said he liked that one because it made his ding ding hurt.  Okay, whatever it takes to get him to have a good trip, right?
We made dinner reservations, but cancelled them when we realized the place we were supposed to eat at was a buffet.  Now,  I had geared myself up to pay the 31.99 for the adult buffet, but they were going to charge us 17.99 PER KID to eat.  My kids eat four bites and then say they are done, so there is no way in HELL I was going to pay that for them to eat nothing.  Livi eats more than they do, and she was going to be free!  We learned our lesson, and figured out how to solve this little conundrum later in the week....
We stayed all day....and watched the fireworks show from Main Street, (with two billion other people...I don't know where they all came from, because throughout the day it was thouroghly uncrowded....)  My kiddos had a great view of the castle, until some childless old people in Disney garb came and stood right in front of us....I later found out that this would be a recurring theme throughout the week.  I was so excited for my kids to see everything, and enjoy the trip....but apparently there is a HUGE group of people on this planet that are grown adults who are PSYCHO about Disney.  I mean, like run to get in front of kids psycho.  Like stand in front of a tiny three year old girl at the parade psycho.  It was nuts!!

 Popee and Bub waiting for our shuttle...

 Our family...right when we got there! (notice my hair is still down....I think it went into a clip six minutes after this picture was taken)

 Sissy's first view of the castle...

 Mid day parade....I love this picture because Sissy is breaking it down to the music. 

 Bub and Sis in Minnie's house.  We laughed because there is no bedroom in Minnie's house....but there is a bed at Mickey's.  Hmm....I wonder where she spends the night! 

 Thanks to Popee, we discovered the "chocolate Mickey" and had to hear about him all week long.  

Cale's first view of the castle from the monorail.  He would never, EVER sit on the monorail.  He had to stand and hold a pole like a big boy.  Even if there were a hundred people in our section, he had to stand up.  

Heading to Orlando....

Last week, we took our first big family vacation as a family of five.  The last time we flew the twins weren't yet two, and I was pregnant with Livi.  We were a little worried about flying with so many little kids, but my parents went with us so we figured we at least outnumbered the kids with the amount of adults we had.  We headed to the airport Saturday morning....

And our resident grump of late decided he wasn't going to make this a day of happy air travel.  Breakfast at the airport was thwarted twice for "breaks" to the restroom where he had to get a good talking to.  The girls were happy and ready to go!

 I should have known I'd be traveling with Meryl Streep.....

After killing some time at the breakfast table, we headed to the gate to board our plane.  The babies thought that taking off was the most amazing thing they had ever seen, which was so adorable it helped me forget that I hate flying.  They were a little busier than the average adult traveler, so we tried everything in our bag of tricks to keep them busy and happy on the plane. For the most part, it worked. Or, at least I didn't notice anyone on the plane giving us the stink eye so I HOPE it worked.  We landed in Florida, and headed to the hotel. We had some lunch at the golf course grille, and tried in vain to get people to take naps.  Adjusting their schedule in a hotel room took some getting used to, but by the end of the week they were pros.
The first night we took the shuttle to Downtown Disney.  This is a new area of the resort for me.  I haven't been to Disney in sixteen years, so it was neat to see so many new and updated things.  The first restaurant we saw upon walking in was T-Rex.  Imagine a restaurant that is sort of like Rainforest Cafe, but SO much better and dinosaur themed, and there you have it.  We decided to eat there without seeing any other restaurants, just because we knew that nothing was going to entertain our kiddos more than T-Rex.  We had a 45 minute wait in front of us, so we got a chance to walk around Downtown Disney and see all the restaurants and shops.  As always, there were amazingly talented street performers, and everything was so over the top....and CLEAN.  We headed back to the restaurant, and had our first of many, many overpriced meals.....that's one thing I just had to get over.  Food is NOT cheap at Disney, and I had to stop caring about it and just enjoy myself.  The kiddos loved their first day on vacation, and hadn't even SEEN a park yet!

Stay tuned for the rest of the trip....