fathers day 2011

Another father's day is here already. This time of year always seems so busy to me and tends to creep up very quickly. Maybe because Miya's birthday falls within days of father's day and leaves lots of planning and organizing to accomplish both. As the girls are getting older, it is much more fun to celebrate father's day for Jeff. They are starting to get their own ideas of how to celebrate and I love listening to them. I asked what they wanted to do for dad this year here are some of their responses.
Jayden ~ ummmm eat birfday cake

Miya ~ lets go to crazy bounce
Mom-not this year sweetie,
Miya-okay, then we'll go bowling
Mom-not for fathers day
Miya -Okay, then how about we get icecream
(3 of her favorite things)

Jayden~ m...m...m...ma...mom, mom, mom,(stuttering and excited) how about we s...s...s...sing him a song like this "happy faffers day to you, happy faffers day to you, happy faffers day to you

Mom - if we could buy dad a present what would you like to buy him?
Miya - ummmm a boat
jayden - ummmm another pwrple shirt and pwrple tie
Miya- ya and some brown shoes to go with it

That's just a little bit of the conversations that went on trying to plan for Father's day. I only wish I had a camera around when we were talking about it.

This is a video of the girls answering the question "why they love their dad". We did not talk about this before turning on the camera (very obvious in the begining). These are the thoughts running through their heads at that exact moment...including Melanie's 'enh's'. I think she's saying "I love you daddy".

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Happy Father's Day to all those Dad's out there, including our dad here in Michigan and our dad far, far, away in Iowa. The miles seem so far away the past few weeks. We love you all!!

Happy 5th Birthday Miya

Happy 5th Birthday Miya!! Since you no longer nap, I will have to write up a blog entry later tonight when you're sleeping!! How can you be 5 already?

Silly Mel

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Here are couple videos of Melanie from last week. The first shows how sensitive her toes are (although, mine toes wouldn't like that thing either??). The second video is of Melanie trying to go down a ramp. She has conquered how to climb stairs; up and down. However, she hasn't realized what a stair really is. She often 'climbs' down when going between two different textures. For example, when crossing from tile to carpet, or cement to grass. She turns that little bottom around and 'steps' down. The same on a ramp. She thought she had to back down it. Better safe then sorry I guess :)

AFO Pictures

(Yes, this is the face she ALWAYS makes when the camera comes out. And yes, that is how her hair ALWAYS looks. She pulls out her piggie tails usually within 20min of putting them in and a clump of hair usually accompanies it.)

Here are some pictures of Melanie's AFO's. They are much smaller then I was anticipating. The start just above the ankle instead of below the knee, YAY!! She is tolerating them very well. They take a while to fit on and she sometimes gets a little impatient with that, but once they're on she doesn't fight them one bit. A friend that also had a preemie that needed AFO's gave us a couple pairs of shoes to try that worked for her daughter. THEY FIT!! YAY! No more shoe stores. She had a size 6 and 7. Melanie 'just' fit into the 6. There's tons of toe room, just not much wiggle room in the top of the ankle.


The shoes/braces make walking for much more clumsy. She is dragging her left foot a little more and often chooses to crawl when she would normally stand or walk around things. It takes much more discipline on my part to walk with her and encourage her to walk. However, I am finding that once the shoes/braces come off she is light as a feather and feels much more confident. She then wants to walk everywhere and will try to take more steps on her own. So if that's the goal of these AFO's we're winning~however, I'm not sure that's how they're supposed to work.

Starting to Walk

Little Melanie is starting to figure out this walking thing. Every day she is gaining more and more confidence in herself. She doesn't like to walk when we 'try' to get her walk. However, if you watch her while she's playing she'll take 2-3steps between toys, turn in circles, and even stand in the middle of the room and take 3ish steps. It won't be long before she's able to keep up with those older sisters!! Hopefuly her braces won't slow down this walking process but only speed it up (we pick them up on Wednesday).

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Showing Pigs

Here is the video of the girls showing pigs. This video is a little long. The first part is Miya showing, the second part is Jayden showing. Nothing special happens in either video so you may want to do so some fast forwarding :o)

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I don't remember if I taped it, but Jayden did cry during her show. The judge asked what her name is and she started crying. Ha. Where do these girls get this shyness from? Definitely not their dad!!

Tulip Time/Pig Show

I'm well aware that Tulip Time was two weeks ago, however I was hoping to get back downtown to try for more pictures in the tulips since round one of pictures didn't go the best. However, there are some very 'real' pictures of how our girls act at them moment :o). Thank you Brittany for taking the pictures and thank you Wendi for occupying the other girls while trying to get pictures. The goal was Melanie's 18month and Jayden's 3year~we'll be heading to Target soon for pictures :0)






This past Saturday Miya and Jayden showed pigs for the first time!! Yeah!! We practiced one time, about 3 weeks ago. We were told they wouldn't be able to show at this event due to some crazy rules...well, we found out Friday night at 9 (while we were at a wedding) that they could show the next morning at 10 if we wanted them to. Ha!! So Saturday morning we tried to find some clothes to wear (we are lacking in the Jean department in this house, everything has holes in it....patiently awaiting the warmer short weather). The girls had their first fight over clothes.....a pair of pink cowboy boots. I am so not ready for that!!!

The pee-wee show is very laid back. They are just trying to encourage the kiddos and get them interested in showing. The age of kiddos in this group was 3yrs old to 8 years old. They could have someone go in the ring with them and the pig. So they asked Aimee and Tyler of course. Once they got over their nerves they had a ton of fun. Surprisingly they didn't even loose their pig :0) I'm trying to upload videos of them showing, I'll keep trying. We're going on 36hrs of uploading to no avail~grrr. Here's a picture after they showed!