The Everyday Life of Ben, Brooke, Macy, Ava, and Aubrey Wyatt

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Other things we have been up to.....

I got our Disneyworld post and Aubrey's 1st birthday post out of the way, so now I am ready to tackle everything else we did this winter. Here is what we have been up to:

Ava and Macy's 6th Birthday. The Disney trip was their birthday party and present, but we still had a couple of friends over to celebrate. It wasn't a sleep over but they still wore jammies (it was a pajama day at school), ate pizza and cake, and played together. These are their friends Savannah and Audrey. They have been best buds since pre-k.  
 



Pajama Day/Christmas Party at School:
 







 
Christmas:  We had a super low key Christmas here at home with just the 5 of us. It was really nice. Santa brought Ava and Macy scooters and brought Aubrey a car to ride in. We headed to Arkansas a couple of days after Christmas to celebrate with family. 



 
 
 
New Years: Because we were in Little Rock for the Holidays, we had free babysitting on New Year's Eve and were able to go for an adult dinner with Jon and Emily. I think we MIGHT have made it until 11:30 before we gave in and just rang in the New Year early. : )
 
 
 
Big Girl Bikes:  Gigi and Papa got the girls bikes with no training wheels for Christmas. Here is Macy learning to ride. They learned really quickly and are doing pretty good at riding by themselves. Sometimes stopping and turning are tricky but I was impressed at how quickly they picked it up! 

 
 
 
Nursery Rhyme Parade at School: Ava is one of the 3 Little Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens and Macy is The Cow that Jumped Over the Moon from Hey Diddle Diddle. 

 
 
 
Playing Golf: Ava, Macy, and Ben have been playing a lot of golf. It works out well.  Ben gets to play golf and he always takes at least one kid. Everybody wins!


 
 
 
Wedding Weekend: Our good friends Michelle and Chris got married so mom and dad came down to keep the kids while we had a kid-free weekend filled with wedding festivities and friends! It was great!




100 Days of School:  100 hearts and 100 stars to celebrate 100 days of kindergarten!

 
 
Daddy Daughter Dance: The community that we live in does an annual daddy daughter dance. I somehow managed to talk Ben into going. Actually, I didn't have much to do with it. Some of our neighborhood friends were planning to go and invited Ben and the girls to go with them. Poor Ben has about 10 years of this because about the time Ava and Macy outgrow it, Aubrey will be old enough to start going. 

 



 



Valentines Day:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pinkalicious Play: The girls and I went to see Pinkalicious the play in Fort Worth. It was a fun day with just my big girls!

 
 
Surgery: Macy had tubes put in her ears over Spring Break. She had some fluid in her ears that just wouldn't go away (for like 2 years!) and it was effecting her hearing. We noticed a difference in her hearing immediately! So thankful that she can hear now and she doesn't say, "WHAT??? HUH????" all the time anymore.


 
 
 
Whew! I think that catches us up to Spring. Hopefully I will be able to post more often and won't have to do a recap of the Spring in September! : )








Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Aubrey's 1st Birthday

Aubrey turned 1! It was a few months ago but I am determined to post about it. We had a family party at Ben's parents house when we were in town for Christmas. Aubrey's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were there and it was perfect.

On her actual birthday, December 17th, we celebrated as a family and gave Aubrey her 1st cupcake and sang to her. She LOVED the cupcake!






 
 
I took Ava and Macy to the toy store a few days before her birthday and let them each pick out a gift for her. Here they are playing with her new toys.

 
Her birthday party with family was great. We had a little food, cake and ice cream, and gifts. Perfect.
 

 





 

 
 

 
 
 
She is still such a great baby. She is easy going (most of the time), SOOO loving and cuddly, and a great sleeper. She loves to hug and cuddle and give kisses. Sometimes she will just walk up to one of us and lay her head down on our lap for a quick snuggle then go on about her business. Every night before bed, she will give all four of us big, open mouth kisses and then blow a bunch of kisses at everyone while I carry her up the stairs. Love it so much! She is an OK eater. WAY pickier than the girls ever were. She likes most meats (loves hot dogs... if that even counts as meat), likes bread and sandwiches (especially PB and J), loves most fruits, but veggies are where we struggle. She will gobble up broccoli and sometimes eats corn. Tomatoes are hit and miss. And that's about it for vegetables. It kills me because the girls and I (notice I left Ben out of that) are all big fans of veggies but I just keep giving them to her and hope that she will learn to love them one day. : )

She started walking right at 13 months. On Christmas day, about a week after she turned one, she took her first steps. She took four of them without even realizing it. Then she would take one or two steps here and there for about a month. Finally, after some encouragement and bribing with Doritos (all Ben) she started putting more and more steps together then just took off and never looked back. She is all over the place and into everything! As I am cleaning up the Tupperware cabinet that she has emptied all over the kitchen, I turn around and she is in the bathroom unrolling all of the toilet paper. It is a never ending battle picking up after her.

She is only saying a few words. Around her first birthday she started saying "mama," "dada," and "byebye." She still says these and has also started signing for "milk" and "more." Just in the last couple of days I think she has started saying something that sounds kind of like "Ava." She uses it for both of the girls. The speech therapist in me knows she should probably be saying more words than this but what is the point in talking when you have a mommy and 2 sisters that anticipate your every need?!?! Plus, she has a pacifier A LOT. (oops!) Poor baby recently had an ear infection and 5 teeth coming in at once so I let her have the pacifier pretty much all the time! She's feeling better now though, so we're working on only giving her the pacifier for sleeping.

She also recently started daycare full time. Our nanny, Paulina, quit which was pretty much heart breaking for all of us. I will be starting work part time this summer that will carry over into next school year. I am super excited about only working 2 days a week and spending the other days with Aubrey. However, we have to make it to June 7th with me working full time so 5 days a week of daycare was our only option until that time. It is going well though. We have her at the same school that Ava and Macy went to for pre-k. The teachers are great and, of course, love Aubrey. She always seems happy when I pick her up and there have only been a few tears when I drop her off. The hardest part is just getting everyone up, dressed, and out of the house in the mornings!


Here are a few more pics of our one year old from the last few months:
 




First time to meet Santa. She just stared at him.
 

New big girl car seat!
 

Christmas Cookies. Yum!


Thanks for my car Santa!
 
 
Bundled up watching sisters play soccer.
 

Example of being "into everything." One night we were getting ready for bed and I left her upstairs with the girls while I ran downstairs to get her milk. I came back to find that she had completely emptied Ava's pajama drawer and pulled every book off of the bookshelf. I was gone for 2 minutes!


First haircut. The before.

The during.

The after.
 
 

Learning how to drive. : )