Daddy-Daughter Science

I just wanted to document how amazing Steve is as a father.  I know we've mentioned before that Ellie has ridiculous science understanding for a three year old, but both our girls also benefit from almost weekly hands-on adventures in science with their Dad.

Steve does a great job of coming up with kid-friendly experiments, and the girls love learning form Daddy.  Here are just a few of our recent adventures in science from the past couple of months.

This first picture is of a homemade lava lamp Steve made for the girls.  It was really neat to watch, and Mckayla loved saying "Bubbles!" over and over.

 Science makes these girls happy.

These next pictures are of an experiment where you place salt on different ice forms and then add colored water to paint the pockmarks and crevasses that form from the ice melting where the salt is.  Mckayla hammed it up for the camera while watching Daddy and Sister.  This girl gets more and more personality every day!

 I love Steve's expression of satisfaction in his girl's joy from science.

Some of Ellie's ice art.

 Our cute little scientist.

 On a total tangent here, everyone says our girls look like their Dad.  However, this picture looked familiar to me, so I looked up a picture of me around the same age.  Yeah, this girl is definitely mine...

 Back to the science, here are a couple pictures of "dancing raisins."




 The girls have also enjoyed fun with dry ice and bubbles, and most recently Ellie learned about osmosis by soaking gummy bears in water.  Yeah, our kids' teachers will probably hate us....

Just so I can say that I contribute in the least, Ellie is also getting really good at identifying first letters and sounds in words, knows fourteen 2D shapes and is starting on 3D shapes, and is now starting to really understand AB patterns and rhyming.  I can't take credit for everything, since Ellie has learned a lot from preschool this year, including months of the year, days of the week, etc.  Once again, her teachers are DEFINITELY going to hate us.

Christmas Break

So you'll have to forgive me, but I have started taking fewer and fewer pictures lately.  Part of this is due to the fact that I am trying not to interrupt moments and enjoy them at times.  Part of this is also due to the fact that it's almost impossible to take pictures of a 1 and 3 year old when you are busy keeping them out of trouble, especially at big events or in public.  This means that although we took pictures of a few events, I am once again indebted to grandparents who are better about taking pictures than I am.

I did document our Christmas tree at home, as well as the easel we gave the girls as their big present from Mom and Dad this year, which we weren't willing to haul across two states to give them.

Christmas break was not as busy as normal for us in Preston this year as we all got the virus Mckayla got croup from.  It totally tanked us and zapped our energy, so we didn't do much adventuring.  Instead we stayed home with Grandma and Grandpa at home much more and had a relaxing break.  The girls enjoyed time playing with the local farm cat that loves abuse from Grandpa.

Then we hit every family house for the holidays.  We spent Christmas Eve with Steve's sister Sheri and her kids for a great soup dinner and the traditional Bennett pinata.

 We then headed to Steve's sister Kathy and her family's house for Christmas Eve night and opened presents there with the girls Christmas morning.  The girls' loot from Santa and us (minus their easel).

The girls did well.  For once they actually loved and play daily with all of their gifts!

We then headed to Steve's last sister Lori and her family's house for family gifts and dinner Christmas afternoon and evening.  (Mckayla sporting her new hat her cousin Erin made her, and Steve and I opening our fabulous picnic kit from Lori and Curtis.)

 These are the girls' Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls Grandma made them for Christmas this year.  So cute!

It was busy, but it was fun!  Especially as it may be a last hoorah for us as the girls get older and we think about spending more holidays at home.

Later in the week our niece watched the kids so all the adults could go watch the second installment of The Hobbit in theaters.  Then on the 30th everyone was at least fairly healthy, so we took the girls to a place called Hardware Ranch in Hyrum, Utah.  These were just a few of the MANY turkeys we saw on the road.

The ranch is an open area where they feed the elk and they come and go as they please.  They take small groups on sleighs out to see the elk up close though.  This was us keeping the girls busy in line for our turn.

The girls really enjoyed seeing the elk, and we enjoyed seeing them up close as the dorky biology teacher and his increasingly dorky wife.

 It was fun seeing a few fawns that still had spots, were nursing, and crying to their moms.

 Mckayla really liked the great big work horses that pulled the sleighs.  Ellie talked about them for days after by name, but now I can't remember what their names were, only that they were a mother daughter team.

 It was BEAUTIFUL out there!

Yeah, and this was a slow visit for us!  We had a lot of fun, as always, and we always miss Preston and being so near to family whenever we leave.

But, New Years Eve we headed out and arrived in Spokane the day after Mckayla conked her noggin.  On New Years Day we got together and Grandma Sun and Papa Rose's house to open gifts.  This was Ellie waiting for stockings, and I love/hate this picture because Ellie is so cute, but looks so big to me here!

 All four cousins lined up and opening stockings.  I love that Mckayla saw a clip-clop princess in the top of her stocking and decided she was good and that Aubrey made a good spot to pile her stocking.

 Yeah, she may eventually give Ellie a run for her money when it comes to who likes princesses more.

 This was Ellie's favorite part of her stocking.  Anything owl gets called her "O the owl ______" thanks to Daniel Tiger, and she loves this hat.

Wyatt and Ellie were both excited about the girls' new train set.

 Our girls are just cute.

 Mckayla opened these soft new jammies and fell in love.  As she opened gifts, played with toys, walked around.... she never dropped these the rest of the morning.

 Juls and Jen.

 Steve and I.

The next day we also met up with Grandma Moon and went to Red Robin for lunch.  It was great to see so much family over the holidays, even if we ended up spending the last few days of break with Mckayla sick or in the ER in Spokane.  We always look forward to the holidays and how much time we get to spend with family that we just don't see often enough!

Mckalya Walking and Sickly days

December 19th was a busy day around here.  We started off with sick kids on a crazy day, went to our ultrasound, and then came home to have Mckayla take her first "real" steps.  She'd been taking a step or two for weeks, but never with real purpose.  Suddenly, she started doing this!

And we knew it was all downhill from there.  And it was.  We left a couple days later for Christmas break, and the girl just took off over the next week, walking down hallways and across rooms within the week.  And now there's no stopping her when she has something she's not supposed to, looks at me with mischief, and takes off faster than her pregnant mom cares to move!

In other new, poor Mckayla has had a ROUGH last couple months when it comes to her medical health.  Before she started walking she came down with a nasty virus and ended up with croup.  It wasn't a terrible case, but when you're used to your child waking up like this:

It's hard to have her hardly sleeping like this...

And tired and laying around all morning.

We ended up taking her to urgent care one night and getting her some steroids that thankfully took care of the croup over the next few days, although the virus was still lingering weeks later, poor girl.

As if December hadn't already been rough on poor MG, on the last day of our trip she fell against a recliner that moves and caught the edge of a wooden space heater.  I saw her, and never even thought she caught the heater.  But she laid there crying, so I quickly scooped her up and then she wouldn't inhale because she was so upset, and then passed out on my shoulder.  Then we found a big goose egg on her head.  This probably qualifies as the scariest moment of my life so far.  She went in and out of consciousness for a couple minutes and was hazy when she was awake.  We called the local hospital and they told us the signs to watch, but an hour later she was fine and the next day was content and eating normally so we drove to Spokane.  Only to have her throw up violently a few days later with no other symptoms.  And then again once two days later.  We started to worry that the two might be connected, and when we called a local urgent care center, they recommended we bring her in.  This lead us to the hospital for a CT scan.  Here Mckayla was playing in the ER waiting room.

Everyone loved our cute girl, and she did really well, even with the CT scan.

Thankfully everything was fine, which everyone thought was the case, but we didn't dare risk it....

 After we got home from break, Mckayla then got the stomach flu.  And then got another cold virus.  And then another stomach flu.  This was one night just a week or two ago after she started throwing up while Steve was at a review session.  Our poor girl has vomited more in the last few months than Ellie has in her life I do believe.

 Thankfully, once she finally got to sleep, she slept through the night and was fine the next day.

 However MG still rattles and has constant congestion of varying degrees it seems.  If things don't change we may have to look into allergies of some sort, but until then, we just hope that her sick months mean she is building her immune system for a much healthier future.  It's a good thing this girl is so happy and cuddly, because it's hard to believe I don't think of the last few months as being miserable considering how often she has been sick.  Thank goodness for good-natured children, even if they do have our fun tempers when they flare up...

Baby #3 Gender Ultrasound

Originally our doctor had us scheduled to have our gender ultrasound with our next 4 week appointment, around the 9th of January - when I was about 22 weeks along.  This was not great for us... We really wanted to know before spending the holidays with family, start prepping if we needed to buy things that were non-pink, and not have to wait weeks past when they normally do the ultrasound.  When I explained the first two concerns to the receptionist at our office, she was more than happy to reschedule our ultrasound.  So, December 19th, at just shy of 20 weeks, we headed to the doctors.  It was STRESSFUL!  Our appointment was at 2:30 - prime nap time.  Steve was going to have to get a sub for his last class and meet me there.  Mckayla was sick with croup.  Ellie was being a bit of a handful, and both girls were tired.  However, with no sitter, and a 3 year old who was soooo excited to see the baby in my tummy, we loaded up and went to the appointment ready for the whole thing to be an epic meltdown.  I love when I am wrong.

The girls were fine and very interested in what was going on.  I expected an uncooperative baby who we would spend lots of time only seeing its back.  Wrong again.  This baby was so active we got to see a lot of it.  The technician knew in about 10 seconds that we were having another GIRL.  Ellie was excited.  The tech asked her what she thought it was, and Ellie told her what we'd been hearing for weeks - it's a girl baby.  And the tech agreed.  Steve and I for some reason both thought it was going to be a boy.  I'm 0 for 3.  I always think it's a boy - no idea why, but it (obviously) never is.  

So, because I know we'll be taking comfort, jokes, and aw shucks over the matter.... Yes, Steve and I want a boy.  No, we weren't heartbroken.  We love our girls.  Have you met them?  Have you seen how amazing a father they have?  How good he is with them and how much they ADORE him?  Our girls are so fun, we will never be disappointed that we get to enjoy another one.  However, yes, we want a boy at some point.  We want to continue the Bennett name.  We want the experience of raising a son, especially of Steve enjoying that special experience.  We plan to have more children, and will have other opportunities.  We cannot know what our Heavenly Father has in store for us, but are still hopeful that we'll enjoy a son as part of our family in the future.  But, that is not our focus.  As soon as we found out this little girl was coming, our focus is on her, and how excited we are to meet her and have her be a part of our family.  So, let's turn the discussion from "it's not a boy...." to "it's another wonderful little girl!"  Because that's where Steve and I are at.

The ultrasound tech commented right away on how active our baby girl was and how she might give Ellie a run for her money.  Slightly frightened by the concept, my response was "That would be impressive."  I hope that just like Mckayla was really calm as a baby but is energetic now that this active little girl will calm some.  Otherwise, with 3 girls full of as much energy as the first two have, I will need to sleep for 3 days every week or so just to keep up with them.  Anyway, here is another shot of our little one.  Ellie is so excited she tells every stranger who stops to listen to her about how she's getting another sister in the baby tummy and it doesn't have a name till it comes out.  That girl can talk....

And here is the little video clip they sent home with us of the 3D ultrasound part.

It was wonderful seeing all her little body parts.  I never cease to be amazed by the development of a human baby, in and out of the womb.  I feel like any lesson in the human body testifies of a Divine Creator and loving Father in Heaven.  I loved seeing fingers, toes, legs, face, heart, all in perfect working order and yet so precious, fragile, and small.  Our little girl measured about 12 oz according to the ultrasound tech.

We were also surprised to hear that because baby was so cooperative (unusual for our girls) that this was our last ultrasound unless the doctor orders one later on.  Normally we have a second anatomy ultrasound and then our giant babies start measuring so big that we get extra ones.  Not that they tell us much -just that we have big healthy babies, which we've come to expect.  So, we may not get any more pictures of this little girl till she comes in late April or early May - due May 10th.  That's wonderful on a new deductible, but a little sad with how fun it is to see our babies during ultrasounds.

So, there you go, the two best pictures of our little GIRL.  We are excited to meet her and to watch her grow and interact with her two big sisters.  And just think of how cute our next family pictures will be with three of those adorable Bennett girls all in a row!

Ellie's Dance Recital December 14th

Ellie had her first dance recital on December 14th.  It was a hoot, as you'll see.  However, it was a journey for us to get to where we could enjoy the recital...

 First of all, we had to find costumes for Ellie's recital.  She had one hip-hop number and one ballet number.  This is what we put together for her hip-hop routine.

This is Ellie's hip-hop/attitude face.  She cracks us up!  Love the puffed out cheeks.

 This was our ballet outfit we needed to put together.  The dance studio then provided red tutus for the recital.

Next, we had our first recital on Friday night the 13th.  So many funny stories from that night.  First, the advanced modern dancers began their first routine to open the show and Ellie looks at me and says "I can do that.  I think I'll do that."  I then had to talk to her about how that is what the big girls had practiced and Ellie needed to do the dances she had practiced.  Ellie then did her ballet routine without mishap.  When it came time to practice the finale dance though, the 3 and 4 year olds were supposed to sit on the stage and wave while the big kids learned the finale dance.  All the little ones did this - except Ellie.  Ellie started trying to do the dance with the big kids, and by the end of their practice time 5 or 6 other littles had joined her.  Way to be a leader, Ellie Bell!  After that, every time they practiced the finale a teacher sat with Ellie so that she would sit still.  By the end, Ellie was a little upset that she couldn't dance during the finale.  We had high hopes that she might go unsupervised at some point and make the recital a lot more exciting...  The little girls then practiced their hip-hop dance and Ellie did great.  She was done for the night, so we grabbed dinner and went home.

Everyone then had to be in full hair costume for dress rehearsal Saturday morning.  Ellie liked having her fancy hair and curls.

We then got her dressed and packed up her costumes and snacks and her and I took off to the rehearsal.  The dance studio had rules about checking dancers in with costumes and snacks where ready-room moms took care of them, and then checking them out when they were done.  You were welcome to stay at the rehearsal, but the dancers had to stay backstage the whole time away from the parents.  Steve and I weren't really fond of this and decided that with a three year old, I would stay at the rehearsal the whole time in case anything went sideways with Ellie.  I was glad we made that decision.  Before rehearsal began Ellie was onstage crying because she was lost.  Her teacher came and found her as I went and calmed her down and I thought things would go better from there.  Then, during the same first routine with the big girls, Ellie charged the stage and I thought, she really thinks she can do that, doesn't she?  Once again, her teacher had to grab her, but Ellie was happy and my only complaint was that she kept slipping away, which she has done in other childcare situations, so not a huge surprise...  

Ellie then did her ballet routine "Sleigh Ride." She did really well.  We learned she knew the routines so much better than we even suspected because in class she was only ever half-focused, but with a stage she was ready to ham it up!

Then the kids did the finale rehearsal so that the kids who were just in the first half could go home after.  Ellie seemed pretty upset and cried again.  I had to go get her and convince her over and over to keep doing the finale rehearsals.  I thought it was strange she was so upset and asked her if she'd eaten any of her snacks.  She seemed confused, which was a bad sign.  The kids had to be checked in by 11:30 and it was now 1:20.  If she hadn't eaten yet, she must be starving.  I instructed her to go ask someone to help her get her sandwich and snacks so she could eat.  I thought that would be the end and fix things.

And then Ellie came out for her hip-hop dance "Funky Y2C" which we call "hey little mama."  Here's how things STARTED.

Ellie then cried about not dancing, and cried about trying to dance, and cried about not dancing, repeat.  It was BAD.  I checked her out and grabbed her stuff and we headed for the car.  On the way there Ellie just kept crying that she wanted her sandwich.  I just couldn't understand why she might be so hungry with all her snacks.  I then checked her bag, to find that she had only eaten 1/4 of a PB&J since I had dropped her off.  Period.  I. Was. ANGRY.  That is putting things lightly...  It was a long story, but the teacher and I exchanged e-mails later and I still don't know how, but supposedly they couldn't find Ellie's food.  I don't know, but it was not a happy experience for any of us, and at this point we were STRESSED about how Ellie would do and be cared for that night at the recital...

We got Ellie home, she scarfed down food, and we got her a nap in the few short hours between the rehearsal and recital.  Then I got her up and got her ready and we took her to the recital.  I checked her in with repeated instructions about where her snacks were and that she could eat any time she got hungry, which is not the norm in our home.  And then we hoped for the best.  When we sat down for the recital I had real butterflies going, but then Ellie did her first dance and I was "beaming" to quote the Bennett side.

Now, the worrying continued as we had to wait for about an hour till Ellie's next performance in hip-hop which had gone so horribly awry that afternoon.  Then the little girls came out to perform.

Seriously, I was so proud and relieved after the emotional rollercoaster of a day we had experienced that I just about cried.  At this point, she'd done it.  Who cared if she made it to the finale or not?  Little did we know, the finale would be our favorite part of the whole show.

We had high hopes when they sat Ellie center stage without a teacher within arms reach...  But Ellie seemed content to wave and do what she was supposed to, so Steve turned the camera off.  And then he had to quickly turn it back on to catch Ellie getting some of the biggest cheers of the night!

I love that after her teacher (also the studio director) came and got her she just went back to waving like nothing had happened.  Seriously, we love this girl.  After the finale we were congratulated by the families we know from Prosser who also had daughters in the show.  They were all hoping she would upstage everyone based on earlier rehearsals too.  Funny girl.

We then went and checked Ellie out and gave her the flowers we bought for her.  We got her dressed and went and picked up some pizza and ice cream for a special treat which we had promised her if she managed to get through the night without mishap.  We headed home to enjoy our treats and got pictures of Ellie being funny waving her flowers around.  

All in all, it was a great recital for our family, even if it came after a ROUGH rehearsal earlier that day.  I can't say that I'm upset we planned on taking a break and doing a different activity for a while, but Ellie did love being in the recital, and we loved watching our girl.  Now we're just waiting to see if we can find her new ballet shoes after someone took the wrong pair home...  The joys of dance.  But, we sure do love this funny little dancer!