Of Royal Birth

 When Petey was born, I was against all things princess. I always thought that calling her a princess automatically meant that she was a spoiled brat. The stereotypical "princess" in my mind was a diva, had many demands, always got what she wanted, and had life handed to her on a silver platter. So since I knew that wasn't all going to happen for my girly, I stayed far away from that word for those first few years.
Then, I attended a meeting at our church entitled "More Precious Than Rubies" and my mind was changed. Instead of focusing on what I thought the word princess meant, I focused on what being a true princess means.

Petey is a princess because her Heavenly Father is a king. Whether I call her that or not, she is a princess and always will be. The best way for a princess to live is to follow the teachings her king has given her and trust me, He has given us many. He has always been there for all of us and He will never let us down.
We may think we are being let down or punished when bad things come into our lives but our king wants us to be tried and tested so that when we return to Him, we are stronger, wiser, and humbled. He wants us to be what He originally intended for us; noble and selfless.

A true princess is all of those things. She is kind hearted and loves the people around her. And since that is what I want my daughter to be, I will continue to call her the princess that she is.

And the best part is, she will always have this little prince by her side. That is one thing that I absolutely love about our little family right now. We each have a title that we need to uphold. Petey has a queen for a mom, a king for a dad, and a prince for a brother. She is not the only one in our family who is of royal birth. We were all created by a loving Heavenly Father who put us on this earth to learn and return to Him.

I will forever be grateful for the many royals that I get to associate with throughout each day. There is so much good in this world and I am blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

And that's how Suze sees it.

Early 3rd Birthday

I cannot believe I am even able to write a post like this already. How is my baby this close to turning 3? It just doesn't see possible that in a short week and a half, he has been mine for 3 whole years!
Anyway, the first of many birthday related posts on my boy is dedicated to his wonderful Nana and Papa (Boss' parents). They came to town to give him his birthday presents before they leave on a trip for 3 weeks. Boss' parents really are the best present givers and they really made Spidey's day.

Both kids were excited and ready to see what they had brought.

 Opening the first present.

 Toy Story villain action figures! He really was excited. My favorite thing about this picture is the look on his Nana and Papa's faces. They love getting the kids excited and they both seemed pretty excited as well. :)

 Then, of course, he opened the Toy Story hero action figures. He has been playing with all of these ever since and is loving them!

 Nana is an amazing seamstress and made Spidey two Buzz Lightyear pillow cases. Seriously, this has amde bedtime way easier! I'm sure he'll get used to them but for now, he loves to go lay down on them and he's happier when I put him down to bed.

 Opening the last present. What could it be? Petey is really excited to find out! :)

 A new Toy Story shirt! They've actually given him 3 Toy Story shirts now) between birthdays and Christmas and Spidey loves all of them! This one is too big for him right now {he still wears the one he was given 2 Christmases ago. ha!} but I'm sure he'll be wearing it anyway this winter. He loves Toy Story!

 Papa even brought Petey some fun little toys from his mining convention. She was excited to have something to play with as well.

 I had to get a picture of the birthday boy with his grandparents. *I am SO sorry for posting this picture of you with your eyes closed, Jed, but it's the only one I took and Andersen looks so happy in your arms!*

And Petey wanted a picture with her favorite Nana. If you needed more proof that Nana is the best seamstress, the dress Petey is wearing was made by her.

Like a Little Child

I used to think it was silly when in the scriptures it says to become like a little child. I always looked at that and thought, "Oh ok, so I can throw tantrums? How about making messes? And what about acting wild all of the time and not having the best listening skills?"

You see where I'm going with this. Becoming like a little child just didn't seem like the right thing to be doing. But it wasn't until I became a mother that I realized exactly what that scripture means.

Children love unconditionally and they love everyone. Children don't judge. They know what true happiness is and they aren't bogged down by all of the worries we all have in our lives. They love God without question. They are excited to learn every day of their lives.

 

So my goal now is to become like a little child. I wish it were an easy task but it isn't. I love many people but I find myself not loving too many people unconditionally.

I try not to judge but it still happens every day.

I may know what true happiness feels like but I often forget about it throughout my busy day and tell myself I don't have enough or that I'm not good enough.

I am constantly worrying about something. I am scared to death of leaving my children with big groups of people because I figure they'll be forgotten about and then they'll end up lost. I stress about school next year for Petey and the choices I have to make for her before then. I stress about teaching my children how to be good people and how all of my yelling will negatively affect them. I stress about my marriage and whether I am being a good enough wife and mother and daughter and sister and aunt and cousin. As you can see, my worry department is full.

I absolutely love God but there have been times I've questioned it.

I am not the most excited learner.

 

How I wish I could remember what it felt like to be a child. I hope I can stop judging because I hate feeling like I am being judged. I hope I can worry less and love more. I hope I can show my children that it is possible to become like a little child as an adult.

 

And that's how Suze sees it. 

Car Wash

Yesterday, I decided to go out on a limb and see if the kids would help me wash the car. We are staying at my parents' house right now and when I get the organizing/cleaning itch, I usually have to stifle it and by the time we get home, sometimes it is no longer there! But I thought about it yesterday afternoon and decided cleaning out the car would be my Wednesday project.
When the kids napped, I cleaned out the inside of the car and when they woke up, I surprised them by telling them we could play in the hose water if they helped me wash the car.

I was surprised at how helpful they were. Of course, they were splashing and playing around half of the time but they did help me scrub.

 Their favorite part was when I would rinse the car off and I would "accidentally" spray them with the hose. We ended up rinsing the car 3 times and then scrubbing it again because they loved it so much. :)

 Petey thought it was so funny to step in the bucket and get her feet all wet.

Spidey was beyond happy to be helping me out and playing with water.

It ended up being the perfect "job" to do at the end of the day. The kids had a blast and I have a clean car. It teaches them some responsibility but they also get to have fun and play around. It was a really fun afternoon and I'm sure we'll be doing this again soon.

Black Bean Tacos, Mango Quinoa Salad, and Chocolate Popsicles

I wanted to start writing by apologizing for not blogging as often but then I realized that blogging is really all for me and I don't have any need to apologize.
Life sure is good about throwing curve balls at me and I feel like once I get used to one trial, Heavenly Father feels the need to give me something else. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, I know He is always there by my side to help e handle everything that comes my way.
So tonight, I wanted to leave you on a lighter note and show off some of my cooking skills.

I decided to make black bean tacos the other night. I would point you toward the original recipe I found on Pinterest but in the blog post was also a big fat F bomb and I'm not really into promoting profanity and since I actually changed up the recipe, I thought I'd give you my own rendition.

What you'll need:
6 corn tortillas
2 cups of shredded pepper jack cheese
1 can of cooked black beans
1 diced tomato
Olive oil

 

Now seriously, this is really simple. Mix all ingredients together except for the tortillas and the olive oil.

 Spread a little olive oil in your pan and let it heat up. Add a tortilla and spread some of the mixture from above on half of the tortilla.

 Fold the tortilla over and cook til it's starting to brown on each side. Mine needed about 2 minutes per side.

 Some of the mixture fell out and I just scraped it out of the pan and threw it on top of my tacos.

They were delicious and 50% of our family liked them! :) That would include me and my girly. Boss actually didn't get to try them and Spidey wouldn't even take one bite.

 Here are the kids' plates with half a taco and some mango quinoa salad. Neither kid liked the quinoa and I actually wasn't a fan of eating it cold but it wasn't horrible. My sister loves this salad so if you think you would like the recipe, here it is on Our Best Bites.

 It sure looks yummy! :)

Last on my list of recipes is a yummy and SUGAR FREE dessert. I took one package of sugar free, fat free chocolate pudding and made it the way it said on the package. I let it cool for 5 minutes in the fridge and then I mixed in half a bowl of fat free whipped cream. I spooned the mixture into little dixie cups, added a popsicle stick and stuck them all in the freezer.

 They looked yummy and the kids were counting down the minutes until they could have one.

 Can you tell they're excited?

 I love his big hazel eyes.

 The only problem was that the popsicles started to break so we put them in a bowl and threw the popsicle stick away. Of course, the kids still thought it was the best thing in the world. Isn't Spidey's smile the best?

And those crazy side curls on my girly are exactly what my hair does. Even though it annoys me, it looks adorable on her!

Hope you've all had a great week so far!

Potty Training at Night: Part 1

(She dressed herself this day and thought it was pretty funny that she was wearing her brother's tie. Also, that is the "stinky diaper face" she does in hip hop class. Hilarious!)

This little girl of mine is such a fun little kiddo. She is helpful, kind, and sensitive. And if you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know that potty training her was not fun. We started way too early, pushed her into it, and she had consistent accidents for almost 2 years. Finally, a couple of months before turning 4, she decided staying dry was worth it and she started going to the bathroom all on her own all of the time. Phew!
She is now almost 4 1/2 and we've never even tried to potty train her at night. It just didn't seem like something that would be possible right now because her pull up is still wet every morning. But we have now decided to give it a chance anyway.
For 3 nights, we've had her in underwear and here's the low down.
Night 1: She went to bed at 8pm, I got her up at 11pm to go to the bathroom and when she was up at 7am, she was a little bit wet. Also, no drinks were given after dinner.
Night 2: She went to bed at 8pm, I got her up at 10pm to go to the bathroom, I got her up at 2am to go to the bathroom, and at 6:30am, she was still dry! She was so darn proud of herself!
Night 3{last night}: She went to bed at 10pm and I completely forgot about the no drink rule and she had had a lot of drinks before bed. So I woke her up at 11pm and 12pm and 1am to go to the bathroom. Seems fine and dandy, right?
Wrong.
Every single time I got her up, it took at least 30 minutes to get her back to bed because she was crying over scraped knees. I'm dead serious (She fell at the park earlier in the day.). I'm pretty sure the scraped knees were only part of the problem because she was so tired. I think she was just sick of waking up and was getting emotional. But I didn't really get to bed until 2am and when I tried to wake her up the next time, she started crying and wouldn't even get out of bed. And my goodness, I just wanted to go to sleep! So I did what everyone told me not to do and I put a diaper on her and fell asleep for the rest of the night.
So I don't really know what to do from here. If every night could be like "night 2", I'd keep going with this! But when I lose sleep, I'm not a very pleasant person. I think that's why God helped me out and both of my newborns slept through the night at only weeks old.
On the other hand, Petey does NOT like diapers and keeps begging me to buy her princess pull ups but I'm not really willing to spend double the money for something that holds pee just the same. This is kind of the whole reason we started nighttime potty training. I told her if she didn't want to wear a diaper, she needed to try to stay dry at night and be a big girl.
Also, I know 3 days isn't really enough time to see if she can do this. I think I'm going to give it another week and if it's just horrible and doesn't work out, she'll have to deal with diapers for a while.

But seriously, any advice is welcome and helpful. I know she may just not be ready for this but if this is just how nighttime potty training starts out and it gets easier, let me know so I can push through this hard time! I'll deal with the sleep loss if it means helping my girl stay dry at night in the long run.

The Unreasonable Threes

Spidey...Oh, Spidey. Isn't he adorable?

On Tuesday, we went to Petey's dance class and Spidey did not get a sucker. I forgot about it until we were in the car and driving away and the only thing that reminded me was the reaction that ensued. Seriously, just watch the video below.

And that wasn't even the worst part of his fit! His bottom lip was quivering, his eyes were swollen, and I kept an eye on him the whole drive home because I was worried he would throw up. It was crazy. And all of that for a tiny little sucker.
Oh the life of a 2 year old...

Let me change that...Oh the life of an almost 3 year old. 3 was much harder with Petey and I'm expecting it to be that way with Spidey. I don't believe in the 'terrible twos'. But boy howdy do I believe in the 'unreasonable threes'.

And even though I can't say they're going to be easy, they are most definitely going to be worth it. I'd take an unreasonable son over no son any day.

And just for a smile, I hope you enjoy this adorable video of my son.

And if you can't exactly tell what he's doing or where he's coming from, watch this little clip of Tarzan killing the Cheetah. My favorite part is the end when Spidey pretends to pick up the "lion" (in the movie, it's a Cheetah) exactly like Tarzan does.
Hilarious.