Catch Up

We are WAY behind on updating our blog. I always get frustrated when that happens. I actually keep putting it off because I am so far behind, which just puts me further behind. There has been a lot going on in our home and we've had a busy and fun 2 months.

The end of May we celebrated my birthday and Lillian's birthday. Thankfully we celebrated Lillian's birthday the weekend before our birthdays (mine is May 27th and hers is the 28th) because I ended up with the worst case of the stomach flu I've ever had. I ended up in the Urgent Care topping the morning of my birthday and got some IVs administered. I don't think I have ever felt so terrible as I did during those several days.  Thankfully once I got the IVs, I started to feel better but it definitely was not the way I wanted to spend my 29th birthday!

Starting in June we had a lot of company, which is one thing we LOVE! My best friend from Naperville and her family came. We had 4 kids in our home and Lillian was the oldest (at barely 3). It was a blast and they all did really well together. Kristin's husband Scott hiked Pikes Peak the first full day they were here! What an accomplishment. It was so fun to get to spend some quality time with Kristin and her amazing family.

Next came my brother Kevin and his family--Julie, Cooper and Chloe. Cooper just turned 5 and Chloe is 6 weeks older than Wilson. We had a lot of fun and the kids all played so well together. We went to the zoo, went on a great hike, ate some good food and enjoyed some great time together. It was so special to our family to have them come.

While my brother was here, Daniel's long time friend Gyle Smith and his family arrived. They didn't stay with us but we got to spend some quality time together. We road the Cog train up to the top of Pikes Peak, we put together a trampoline (thanks Smiths), ate lots of good food and went to the pool. I have never spent an extended amount of time with the Smiths, so I really enjoyed the chance to get to know them better.

Between all the company Daniel has been to San Antonio and Nashville playing drums as well as laying new sod and rock in our yard! We had 15 tons of river rock brought in and the guys wheel-barrowed it all over our yard. This last Saturday was our first real day off together in a long while. It has been such a fun month!

In the last month it sure feels like our kids have grown a TON! Lillian is now 3. She is so much fun!
Here are a few things that we want to remember about Lillian at 3:
*She loves to imagine...play imaginary games. These games include playing doctor, pretending to drive places, and "reading" books
*Lillian loves to look at letters and talk about the sounds and figure out how to spell a word. She does well when we help her sound it out.
*Numbers: she counts to 40 without any help and can go higher when we help with the prefix (fifty __)
*She also loves to add and subtract when we help her visualize and talk through the problem
*At her 3 year old appoint she weighed 30 lbs and was just under 38inches tall.
* She does NOT like car washes, smoke alarms, or the lawn mower. Basically any loud noises are not among her favorites.
*She is an amazing big sister. She insists on giving Wilson kisses before naps or bedtime and really enjoys being around him (except when he is after one of her toys).

Wilson is now 10 months:
*He started crawling at 8 months and is totally on the go! He loves to get places.
*Right at 10 months he conquered going up the stairs. I am now awaiting him figuring out how to go down. He fell down the stairs the Sunday morning after he started crawling and it was all my fault. He fell all the way down the steps on to the wood floor. He recovered in about 4 minutes and I have yet to recover. :)
*With his newfound freedom he gets into EVERYTHING! He pulls all sorts of treasures out of the cabinets. He also chases Lillian around and she used to hide on the stairs so that he couldn't get to her but now that he can do the stairs she's had to resort to going on the bed or the table. ;
:)
*He pulls up on everything and in the last day he has started letting go of things and trying to stand. The first time I saw him do this was when he was playing on Lillian's drum set.
*He is making lots of sounds and I am pretty sure he has learned the word "ball". He LOVES to play with any kind of ball. He throws to you if you are near and if you aren't, he will throw it to himself and chase after it.
*He will do the sign for "more" and "all done" and if you say "how big is Wilson?", he will throw his hands up in the air as if to say "so big".

We are loving life and are so grateful to God for our precious kids and our family and friends!

Lisa

Lillianisms

Lisa and I are blessed parents. Lillian Carol and Wilson James keep us laughing. This blog is our attempt to capture--to preserve--the memories we're making and the precious things are children are saying and doing as they grow.

Here are the fan favorite Lillianisms for the last couple weeks:

1. Lillian is not yet three, but she's very punctilious when it comes to using language/grammar. Wilson, who is 8 months, doesn't always enjoy getting dressed. He doesn't want to stay in one place very long. So the other day as Lisa was dressing Wilson, he was protesting by rolling around and being difficult to corral. To console him as she restrained him, Lisa was using baby language and talking in that voice that every parent acquires to try to let their babies know that the torture of getting dressed will be over with soon. She said in a baby's voice, "I sorry, Wilson. I sorry." Lillian jumped all over it. "Mommy, it's 'I'm sorry', not 'I sorry.'" Come on, Lisa. What were you thinking?

2. Last week I took Lillian to a stage production of Alice in Wonderland. It was a great daddy/daughter date together. The weather wasn't that great when we went in to see the show, and as we walked out Lillian commented that "it's quite windy out here, dad." Every once in a while with Lillian it sounds like a 30 year old adult is talking to me. I never expect to hear the word "quite" coming from my two year old.

3. When it comes to clothing, Lillian is pretty opinionated. Not picky in the sense that she wants brand-name clothes, but just very definite on the texture of the clothing and how it makes her feel. She has grown to disdain tags that rub up against her skin. She let Lisa know, "Mommy, I like to play tag, but I don't like tags." We laughed.

4. The other day we were getting ready for dinner and I couldn't find Lillian anywhere in the house. I called out. I went upstairs and down to the basement. To where in the world did she disappear? Until I opened up a coat closet. There she was. And she was holding something--a pair of scissors in each hand.

Hmm. This was unusual. Like a lamb before the slaughter, she didn't say a word. She just looked at me with her wide, irretrievably guilty eyes. And then, I saw it. One gorgeous, curly, blond lock of hair lay on the wood floor. It was Lillian's first--and surely last!--attempt at cutting her own hair.

5. Lillian understands the concept of Lisa and I being married. She gets that it's just the two of us for the rest of our lives. No others. We talk about that from time to time with her. She just smiles, looks to the ceiling and gets this slightly embarrassed look, as if to say, "Oh, that's so cute. I like that about you Mommy and Daddy."

And then one day Lillian went for the jugular. She walked up to me and said, unsolicited: "Daddy, I'm going to marry you one day."

That's all for now. I'm going to go cry now.

Love.
Daniel, Lisa, Lillian and Wilson Grothe

Wilson James

Wilson James Grothe is 8 months today. That is so hard to believe! We woke up to snow all over the ground and it has been snowing all day since. You never know what you are going to get around here. It will probably be 70 degrees tomorrow.

Back to Wilson. Some memories I want to keep locked away of my darling little man:
* How loves to dance to any type of music. If he is sitting, his torso, arms and head are all bouncing around. If you are holding him his entire body is moving in a syncopated flail. It is really funny to watch
* He bangs his hands on the highchair causing any of his food that remains on the tray to flop around like fish out of water
* He lets you feed him food, but he always wants something on his tray that he can feed himself too.
* The noises he makes are so "boyish." I am not sure how else to describe it, but I feel like there is a significant difference in the noises he creates at this age compared to the ones Lillian made at this age.
*He rolls around all over the place to get where he wants. He leans over and gets in the crawling position only to land on his tummy and move his arms and legs like he is trying to swim.
* He loves his jumper that hangs in the door. He gets excited as soon as he sees me hang it up.
* He ADORES his big sister and she adores him! They are so excited to see each other in the morning and after naps.
* He basically skipped right over baby food. He doesn't like it. For weeks Daniel and I tried to get him to eat it only to have all of us become frustrated. Since he started eating "big people" food, he pounds it and he is the last one to be done at meal time! I have kind of felt bad, thinking my sweet boy has been starving.
* He is now sleeping through the night!!
*Socks are constantly being pulled off. I am glad the weather is getting warm enough that people will not think I am bad mom if my son is out of the house with no socks.
* He is sooo content and smiley! I love him so much. Daniel and I are so blessed to have our darling little guy as a gift from God.

Thats it for now. Daniel may have more he wants to add later.

"I'm big now..."

So a couple of stories I have been trying to keep in my brain so that I would not forget.

1. Lillian and I are practicing appropriate responses to requests made by other people. The other day I asked Lillian to do something and I gently reminded her that she could respond with "Yes ma'm or Yes Mommy." Lillian thought for a few moments and said "I am going to say Yes Ma'mmy, like yes mom and yes ma'm." Clever I thought, and agreed that would be okay too.

2. This morning as I was getting Wilson dressed for church I hear Lillian hollering up the stairs "Lisa, Lisa, LISA, lisa...." After she arrived in Wilson's room I looked at her and replied "who am I to you?" and she said  "Mommy, but I am big now so I can call you Lisa." I chuckled and explained that I got to be "Lisa" to hundreds of people but I only got to be "Mommy" to her and Wilson, thankfully she obliged.

Wilson has gone several nights now sleeping through the night! It has been glorious. I feel so relieved and just so much more patient. I know I was surviving those long nights of waking up several times a night but I am confident that I was not being the best wife, mommy, friend, etc. that I could be. Glad there is grace.

Daniel spent two nights with Eugene Peterson last week at his home in Montana. Eugene translated the Message Bible and has written forty-one books, and many of them have really challenged and encouraged Daniel. Some of you have asked about his time--I am sure Daniel will write about it in the near future after he has been able to digest his experience. For now I will share a picture with you. Eugene informed Daniel that several years ago after he concluded his time teaching at Regent University in Vancouver he made a vow to be done with posing for pictures. We are glad he decided to break his vow.  :)

Well I am one happy mama! My 7 month old little (big) man has slept through the night for the past few nights!! This is a major deal in my house considering it has been over 7 months since I have gone to bed and not had to get back up out of bed multiple times in the night. Hopefully now I will have a little more energy to keep up with a few other things in life, such as a blog :) Lord please let this be the new normal!

Daniel is up at theMILL tonight. They meet on Friday nights. We (the kids and I) have made it a fairly regular routine to go up and visit Daniel for part of the evening. I wish I could be up there the whole time but it is just a little bit challenging to make it the whole night. I am sure we could do it but then we pay for on Saturday with tired kiddos.

Lillian has been saying some fun things lately. She cracks me up.  She has turned into my grammatical coach the last few days. A few days ago I was putting her sock on when she informed me that there was something bothering her in the sock. So we pulled the sock off and found a thread in the sock. I pulled it out and we started over again. She then asked me what was in there. I told her "there was a thread in your socks." She stopped for a second and said "No mommy, its sock, it was in just ONE sock." Yesterday I was getting Wilson dressed. When I did this he started fussing at me and I was just rubbing on him and kissing on him and I said "I sorry, I am all done" Lillian looked at me and said "Mommy you are supposed to say I'm sorry not I sorry." Okay then, you are right.

Often times in my journal I right a "Favorite Moment" from my day. Lately my favorite moments have involved Lillian and Wilson just giggling away at each other. Lillian loves to make Wilson laugh and Wilson loves his big sister so they will just be laughing out loud. It is music to my ears!

A Few Fun Lillianisms

I am trying to do a better job of writing down the funny happenings in our house a little quicker or else by the time a "quiet" moment rolls around I have already forgotten. So here goes a few of my latest laughable moments:

1. A couple of days ago Lillian was looking at my Anthropologie catalog. She was enjoying looking at all the pictures and then when she looked at one of the models she said "mommy, she looks like you." I took that as a compliment and it felt nice that she had that thought...until the next day when she was looking at our ESPN magazine and as she was looking at the cover full of pictures of Shaun White she stated, "He looks like you mommy." For those of you who don't know who Shaun White is, let me explain. First he is a MAN! He is the Olympic snowboarder with wild, red, curly hair. So much for soaking up the compliments from my 2 year old! I will remember to take those with a grain of salt.

2. As Lillian sat down to go to the bathroom today she wanted to pull the seat up. I told her that it probably was not a good idea. She continued to inquire about why it wouldn't be such a good idea.  I explained that she might fall in if she sat there with the seat up. She then said that I was right because she "might get flushed down the toilet and then her brother wouldn't have a sister anymore." I couldn't help but nod and smile. 

Anyway, thats it for now.