My Sweet Little Boy

The other night, as I was putting Ethan down for bed, I asked him what song he wanted to sing. His usual song choices are: Little Einstein's Theme Song or "Rocket" as he calls it, the airplane song (which is a song that one of his toy airplanes sings), and Soy Un Hijo De Dios which is I am a Child of God in Spanish. But this time Ethan kept saying that he wanted to sing the night-night song. I really had no idea what song he was referring to so I started singing the song "Lullaby and Goodnight." As I was singing it, I saw the corners of his mouth turn down into a frown and his little chin started quivering as big alligator tears welled up in his eyes. He then started softly crying. I stopped singing and asked him what was wrong and to not be sad ( honestly I was thinking that he was sad because he was having to go to sleep) but he sweetly looked at me with those big eyes and long eyelashes catching his tears and said, "Mommy, I not sad. The song is soooo pretty." What? Did those sweet words just come out of my rambunctious 2 year olds mouth? I then started crying because I was so touched by how sensitive my little boy can be and we were just a big ball of tears hugging each other. I love tender moments like that and I just thought that that is something I should document before I forget about it.

I'm so glad to know that Ethan does infact have a soft and sensitive side to him... His future wife will appreciate that someday :)

Meet The Smith Side

Here are just a few members of the Smith side of the family, according to Ethan.....


Back row, left to right: Grandma Smith, Loopin' Louie (an adopted member of the family I suppose), Aunt Chalene
Front row: Aunt Caryn, Uncle Jordan

FYI: Ethan made these all on his own with out any help. He also named them all by himself and makes these potato heads several times a day exactly the same way!

My favorites are Grandma with the HUGE bug eyes and Chalene with the cool Pablo mustache :) Now we all know how you guys look to Ethan with his observant 2 year old eyes :)

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary....

How does your garden grow?? Well at our house, our garden grows right on our front porch!




Because we have not landscaped our backyard yet (that's next on our list of things to do) and it doesn't get very much sunlight during the winter/spring, we just decided to get some pots and plant some veggies right on our front porch! I'm sure if the HOA saw it we would get in trouble, but let's just hope it blends into our house or something :)

Justin has been so excited to start a garden and I have let him have his fun at it. He of course loves experimenting with all the product from his company and I tell ya what, that stuff is amazing!

Check out the budding on these tomatoes....

This is just one part of the front of the plant

And this is one part of the back of the plant....

There are a ton of tomatoes!

My mother in-laws tomato plants are amazing! She uses the "foo foo juice"- as one guy calls it in our ward, and I have never seen tomatoes so thick! I love that my husband is an agricultural kind of guy and knows how to grow a garden!

We Just Love These Kids

Justin is out of town for the next two weeks for business so stay tuned for a lot more posts from me. Hey, I have to find some way to keep myself busy at night, right?!

Yesterday I couldn't help but take lots of pictures of these cute kiddos. I just adore Ellie's little outfit (thanks Allison) and she must have too because she was so happy to let me snap a billion photos of her! So, of course I think they are all cute and couldn't just choose a few so here are some of my favorites....
P.S.. I am so so so sad that all of them turned out blurry. Turns out my camera is dying and the processor, or something like that, is going kaput :(


This one would not upload right side up! I tried....

Oh how I just love those big gummy smiles!!



Of course Ethan had to jump in on the fun too!

And I'm pretty sure these next 2 pictures just make me want to cry...soooo sweet!
Again, I tried to flip it around-sorry!



And this is how we do tummy time with Ellie. She cries and cries when she is on the ground doing it so I am more than happy to cuddle with her lying down like so, so she can get some practice....

I'd say she is doing pretty good getting that big ole' head up!

Little girls are so much fun!

Our Eventful Afternoon...

True story... Ethan came running up the stairs screaming/dancing, "Mommy, I go potty, I go potty, I go potty!!!!" Of course I was busy nursing Ellie at this time (it seems as if he ALWAYS has to go potty when Im feeding her) and I asked him if he could wait until I was done feeding her. The poor kid was almost in tears screaming "I go potty!" and was about to pull his pants down right then and there. So I ran him to the bathroom set him up on the potty (all while still nursing poor Ellie I might add). He had diarrhea. I set mad Ellie down on the floor so I could wipe Ethan and while doing so, Ellie blew and I mean literally blew out of her diaper- she destroyed that thing and not to mention the clothes she had on and the bathroom rug she was lying on.

Ethan was about to jump off the potty with a still poopy bum and Ellie was mad as could be because she didn't get to finish eating. So I wiped Ethan and then ran Ellie to the changing table. Of course poop gets everywhere trying to take her onesie off and not to mention she is spitting up all over the place because she didnt get burped. I give her quick bath- she is still spitting up everywhere and put on some clothes thinking she couldnt possibly spit up anymore. Then she did, All over her cute little outfit....

Even with times like these, I still love being a mother... And I don't even mind getting spit up on, pooped on and wiping dirty bums :)

Miss Ellie At 1 Month

Our little Ellie turned 1 month old on the 10th and is just the sweetest little baby... Here is what she is up to:

-She is still a dynamite little eater and is on a really good schedule of eating every 3 hours or so.
-She sometimes will sleep through the night (from 10pm to 6am) but normally she will eat at 9:30pm and sleep until 3:30am and then sleep again until 6am... with that much sleep, I can't complain and I feel really lucky that she is a good sleeper! Ethan dropped his 3:30am feeding at around 2 months so I'm hoping she will do the same!
-She just moved up to stage 1 diapers and is wearing 0-3 month old clothing
-She smiles and coos at us! One morning this last week she just started giving us big gummy smiles and has continued to do it ever since! I just love it!
-She sustains eye contact and is a lot more alert and awake now a days...
-She is a spit up baby! Ethan was pretty bad so I wasn't expecting her to not be... cloth diapers are my friends...
-She grunts like a little piggy and is the noisiest little sleeper. It's a good thing I don't hear much when I sleep or she would constantly keep me awake with all that grunting she does!

She really is just a little dream to have and we are so lucky to have this little girl as part of our family! True to what they say happens with the second child, we don't have near the pictures of her as we do of Ethan at this age but here are a few of what we have manage to take of her thus far...



We just love this little lady and so does her big brother! he can be so cute with her. I love this stage of hers and I'm in no hurry for her to grow up anytime soon... Why can't they stay our babies for forever again? :)

Easter Festivities

We had a great Easter this year and I've decided that holidays are SO much more fun now with a kid who is old enough to get excited about them. Last weekend, our city had kinda a mini free carnival of sorts with a huge Easter Egg hunt for the kids.

Here is Ethan and his good buddy Parker getting ready to load up on the Easter eggs...

Ethan found one spot where there was a ton of eggs and so he just stood there and picked up as many as he could around them... I guess this wasn't much of a "hunt" but he loved it!

He even got to meet the Easter Bunny

They had a petting zoo there and Ethan loved petting the goats and chasing the chickens around.


He was even brave enough to touch this massively huge albino python... seriously, this thing was enormous! I think they said it was 16ft long!

Ethan kept wanting to "pet" the head and showed absolutely no fear for the ginormous reptile. I however, was perfectly content keeping my distance and zooming in for the pictures. I refuse to touch a snake since the last time I did (I was like 10) the nasty thing decided to spray it's poop all over me... that was the first and last time for me to touch any kind of snake :)

This iguana was a rare breed from Haiti...

Ethan also had a blast jumping around....

and dancing to the beat of African music....
*side note*- He was terrified of that huge er... haystack?.. dancing in the background. Seriously, didn't they know that something like that could possibly give kids nightmares?!

But despite the scary looking dead grass, Ethan got up on stage, shook his little instrument, and danced along with all the other kids... he was SO cute up there!

But for Ethan, the highlight of the carnival was getting to explore the firetruck! They even gave him that cute little fireman's hat to wear. He loved it!


On Sunday (Easter) we dyed some Easter eggs...

and decorated them...

and then had fun playing Egg Wars. This is where you crash your eggs into each other and whoever's egg cracks loses.... Needless to say, this was our favorite part of the Easter egg decorating and will probably be a tradition from here on out.

Here is the aftermath.... Maybe we had a little too much fun :)

But we couldn't let those perfectly good hard-boiled eggs go to waste so we ate some egg salad sandwiches for lunch!

I just love this picture of Ethan... Isn't he a cutie?!
We had a wonderful Easter weekend spending time together as a family and watching General Conference. I love learning from our prophet and apostles. It was nice to spend a little time reflecting upon our Savior and his great sacrifice for us. We feel so blessed to be sealed together for time and all eternity and know that we have been greatly blessed with the children we have. We love life and couldn't be happier! :)

Ethan's Obsession

Meet Looping Louie.......


This game is Ethan's newest obsession. He could seriously play it for hours and when he isn't playing it he talks about playing it constantly!



It's actually quite a fun game. You have to try to keep the mechanically spinning airplane from taking your chickens down by hitting it and you can also attempt to hit other people's chickens. Ethan doesn't like to play how you are suppose to though. He LOVES putting it together, taking it back down again, putting it into the box, putting it back on the shelf, and them runs up to me to ask if he can play "Bu-duh, buh-duh airplane." Then repeats....mulitple times a day :) You might think that this would be a fun opportunity to play with my child but no, he doesn't want me to. I've tried!

He loves this game so much that we have to limit the amount of time he plays with it so he can want to go outside and be a normal child! But hey, there are worse things he could be obsessed about I guess. I have to tell him, "Ok Ethan. First we go to the park, go to Wal-mart, (or whatever) and THEN we play with Looping Louie... then he will gladly leave it. It's kind of nice though to have something to fall back on for punishments... He know that if he doesn't make good choices then he doesn't get to play the game. It works out quite nicely actually :) He has also been thanking Heavenly Father every night for it during his night prayers- so cute!

I just love this stage that he is going through. He seriously makes me laugh at the funny things he says. For example...

- Yesterday while watching general conference, President Packer was speaking and Ethan says.. "Look Mommy! It's Mr. Friederickson.. like UP!" For any of you who dont know who this character is just google him and you might see a striking resemblance (at least through a 2 year olds eyes :)

- Also during conference he got in trouble for doing something and had to go sit in time out. He wasn't happy about it even after we talked to him and so he stood in front of the TV with his arms folded angrily and points his cute little finger up at President Monson speaking and said
" No. Bad Choice President Monson... Bad Heavenly Father" and then stomped away.
That right there folks is why little children are not held accountable :)

- He also loves to sing songs and I'm pretty sure that we have to sing Little Einsteins opening song and Oh mr. sun, sun, Mr. golden sun many times a day.

- He is starting to compare objects to one another as well. Like the other day he ate all his grapes and looked at the empty stem and said " Look Mommy! It's like Randall from Monsters Inc!"- I personally was not ever aware that he has ever seen this movie so i was very impressed!

Anyways, he is in such a fun stage and I love the funny things he comes up with to say everyday. There are many more examples but I can't think of any more right now and this post is much longer than I intended. We sure love our little boy and can't believe how fast they grow up. Please, please, please stay my little boy for forever??