April Fun

We celebrated Easter this month. Here are some fun pictures from our experiences.

We enjoyed a fun Easter Egg Hunt with MOMS club. Lydia was so interested in the eggs that it took her a long time to just pick up three. She wanted to hold them instead of put them in her basket.

Ethan loves to hunt for eggs and even after Easter he would hide eggs and then ask us to find them or find them himself.

checking out the loot

Lydia loves to be outside and climbing on everything she can. She loves the swings and slides.

Just a fun Easter treat that I made for a party

Pretty hard to get everyone to look and smile.

Visiting the zoo to see the tulips

Some of my favorite flowers!!

Happy to sit in a chair her own size

More fun at the park

Lydia loved finding treats in her eggs

Easter Sunday

Coloring Easter Eggs

Doing tricks together :)

I can see a lot of Burningham in her face in this picture

Yard work and mulch. Ethan loves to be outside with Dad

Lydia figured out how to crawl through the cube shelves into the small space on the other side

Riding and walking at the park. Everything is so green here now!

MOMS club visit to the Hebron Fire Station

Ethan started being a lot more independent this month...with the motivation of a new car. He will now go to the bathroom, wash his hands, get dressed, put on his socks and shoes, and mostly buckle himself in his car seat all by himself. It is so wonderful for me!!! He can play nicely with Lydia some of the time as well which is fun to watch. I hope they will be good friends.

I also completely weaned Lydia at the end of April to Coconut/Almond Milk. She is allergic or intolerant to dairy, eggs, wheat, and peppers. It is a challenge to feed her, but I know when I've been successful because she is happy, takes good naps, and sleeps through the night. It's always the goal, but I've been surprised at how hard it can be to achieve. Here's hoping that she grows out of the allergies sooner rather than later!!

Random Things from March

So, it's bad when I can't even really remember what happened in March and then I look back through the pictures and just see random moments. So, here is a post about random moments. :)

Finally got some pictures for Lydia's birthday

This cute little dress was Lydia's birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa Burningham

One of my favorites

We went to Jumpzone as a family for a friend birthday party. Ethan and Lydia had a really fun time, but unfortunately I'm pretty sure we took some germs home that gave us some awful colds--The down side of fun places like this for sure.

We made it to the zoo for the first time this year and Ethan wanted to visit the hippos first, but really this area nearby is just as fun as seeing the hippos.

One morning I woke up to this in the morning. Ethan had filled Lydia's crib with three bins of clothing I had just sorted along with all her shoes, books, and dirty laundry. Lydia had a grand time too, but she's crying in the photo because I didn't take her out of the crib before I took the picture. :)

Ethan has also has fun lining up all the cushions and pillows and Lydia loves to climb through them. Unfortunately, Lydia "messes up" Ethan's neat rows so he's not too happy about that...

Fun times making bracelets with a friend over

Lydia loves this purple purse and carries it around on her arm whenever she sees it lying around.

Lydia walks everywhere she goes now even though she's not totally steady all the time. It's fun to see her waddle around.

I use time-outs when Ethan makes bad choices. Fortunately, often by the time I go back to check on him after three minutes, he's sitting there looking at a book. I think he's going to be an avid reader once he learns to read.

Ethan put together this series of things to step on and it didn't take Lydia long to get up on the chair too. This is Ethan's "smile."

Lydia opening a present from Grandma and Grandpa Rogers.

Ethan came home with a planted seed from church one Sunday. Ethan was very interested in watching it grow.

A recent rain storm left huge puddles on our walking path at the park. Ethan loved riding through them over and over again....although he looks pretty serious in this picture. :)

These Lego cars have become part of our home decor since Ethan wants his stuff put up high so Lydia won't ruin it.

Ethan requested that I take this picture of him sitting by the Mary Ingals statue at the library. We visit her often!

Picture of Lydia smiling while playing peekaboo with her blanket

February Happenings

In addition to Lydia's birthday, here are a few more things that happened in February...

We went to Totter's Otterville with friends. Ethan really enjoyed it since it had been over a year since we'd visited. 

Tub Fun--Ethan actually prefers that Lydia take a bath with him. They both love playing in the water.

Happy Birthday to Jason! We celebrated his birthday by opening a few gifts and eating Puppy Chow. Unfortunately, we all got a stomach bug that week. Hopefully we'll be able to squeeze in our Birthday/Valentines Date soon. Jason is doing well at work. It has its ups and downs, but overall he feels good about being there right now. Besides work his church responsibilities keep him pretty busy and if he has any spare minutes I give him plenty of ideas about how he should use them. :) Unfortunately, sleep never makes it very high on the priority list.

Cutest Valentine

The night of Valentines Day, Jason took the kids with him to the store to give me a break and pick up pizza for dinner. At the store, Jason let Ethan help pick out a valentine for me. When they got home, Ethan was so excited to give it to me that he tripped up the garage stairs through the back door and went sprawling, but quickly recovered himself and recited the love lines Jason had coached him to say. It was super adorable!!

I got a new calling at church this month. I was the primary pianist, but I got released and was called to be the 1st Counselor in the Primary Presidency. It will be nice to teach children again and I'm looking forward to it.

We had about 2 weeks of really nice weather in February. We were able to go out walking, Ethan got to ride his tricycle a lot, and we played outside a lot. It was so nice to have an early Spring come after our mild Winter.

We ordered something that came in a really big box and Ethan enjoyed using it as his "house." He even wanted to watch his shows in there.

For Lydia's birthday activity we went to the Newport Aquarium together. We had never been but had heard good things about it. Unfortunately we went on a super crowded day that made it less enjoyable, but our favorite part was the cool shark tunnel they had as well as a shallow area of water where you could put some sharks as they swam by. Ethan really enjoyed the trip so I'm glad we went.

Ethan excited about seeing fish swimming over his head

Shark tunnel

Petting sharks

Other February activities included cleaning the church, driving to Louisville for our monthly visit to the temple, and doing our taxes so we could claim our refund. It's amazing how on any given day it doesn't feel like we (Ethan, Lydia, and I) do much, but when I look over the month we somehow manage to squeeze in a lot!

This month I researched some preschools and then signed Ethan up for half day preschool three days a week at a Baptist church starting in the Fall. They have a lot of good Christian preschools around here and I think he'll really like this one.

I started doing some preschool activities with Ethan most days this month and his curiosity and interest in letters and letter sounds has really taken off. I've been working with him on recognizing the letters of his name and his little brain has been jumping ahead and trying to figure it all out. He can name a lot of letters sounds and also tell you what sound and letter a word starts with, even new words, by hearing a word and picking out the first sound. Every day he'll say a word like "dinner" and then a few seconds later he'll follow it up with, "d-d-dinner" starts with "d." He is pretty smart. Of course in addition to picking up new words, letters, and sounds, he's also found new ways to break rules and "solve problems" like how to solve the problem of getting to the Oreos high up on the shelf in the back corner, how to get his milk off the top shelf, or his toys back that were taken away. We've also lost more rolls of toilet paper and tubes of tooth paste to his new found testing of rules. I always now when he wants to shut the door of the room I'm in that he's about to try something mischievous. Fortunately, sometimes that "mischief" is just climbing into Lydia's climb to play with her, or to clear the table from breakfast to surprise me. I did walk in on him clearing the table and caught him just in time before he tipped over a pitcher of orange juice all over the fridge and floor. He was unhappy I caught him doing something good, but I was very relieved that I didn't have to clean up the orange juice!

Practicing some letters in the rice. He prefers to pour it into different containers though and could do that for a long time.

Ethan also uses more and more adult words and phrases like "actually" and "in order to." For example, at dinner he would say, "How many bites of chili to I have to eat in order to get more corn bread?"

Here are some cute things Ethan has said in the last couple of months:


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To Dad, Ethan said “Mom said we’re having ERG, it’s a other word for Family Home Evening.”

When asked how many kids we should have in our family Ethan said 3 kids. Why? Because he doesn’t want too many. When asked how many sisters he wanted, he said 4 sisters.

He also makes up other random nonsense words and says it’s a Spanish word that means, _(whatever he comes up with on the top of his head)______.

Ethan saw some earrings I was wearing and said "Ohhhh, Mom! You have a screw in your ear!"

During Family Home Evening when we were talking about Jesus descending from heaven to visit the Americas, Ethan answered a question by saying, "Jesus comes down, Jesus is like a helicopter." 

Ethan also tells us lots of things he did "when he was a missionary." For example, one time he told Jason, "When I was a grown-up I went on my mission to China and I learned how to catch balloons."

One of the first times he discovered how great it was to get into the snacks without asking, he came and told me about it afterwards and said, "Mom, when I was playing, I heared my tummy rumbling for some bunny crackers so I just ate some to make my tummy happy."

Speaking of bunnies, Ethan played at a friend's house and they let their pet bunny loose and apparently Ethan was very interested in watching!