So Fun

It has been so fun having my sister and her girls in town to play! My mom and dad flew in last night as well and the girls are busy loving on grandma and grandpa.  :)  It has been so fun seeing our daughters interact and play together. We only wish our other siblings could have made it out as well and that ALL the cousins could have been her to play together!

Sara loves holding Mia, even though they are getting closer and closer to being the same size.  lol

Mia, my cute little bug, trying to keep up with her cousins.

Hard at work on Halloween decorations for the house.

It is, apparently, VERY serious business.

This morning we got up, ate breakfast and put on our Halloween costumes to go trick-or-treating at a nursing home for a play group activity. Nothing like a little candy first thing in the morning!  :)  It made me think of a bib I saw at the store the other day that said, "The sugar made me do it!"  I think we'll have to get three of those shirts for these three cute candy-loving girls for the next few days.

My little pink caterpillar playing with mom's sunglasses before getting into her butterfly costume.  :)

Sofia, Mia and Sara - 3 little beauties! Mia's loving sitting like a big girl with her cousins.  :)

This little Butterfly is read to Trick-or-Treat rock-and-roll!

My niece Sara did NOT want to smile for the camera. I decided to use reverse psychology by telling her I wanted to take an "ugly senorita" photo so she should show me her ugly senorita face. It worked, and Sara smiled. However, Sofia took me seriously and this was the resulting photo:

Ugly senorita photo.  lol

Aren't they the cutest things ever!

Ready for trick or treating.  :)

Trick-or-Treat!

Uhm, mommy, is that MY piece of candy in YOUR mouth??? Whoopsie!

LOVE this smile! I just have to say how great her lip repair surgery has healed. We are almost a year out and her lip is so smooth that you'd never guess it was open on both sides of her sweet little mouth/nose when she was born.

And a few last photos of the girls with grandma and grandpa:

Mia getting some grandma loves.  :)

Fia chilling with grandpa...

...while grandma reads to Sara.

grandma?!?!?

So I was walking into the store the other day and looked down and realized that I'd dropped Mia's blanket off the diaper bag.  I had parked in one of the first stalls and was almost to the door of the store when I realized it, so I didn't really have TOO far to go to find it.  Well, just as I approached my car, this lady was walking my way and picked it up for me.  She said she'd seen it fall as she was pulling into a parking spot but didn't know if I'd realize what she'd meant if she'd honked.  We chatted as we walked back towards the store and she said that she'd had her two little nieces the day before.  Then she asked me how old Mia was and when I told her "5 months", she said, "Is she your first grandchild?"  GRANDCHILD?!?!?!  What the heck?!?!?  I said, "No, first child - we got a late start."  She was so embarrassed and mortified and apologized profusely and said she hoped she hadn't offended me.  I just laughed it off, but then later that day I started thinking about it and doubting myself.  I've always thought I look young for my age, but that lady totally blew THAT idea out the window.  The lady was obviously around 10 years older than I and when I said that we'd gotten a late start, she said she'd had her first child at 38.  What?!?! 

Needless to say, my quickly dwindling savings is now down $40 because today I bought some Olay Regenerist, which, according to the commercials on TV lately, works better than some $700 creams.  Let's just hope it really works and I have "visibly tighter skin in just 5 days." Otherwise I totally blew my savings plan to buy the newest Photoshop Elements for myself for Christmas.  Bummer.  I know I'm getting older and wrinklier, but grandma?!?!  I guess I'd better get use to it - I'm sure that when Mia starts school in 5 years that I will quite often be confused for being her grandma.  Sadness.

More pics of family visit!

We are SO enjoying having family in town and the raucous excitement it brings to our little home.    :)  It is going to seem SO lonely and empty once everyone leaves, and Mia's going to feel bereft and alone with out her cute cousins to fuss and coo over her!  lol

Sara loves getting as close to baby Mia as possible and is so cute with her!

Quote of the day was from Claes as Sofia was climbing all over him on the LoveSac - "This girl's about as graceful as a tank!"

Sara and Sofia reading one of their new books with Grandma.

Putting their "piggies" together for goodnight kisses.  Cute book with awesome illustrations by Don and Audrey Wood - "Piggies".

Mia enjoying chilling with Uncle Claes.

Fun little Halloween week outfit.  :)

Playing at the pool - Sara and Fia "cleaning" around the pool with sticks.

while grandpa, mama Nikki, grandma, and cousin Mia look on

Sofia and Sara looking at the HUGE grasshopper Sara found and brought to show her mom - which elicited horrified screams from Nikki, grandma and me!

grandpa, Mia, and grandma chilling by the pool

Claes - the best dad in the world - getting the grasshopper for Sara to take home.  Quote of the day from Sara, "It's dead so we can take it home.  If it was alive we would have to leave it here.  But it's not.  It's dead.  So we can take it home."

Sara was SO excited to loose her wiggly tooth in Texas!  It was her first tooth and the American tooth fairy gave her TEN DOLLARS!!!  Wow, MY tooth fairy never delivered like THAT!  :)

Sofia and Sara with their pumpkins - faces drawn on and ready to be carved the next day

the fam preparing for dinner - Zeus cooked up some DELICIOUS enchiladas that everyone LOVED and devoured!

Mia's little cleft lip pumpkin - we didn't carve it cause it was so little!  Sara picked it out for her and I drew the face.  :)

Mia snuggling Uncle Michael and trying to charm him into giving her a cousin or three...  ;)

My sister Nik and her beautiful family - Nik, Sofia, Claes and Sara

Sofia and papa Claes, and Sara and mama Nikki carving pumpkins

Sofia's gooey fingers from digging out the guts

Sofia and Sara were WAY excited to help me give Mia her bath

they helped get Mia VERY clean and had fun rinsing her off with water and scrubbing her with wet cotton balls... I told Nik she should have another one since she had such great helpers... she declined to comment... 

Mia trying to touch the water - little cutie pie

clean snuggles with mama after bath time

Zeus called today to try and reschedule Mia's surgery at the hospital here in town. We heard back from Shriner's and they wanted to have a preliminary meeting with us on the same day - November 10th.  Shriner's will do Mia's lip and palate surgery for free.  FREE.  It would be such a blessing to not have the financial burden, but our primary concern is that Mia receives the best possible surgery and care.  So, we are going to drive down to Houston next week to meet with their team and see how we feel about it.  The team here is going to see if/what's available in December and get back to us, so we will be driving to Houston the original surgery day instead to meet with the Shriner's team. It is such a scary decision. After the fiasco tonight with getting her NAM in, I'm ready to have had the surgery last week, but then I think, we've already been doing this for 3 1/2 months, what's a month or two more in the grand scheme of things?SO many more pictures to share, but it's just after midnight and I need to get some sleep.  More pics soon of our fun "trunk-or-treating" and all three girls all dressed up in their Halloween costumes.

On a happier note, Mia's started giggling more regularly and it is SUCH a joyous sound!!! :) We took a ton of pics of her and her cousin's in their Halloween get up. It was funny because when Sofia asked where Mia's costume was and I showed her Mia's skeleton outfit, she said as we were walking back down the hall, "Mia is NOT nice. Sara and I are nice, but Mia is NOT nice." It took me a second to realize that she thought Mia's costume was mean/scary. lol I told her that Mia's LOOKED scary, but it was really a NICE skeleton. ;) She said, "Ok," and trotted off to the next thing. Silly kids!

Random Pics and Just Chillin'

I think that Mia's come down with a little bit of a cold - her first one.  When I take out her NAM she has a lot more congestion build up than ever before and does NOT appreciate my efforts to clean her little mouth out of all the extra "gunk".  I hope it clears up soon!   Because of that, we are just chilling at home again today. 

After yesterday's post of her sitting on the couch, I felt the need to take some pictures of her this morning to show that she is INDEED still small and little and not ENTIRELY grown up yet!  lol

My little sweetie in her little outfit my sister Nik passed along from Germany.  I think Sofia wore it when she was a baby. 

It's hard to see but it has a little fairy in the middle and says, "Komm, wir machen eine Reise en mein fairyland..." (Which roughly translates to, "Come, we're taking a trip to my fairyland...")  I'll have to try and get a pic of Sofia in it and post it along side Mia so we can see the two little cousins in the same outfit!  :)

Here's a quick one from this morning as well - Mia and I snuggling while we wait for her bottle to warm.  As always (of late), Mia's got her milky mouth spots on my shoulder and her fingers in her mouth!  Black is definitely NOT the color to wear during the drooly stages apparently.  lol 

See!  She's still little!!!!  :)  (But growing WAY too fast.)

Here are a few extra pics from the past week that I found on my phone.  :)

got her toes! 

Mia's randomly caught a hold of her toes a few times this past week.  It seems totally on accident for now, but we'll see how long it takes her to do it on purpose.  :)

Both grandma and Mia THOROUGHLY enjoy snuggle time with each other.

I found this paper tape that is touted as "removes easily" and "for delicate skin".  It's really helped keep her NAM on all day, but doesn't necessarily come off as "easily" as I was expecting.

"Mia, what do you think of this new tape?" I asked. 

"Hmmmm," she replied, "Let me think on it and get back to you mom."

Thankfully she doesn't seem to mind it!

Okay, I admit it - I'm a bit of a loon and as anyone who knows me well can attest to, I am also VERY curious in nature.  Mia wasn't thrilled when I had to peel the tape off her cheeks, even though it didn't leave a big red mark behind like the previous tape she had.  So, I wanted to find out what the best, most gentle way was to remove the tape.  Pull in the opposite direction?  Pull straight out?  Fast pull to remove?  Who knew?!?!  Of course, you don't want to experiment on your darling, sweet, precious baby...

Twinners!

Come to find out, the "fast pull" actually hurts significantly and burns for quite some time, while the most gentle way to remove it seemed to be to pull gently in the opposite direction.  She still doesn't LOVE it, but it holds her NAM in place SO well, even if she catches her little fingers on it and accidentally pulls on it - HOORAY!

On a side note, on our one outing for the day yesterday afternoon, Mia and I went to the Hallmark store and video store.  At the Hallmark store they had these mugs and piggy banks with kids names on them that were 40% off.  I was happily surprised to find Mia's name on both - so cute!  Which then left me with the conundrum as to which one, if any, to buy.  I took pictures with my phone and sent them to Zeus to see if I should get them or not, hoping he would be the voice of reason in my shopping craze. 

the mug

the piggy bank

They are so dang cute, aren't they!?!?!  Thanks to papa's calm voice of reason, Mia is now the proud new owner of a personalized mug AND piggy bank!  :)